Geomedia Speaker Series - Ana María Munar

This presentation addresses emerging social media cultures and socio-technical practices through the theoretical lens of the Theory of Communicative Action of Jürgen Habermas. This conceptual scene is used to explain the interplay between social media and tourism. The study analyzes the paradoxical role of interactive technologies as forces for the reproduction and transformation of this worldwide phenomenon. I will discuss the processes of colonization of personal relations and life-spaces and the ambivalent potential of tourism social media as communicative technologies for emancipation but also as tools for hierarchization, control, and exploitation. Finally, I will introduce the concept of “emotional influence” and combine Habermas’ theories (i.e. cognitively specialized influence and normatively specialized influence) with the ideas of Lucy Suchman and the ideological fields of technology of Kozinets to discuss how digitally mediated communication relates to processes of sense-making, identity formation, emotions and cultural reproduction.

Open seminar:

Date: 27th of November
Place: Room 11C370, Karlstad University
10.15 - 12.00: Presentation by Ana Maria Munar

Closed seminar (Geomedia research group):

12.00-13.00 Lunch: Aventinen, Karlstad University
13.15 – 14.30 Presentations, Minerva, Karlstad University  
14.30-15.00 Coffee break