ICTs, domestication and language-games: a Wittgensteinian approach to media uses

Abstract

This article acknowledges the vital role that the Domestication Research-perspective has in media research, but criticizes it for being analytically ambiguous in its use of the central term `domestication'. By way of a contrastive set of data from an ongoing research project, we argue for a dislocation of `domestication' from the domestic and the private. Instead, we wish to retain the meaning and use of the term to acts of domesticating, i.e. processes of `taming the wild'. By connecting our arguments to Wittgenstein's concept of the `language-game', we emphasize the practical aspect of language and meaning, and how ICTs become meaningful only as parts of practical-communicative contexts. We argue that this steering towards `domestication' as contextualization highlights the universal and fundamental process of enculturation. Such a turn frees the perspective from historical and cultural specificities and thereby accentuates its analytical potential in a post-national, globalized world.