Listening to and Living With Networked Media During a Pandemic

Anne Soronen; Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg

doi:10.17742/IMAGE.MM.12.2.15

Authors

Anne Soronen Tampere University
Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg University of Jyväskylä

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.MM.12.2.15

Abstract

This article explores mediated listening from the perspective of intimacy during the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. The theoretical frame builds on the literature on listening and presence in mediated environments, audience engagement, and intimacy as meaningful connections. Methodologically, the study is connective ethnography, and the data was collected by collaborative autoethnography. Our data show that listening was an individual sensemaking strategy of the outside world and a means to form connectedness. Threading between different screens on digital platforms caused the collapse of public and private contexts, and through these, particular types of intimacy arose. When the position of academic mothers is often that of a ‘knower,’ the severe crisis compels them to look for receptive ways of knowing, such as careful listening of others. Listening is a means to form belonging and understanding, but from a silent position. We should pay more attention to the silent presences and audiences in contemporary mediated environments.

Author Biographies

Anne Soronen, Tampere University

Anne Soronen, PhD, is a media scholar who works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Unit of Social Research at Tampere University, Finland. She is also Docent in Media Studies at the University of Turku. Her research interests include intimacies of digital work, everyday media cultures, creative industries, and ethnographic methods. Currently Soronen explores Finnish creative workers’ agency and presence on social media platforms in the project Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture https://www.dataintimacy.fi/en/. Previously, she has studied temporal practices in media work, emotional labour in magazine work, and gender performatives on lifestyle television. She has also taught in Communication Studies at the University of Vaasa. Soronen has published articles and book chapters on journalistic work, affectivity of media texts, and user experiences of domestic technologies.

Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg, University of Jyväskylä

Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg is an Assistant Professor of media and communication research in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Her scientific research interests centre on multiliteracies for social and digital participation and datafication. Recent research projects include nonuse of social media; datafication and experiences of vulnerability; digital self-performance in videostreaming cultures; bots and the experience of social presence; and data-driven AI solutions for health and well-being. She also has long experience teaching in academic positions in the fields of the interactive narration, concept design, ethnographic methods, visual communication, data journalism, and investigative journalism. Before her academic career, Talvitie-Lamberg’s artistic work on interactive film and concept design was awarded both nationally and internationally. She also actively appears in the media as an expert on digital inclusion issues. She has published articles and book chapters on topics including confessional digital communication, datafication, surveillance practices, and AI deployment in organizations.

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