Media of the Everyday. The Contribution of European Ethnology to the Field of Media and Digital Anthropology

Digital media have become an integral part of everyday life. Media-related research within European ethnology is characterized by the fact that it penetrates the interconnections of media and everyday life ethnographically. In order to substantiate this competence, the article outlines a series of conceptual approaches that all help to better understand and ethnographically explore the everydayness of media. This includes an eye for media practices and the interwoven, incorporated knowledge; the analysis of the potentials and limitations of practice inscribed in media (affordances); access to media infrastructure processes; the interplay of encoding and decoding; and last but not least, the ethnographic understanding of sensory and emotional processes in relation to media. In summary, these concepts provide a discipline-specific perspective on "media of the everyday" that allows to emphasize and to make productive the specific contribution of European ethnology to the transdisciplinary field of media and digital anthropology.