Texture

Abstract

The article outlines the contours of an emerging sub-field within media and cultural studies — communication geography. It is argued that post-industrial society nurtures a regime of hyperspace-biased communication, which generates spatial ambiguities tied to mobility, convergence and interactivity. These ambiguities call for a spatial turn within media studies — a turn which implies a problematization of the space—communication nexus, through which communication can be understood as the production and becoming of space. Following Henri Lefebvre, the term `texture is advanced as a potential cornerstone for the geography of communication. The concept refers to the communicative fabric that mediates between the structural properties of space and the spatial or communicative practices that (re)produce space. Textural analysis holds the potential to go beyond the duality of transmission and ritual views of communication, as well as to take the material geographies of communication into closer consideration.