Utopian media studies: Introduction

This introduction to the special issue ‘Utopian Media Studies’ sketches a framework for how media studies can become a site of utopian praxis, research and experimentation. It first addresses three apprehensions media scholars might have about the notion of utopian media studies and its appeal to a loaded concept like ‘utopia’. The introduction then outlines five sensibilities to explicate the nature and significance of this special issue’s contribution to the field: a utopian media studies must adopt an ecological approach to media; recognize and be invigorated by limits; work toward the technological liberation of time; connect imagination with practice; and emphasize and enable conditions for transmitting hope. Lastly, the introduction considers Ruth Levitas’s distinction between utopia’s archaeological, ontological, and architectural mode to map some of the concrete ways in which existing media studies research is doing utopian work that aligns with these sensibilities. In connecting work that operates in these modes with the various contributions to this special issue, the introduction reveals the utopian currents that already run through media studies as a discipline and opens up new conceptual and methodological approaches to studying and modeling digital utopias.