Practicing Media—Mediating Practice | Jumping on the Practice Bandwagon: Perspectives for a Practice-Oriented Study of Communication and Media

Abstract

The article proceeds from the interest in a practice-oriented vocabulary in culturalist studies of communication and media. It assesses whether a jump on the practice bandwagon can be justified by the contribution of praxeology to scholarly work that seeks to contextualize communicative routines or the production and appropriation of media. Setting out from the principles of recursivity, relationality, and expressivity characterizing media practices, I look at the ways in which media ensembles are constituted through the articulation of their technological, discursive, organizational, and institutional features. From that, I outline perspectives for a practice-inclined analysis of the transformation of collective orientations to media, the maintenance of media-saturated everyday lives, and the modification of media affordances.