The chapter considers how the concept of communicative figurations can be employed in researching communities and collectivities in today’s deeply mediatized world. It does so by providing specific examples from previous projects and by mapping out different perspectives of thinking about empirical challenges. In a first step, we introduce the concept of communicative figurations and consider how this concept can be fruitful with regard to the necessities and challenges that pertain to two central steps of the research process: (1) approaching and conducting cross-media research and (2) defining the field of research and its limits. We consider both of these central steps as necessities as well as challenges when researching the life worlds of individuals and collectivites in today’s media environment empirically, and we argue that the concept of communicative figurations can provide a useful tool when dealing with some of the challenges. At the same time, it comes along with a set of necessities, which we address along the way. In the final section of the chapter, we then illustrate our considerations by giving the example of an ‘ideal’ study design that employs the concept of communicative figurations for a research project on the communicative construction of family memory. Again, we explain our conceptualization of this project along the lines of the necessities and the challenges of conducting cross-media research and delineating the boundaries of the research field.

The so-called migration crisis in Europe is not only covered by serious informative genres such as news and documentaries, but has also been the topic of entertainment genres such as reality TV. This article focuses on two cases of European ‘refugee’ reality TV in which European participants embark on a ‘reversed’ refugee journey: from the Netherlands and Germany, respectively, to war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East. Despite the shows’ claims to fulfill an important function of educating the broader public about the hardship and plight experienced by refugees in Europe, the construction and conception of collective cultural identities in these shows warrants closer analysis. Through an interpretative textual analysis of the series, we investigate how civil belonging is mapped and constructed by the series as a range of different subject positions on refugees and civic responsibility toward refugees. This study problematizes the manner in which a plurality of voices is accommodated in contemporary European liberal democratic society and how cultural forms such as reality TV function normatively as a technology of citizenship.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract