Researching Communicative Figurations: Necessities and Challenges for Empirical Research

Abstract

The chapter considers how the concept of communicative figurations can be employed in researching communities and collectivities in today’s deeply mediatized world. It does so by providing specific examples from previous projects and by mapping out different perspectives of thinking about empirical challenges. In a first step, we introduce the concept of communicative figurations and consider how this concept can be fruitful with regard to the necessities and challenges that pertain to two central steps of the research process: (1) approaching and conducting cross-media research and (2) defining the field of research and its limits. We consider both of these central steps as necessities as well as challenges when researching the life worlds of individuals and collectivites in today’s media environment empirically, and we argue that the concept of communicative figurations can provide a useful tool when dealing with some of the challenges. At the same time, it comes along with a set of necessities, which we address along the way. In the final section of the chapter, we then illustrate our considerations by giving the example of an ‘ideal’ study design that employs the concept of communicative figurations for a research project on the communicative construction of family memory. Again, we explain our conceptualization of this project along the lines of the necessities and the challenges of conducting cross-media research and delineating the boundaries of the research field.