Stretching the Frontiers of Communication and Media Studies

Abstract

Nico Carpentier is a renowned researcher in the field of communication and media studies. He published a large number of studies dealing with participation, media, media technologies, civil society, discourse analysis, power and communication rights. His scientific writing, always attesting its concerns of well anchoring its research theoretically. In this interview, Nico Carpentier discusses the significance of disciplinary dialogue within and beyond what he calls the “discipline/field” of communication and media studies. He argues, on the one hand, that disciplinary strength is fundamental because it allows the articulation of conversations within and between regional outbreaks (e.g. European, North American and Latin American) of the discipline/field. On the other hand, this stance favors an interdisciplinary opening that can reinforce the theoretical and empirical foundations of communication and media studies. Last but not the least, throughout this interview, Nico Carpentier gives access to his most recent research. These seek to highlight the empirical case of the Island of Cyprus ongoing conflicts, by analyzing the discursive-material knot of a participatory-agonistic assemblage (a community radio station)—these observations are discussed in his 2017 paper, The Discursive Material Knot: Cyprus in Conflict and Community Media Participation. Through this particular case, he is also interested in showing the links between the material and the symbolic per the study of representations, cultures and materialities—which results are presented in the article Cyprus and its Conflicts: Representations, Materialities, and Cultures (co-directed with Vaia Doudaki, 2018).