Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this article, we examine the constitution of mutual knowledge on the Internet from the phenomenological standpoint that Alfred Schutz has articulated. The question Schutz seeks to answer is how we come to know the minds of others. Schutz divides the contemporaneous lifeworld we live in into two realms: consociates and contemporaries. Schutz argues that we come to know others through face-to-face interactions with them in the realm of consociates, and based on the public knowledge of ideal types in the realm of contemporaries. Extending Schutz' project to the study of human interaction on the Internet, we find that in the realm of the online world knowledge of others is obtained from the biographic narratives others relate to us. We argue that the purpose of mutual knowledge is not just to know others, but also to know our selves and our relationships with others. In this regard, the knowledge of others we gain online is a valuable part of the total stock of mutual knowledge we accumulate through our interactions with others in the lifeworld.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: ? I have begun exploring the structure and culture of scandal in what I call the “no-fault society” in a series of articles and papers (Jacobs 2005, 2006). In this roundtable presentation, I wish to start exploring its phenomenology. In terms of practical significance, understanding the phenomenology of scandal is necessary to understand the processes of informal social control that undergird the failed processes of formal control in US corporations. The first step in approaching this problem is to canvass competing approaches to phenomenology, surveying the alternative postulates they pose. What is the phenomenology of compromised personal integrity, as seen through the various lenses of symbolic interactionism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, and dramaturgy?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper outlines of a theory applicable to mobile technology derived from Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. Contemporary technological mobility intensifies the problem Heidegger identifies in modern technology: the end of distance. Miniaturization, ubiquity and speed make traditional conceptual differentiations between humans and technology impossible to maintain. Time/Space compression and tele-presence are now staples in theorizations of technology and society, but these theories focus on situationality rather than de-distancing as an experience. Heidegger warns this approach continues to theorize humanity into the standing reserve of nature. In addition to elaborating how technologies are employed in everyday life, I suggest it is important to identify poetic dwelling, seizing technological crisis as an opportunity to find Heideggerian truth. The task is to identify rituals that give sacredness to the artifacts (Carey, 1989), and in the revealing of the ritual processes, unveil the experience of pure being itself. Technography as a method of qualitative inquiry in communications should take seriously the Latourian perspective that technological devices function as actants in the actor-network, holding things at a uniform distancelessness as per their programs. Technography should artfully represent and recreate experience, autoethnographically and dramaturgically, emphasizing the performance of culture even as we and our technologies participate in writing it. This paper fits the ICA theme “Questioning the Dialogue” by exploring the relationship of culture and technology through a dialogue of traditional and contemporary theoretical and philosophical discourses. (an earlier draft of this paper was presented at a nonacademic conference, the New Forms Festival 2004, Vancouver)

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: This paper explores news journalism in an era in which practitioners and observers alike have noted startling changes in the depth, scale and speed of news coverage. My project investigates the everyday practice of news journalism in its organizational contexts in order to develop a more nuanced portrait of the forces that shape news-making today. This paper is based primarily upon 14 months of field research with German news journalists between 1996 and 2005, and focuses specifically on two issues: (1) the reconfiguration and tightening of relations between news organizations over the past 25 years and (2) the phenomenological challenges of practicing news journalism in a "real time" mode.