Beyond space and place. The challenge of urban space to urban media studies

Within Urban Media Studies, current research on media practices in urban\r\nspace is by and large informed by a phenomenological conceptualization of\r\nspace directly derived from traditional audience studies of the 1990s. This\r\nconceptualization has as its linchpin the distinction between space as abstract\r\nlocation, and place as space endowed with symbolic meanings and affections\r\nthrough practices of place-making. This approach has the merit of going beyond\r\ndeterministic hypotheses of media-related placelessness and clarifying\r\nhow specific media-related practices can contribute to fostering people’s attachment\r\nto places and to endowing them with symbolic meanings. Yet, as\r\nshown through a discussion of an original case study on “captive audience\r\npositions” (situations in which we are somehow forcedly put in the position\r\n“to audience” a media spectacle), this conceptualization seems less adequate\r\nto addressing the relationship mutually shaping space and practices enacted in\r\nurban space, whether media-related or not. These limitations could be overcome\r\nby extending the phenomenological conceptualization of space into a\r\nfully fledged relational one.