economy.
Double articulation
The double articulation concept
The concept of the double articulation is a core concept within semiotics.8 Silverstone et al. (1991) state that the origin of the double
articulation notion lay in the analysis of natural language use and in the work of Andre Martinet, a linguistic functionalist (cf. Silverstone and Haddon 1996). Martinet showed that both the morphological (semantic) and phonetic (distinctive) aspects of language (and especially their interconnection) are important for meaning creation (cf. NoÈth 2000, pp. 333±4; Silverstone 1994, pp. 122±3). Without these two interdependent structural levels, we could not convey complex meanings with the pre- given resources (the two levels help to structure the principally unlimited possibilities). When Martinet speaks of articulation, he thus actually refers to structure. The first level of this structure (the first articulation) refers to linguistic signs that convey meaning (Martinet's `moneme'), while the second level are the `phoneme' (the sounds) that help to distinguish the different monemes. Together, they form the specificity of different words, that is, they make up our language. The most important aspect to consider here is the interdependence of the two levels.
Silverstone and his colleagues actually apply Martinet's double articulation in unexpected (some claim, impossible) ways.9 They state
that meaning creation in relation to media technologies similarly takes place on (at least) two interdependent levels. The technical dimensions are communicating the `meaning of the commodity as object' (Silver- stone and Haddon 1996, p. 62), while `the texts and communications of the technologies' (ibid.) generate the messages. The double articulation hence emphasizes that media are articulated as specific technologies: they are both objects and conveyer of messages. This makes these media the particular and unusual objects of consumption, the particular technologies that they are, which therefore need to be analysed accordingly. Their description as `media technologies' already hints at the combination of these two aspects. Silverstone and Haddon stress that the technologies need to be articulated first before the messages can be
articulated (ibid.). The medium is not, but it does become the message (Silverstone 1994, pp. 82±3) ± or, as I would claim, it becomes part of a set of different messages. Put together, the practices and discourses of the production, marketing and use of these technologies constitute the first meanings (Silverstone and Haddon 1996, p. 62).
. . . these technologies are not just objects: they are media. . . . information and communication technologies are also objects . . . [and] technologies. But [they] . . . have a functional significance, as media; they provide, actively, interactively or passively, links between households, and individual members of households, with the world beyond their front door . . . in complex and often contradictory ways. Information and com- munication technologies are . . . doubly articulated into public and private cultures.
(Silverstone et al. 1992, p. 15) The latter is a reference to a second important interpretation of the double articulation in the domestication context: media are also doubly articulated as private and public (and as the interrelationship between these two). This argument builds on the previous in the sense that both the technological object and the media messages are imbued with public meanings that are then embedded within the private realm of the household. These two are caught in a process of mutual influence and neither has a fixed boundary.
The history of the concept
Similar to the domestication concept as a whole, the double articulation is set against particular traditions within the above-mentioned study of (television) audiences.10 The double articulation argues against what
David Morley has called the `textualization' of cultural (and also media) studies (Morley 1992, p. 5; see also Hall 1992, p. 286). Instead Morley promotes an analysis of `processes of culture and communication within their social and material settings' (1992, p. 5). Despite using a semiotic concept to do so, the double articulation provides an inclusive move from the semiology to the sociology of media use: `The research questions . . . were driven . . . by a compulsive fascination with the `actual practices' of media and information technology use, by a conceptual imperative to provide a framework for understanding reception . . . and consumption' (Silverstone et al. 1991, p. 219).
This interrelationship between object and messages underlines the complexity of the processes of meaning-making involved in media
consumption. Again, one can detect the threefold move from (a) a primary concern with ideology, to (b) positions that regarded audiences as active and content as polysemic, to (c) the actual context of media use. The attempt within the double articulation concept is indeed to research reception and consumption of media in terms of their complexity and multidimensionality. The content and potential ideology ± or limited polysemy ± form one part of this process:
. . . our understanding of the double articulation of information and communication technologies in public and domestic culture are those that media scholars will recognize. They concern the ideological significance of mass communications, the power of texts, and their articulation and negotiation of the boundaries between public and private worlds: through indivi- dual programmes, genres and the schedules of broadcasting.
(Silverstone et al. 1991, p. 219) The second articulation
While the first articulation of media technologies is easy to pin down ± the television set, the radio, the computer as material objects and in their role as consumer objects ± the second articulation is less easily named. It includes, as shown above, individual programmes, genres, broadcasting schedules. Mentioned elsewhere are narratives, rhetorics and software. Another form can be to ask `how the seating pattern is arranged, who watches what with whom, who chooses programmes, and what kinds of talk are defined as appropriate during viewing' (Morley and Silverstone 1991, p. 152), in other words, the use of media in everyday life. The social structures and patterns around viewing are core concerns.
All these aspects underline that media are content-based technolo- gies. From the specific (for example, individual programme) to the more general (for example, the genre) to the most general (for example, the programme flow and surrounding talk): all these aspects matter. The emphasis of the analyses within the domestication framework, however, lay primarily on the most general level. We shall return to this point in the context of the discussion on the double articulation of digital media. Let us first reconsider the specificity of the second articulation not through the media-specific aspects, but through its consequences. Media technologies connect the private worlds of the users with the public worlds beyond their front door. They enable the participation in the national community. They draw people into a world of public and shared meanings, while they also provide options for the meaning- formation in private worlds. Building on this meaning-formation, the
second articulation of media `provides the basis for an ``education'', a competence, in all aspects of contemporary culture' (Silverstone 1994, p. 123). Thus media technologies are crucial to our `being-in-the-world', both as consumers and citizens, as individuals, family-members and more: `Their difference [of media to other technologies] centres on what we would like to call their articulations and their differential capacity within those articulations, to change culture and society; to engage the user as audience or consumer' (Morley and Silverstone 1990, p. 36).
The possibility for change, however, is limited. It has already become clear that the use of the media is dialectical and problematic. The interpretive power concerning the first articulation is limited through the affordance of technologies, in the second articulation through textual `affordances of interpretation'. The emphasis in the double articulation concept is on an interpretive power of the media user over the agenda, not over the text (Morley and Silverstone 1990, p. 34). The text itself, however, brings its own limitations ± this is exactly why its analysis remains crucial.
The analysis of the text or message remains, of course, a fundamental necessity, for the polysemy of the message is not without its own structure. . . . While the message is not an object with one real meaning, there are within it signifying mechan- isms which promote certain meanings . . . these are the directive closures encoded in the message.
(Morley 1992, p. 21) The relationship between text and `reader' is reworked by Morley and Silverstone (1990, pp. 46±7) to state that: (a) the television-meanings are generated in daily-life activities (beyond the viewing), (b) there is a need to recognize differences between the different media, (c) there are different modalities of engagement, and (d) the construction of mean- ings is a dialectical process of changing variables (including all of the above). Deconstructing the directive enclosures and engaging with both the modalities and the meaning-construction is a complex process. Only if this is pursued, can the double articulation be made visible. In the research that built on these theorizations, this is not always the case.