Media Technology and Media Logic(s): The Media Grammar Approach

Abstract

In the digital age user empowerment and ubiquitous technologies are categories, which reshaped the media system and changed society as a whole. The media logic approach offers parameters for an analysis of media developments and hence can also help explain the structural qualities of digital media. In this chapter, a model of media grammar will be introduced: “Surface grammar” is visible and accessible to the user, is subject to usability as well as user acceptance and can thus determine the economic success of the medium. “Property grammar” is constitutive for the medium itself and helps to form the “networked logics.” It is argued that a new reflection on the power of technological logic is needed, which also includes user perspectives and user cultures.