From Narrative Machines to Practice-based Research: Making the Case for a Digital Renaissance

Contemporary communication sciences are embedded with theoretical traditions supportive of an occupational boundary work: the social and the cultural world as a strict sociological and anthropological object of study and the material world as the domain of scientists and engineers. This epistemic divide places communication sciences before a future shock, by failing to respond explicitly to emerging mediations made possible by radical technologies. Practice-based research (PbR) is still underrepresented in communication studies and has yet to be further articulated in order to provide a clear epistemological foundation. This paper objective is to fill in that knowledge gap: it positions digital media as a transdisciplinary scientific domain with a triple helix structure (hardware, interface, and software studies), placing PbR as a critical native methodological approach and presenting a holistic research framework.