Hosted by Patrick Murphy, this talk will focus on Dr. Couldry’s latest book, “The Mediated Construction of Reality.” The book offers a critical reevaluation and rearticulation of the social constructivist ambitions of Berger and Luckmann’s 1966 book, “The Social Construction of Reality,” while radically rethinking the implications of this for a work saturated not just with digital media, but with data processes.
 
The talk will outline how a materialist phenomenology can draw not just on traditional phenomenology, but on the social theory of Norbert Elias, particularly his concept of figurations, to address the challenges of social analysis in the face of datafication. Elias, he will argue is a particularly important theorist on whom to draw in making social constructivism ready to face the deep embedding of the social world with digital technologies, and more than that, to outline the challenges for social order of such a world. More broadly, he will argue for a reengagement of media theory with the broader tradition of social theory in the face of a radical expansion of what media are, and how mediation is embedded in everyday social orders.   
 
Dr. Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture. He is professor of media communications and social theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of 12 books including “Ethics of Media,” “Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice” and “Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism.”