This book outlines a theory of communication and justice for the digital age, updating classic positions in political philosophy and ethics, and engaging thinkers from Aristotle through Immanuel Kant and the American pragmatists to John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, and Amartya Sen.
In communication seeking to define justice and call out injustice, there is such a thing as the last word. The chapters in this book trace the historical emergence of communication as a human right; specify the technological resources and institutional frameworks necessary for exercising that right; and address some of the challenges following from digitalization that currently confront citizens, national regulators, and international agencies. Among the issues covered are public access to information archives past and present; local and global networks of communication as sources of personal identities and imagined communities; the ongoing reconfiguration of the press as a fourth branch of governance; and privacy as a precondition for individuals and collectives to live their lives according to plans, and to make their own histories.
The book will be of interest to students and researchers in media and communication studies, cultural studies, political philosophy and ethics, and interdisciplinary fields examining the ethical and political implications of new information and communication infrastructures.
Autorentext
Klaus Bruhn Jensen is Professor, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research centers on communication theories and research methodologies regarding digital media. Previous publications include Media Convergence: The Three Degrees of Network, Mass, and Interpersonal Communication (2010), International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (2016, coedited with Robert T. Craig), and A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies, 3rd ed. (2021). He is Life Member for Service of the Association of Internet Researchers and a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute.
Inhalt
Preface
1 The end of communication
What is, what ought to be, and what could be
Turns of philosophy
Theories of communication
Justice - an essentially contested concept
Communication as action
The chapters of the volume
2 A brief history of justice
Between chance and necessity
The prehistory of justice
Three traditions of justice
Do good - virtue ethics
Do the right thing - deontology
Do the math - consequentialism
The global futures of justice
Migration as communication
Communication as migration
Does the world still need a theory of justice?
3 The structural transformation of Jürgen Habermas
From the coffeehouse to the internet
The rise and fall of the bourgeois public sphere
Historical norms
Retrospective systematics
Reconstructed interests
Interested knowledge
Disinterested communication
From the categorical imperative to communicative action
"A third, somewhat less demanding way"
How to do things with other people's words
Laws of communication
The power of communication
Speaking of ideals
Communicative action in the public sphere
Religious communication
Global communication
Remember Habermas!
4 John Rawls behind the veil of communication
Habermas v. Rawls
Justice as fairness
Principles and consequences
Procedures and communications
An overlapping consensus
The rational and the reasonable
The public uses of reason
The laws of the lands
The veil of communication
5 The long legacy of pragmatism
Erro, ergo sum
Theoretical, practical, and productive sciences
The modern inversion of theory and practice
The American revival of pragmatism
The pragmatic maxim
Communication as representation and resource
Individual beliefs and collective actions
Priests, prophets, and heirs of pragmatism
Cambridge pragmatisms
Postmodernist pragmatism
Transcendental pragmatism
Pragmatism, communication, and justice
6 Media of justice
Medium theory
The in-formation of justice
Saying, writing, and printing it
Mediated modernity
Media of discovery, justification, application, and dissemination
Communication flows
One-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communications
Information flows, user flows, and context flows
Many-to-one communication
Performing justice
Positive and negative freedoms
Branches of governance
The mediation of agency and structure
7 The communicative position
The right to communicate
The capability of communication
Principles of communication and justice
Justice as representativity
Rights of information
Rights of communication
Rights of participation
Rights of privacy
Communication as condition and constituent of justice
8 Justice - measure for measure
Measures and meanings
The reality of justice
The empirical, the actual, and the real
Institutional, technological, and discursive mechanisms
The empirical goods of justice
Information goods
Communication goods
Participation goods
Privacy goods
Monitoring injustice
Inferring justice
Identifying injustice
Practicing justice
9 The future of justice
What is, what has been, and what will be
Not enough
Justice in time
Agricultural, industrial, and informational goods
The silk roads
Capital and ideology
Timing communications
Unknown knowns