This project examines conjunctural changes in information technological innovation discourses. In the theoretical part of the project, the key literature on innovation will be analyzed and new theoretical perspectives developed to study innovation discourses from a critical social scientific viewpoint. The empirical case studies of the project examine ICT-related innovation discourses in the media and in public policy documents. The focus will be especially on the ways in which ICT innovation and entrepreneurs have been publicly represented. Both of these parts of the project will look at the topic from a comparative historical perspective.
Background
In the first stage of the study I will examine existing theoretical literature concerning innovations and innovation policy, with the aim of developing ideology-critical perspectives for the study of innovations. In later stages of the study I will collect empirical data on innovation discourses in the media as well as in governmental strategies and in other public policy documents.
Goal
In the past two decades innovation has become a ubiquitous concept in the media and in public policy discussions advanced industrial countries. For the most part, these public discourses are uncritical, marked by one-dimensional pro-market understandings of what innovations are and what drives them forward. As such they do not pay attention, for example, to the negative social consequences of many innovations. The same uncritical perspective characterizes most academic studies on innovations. This project offers a critical corrective such one-dimensional perspectives, especially by focusing on the ideological nature and meaning of mainstream innovation discourses.
Funding source
Academy of Finland
Contact persons
Marko Ampuja
Academy Research Fellow
marko.ampuja [at] uta.fi
+358 50 437 7159