Transforming Communications – Studies in Cross-Media Research

We live in times that are characterised by a multiplicity of media: Traditional media like television, radio and newspapers remain important, but have all undergone fundamental change in the wake of digitalization. New media have been emerging with an increasing speed: Internet platforms, mobile media and the many different software-based communication media we are recently confronted with as ‘apps’. This process is experiencing yet another boost from the ongoing and increasingly fast sequence of technological media innovations. In our late modern social world, communication processes take place across a variety of media. As a consequence, we can no longer explain the influences of media by focusing on any one single medium, its content and possible effects. In order to explain how media changes are related to transformations in culture and society we have to consider the cross-media character of communications. Furthermore, today’s digital media are not only means of communication, but also of continuous generation and processing of data.

 

In view of this, the book series ‘Transforming Communications’ is dedicated to cross-media communication research and related processes of datafication. It aims to support all kinds of research that are interested in processes of communication and datafication taking place across different kinds of media and that subsequently make media's transformative potential accessible. With this profile, the series addresses a wide range of different areas of study: media production, representation and appropriation as well as media technologies and their use, all from a current as well as a historical perspective. The series ‘Transforming Communications’ lends itself to different kinds of publication within a wide range of theoretical and methodological backgrounds. The idea is to stimulate academic engagement in cross-media issues by supporting the publication of rigorous scholarly work, text books, and thematically-focused volumes, whether theoretically or empirically oriented.