Seeking Comfort in Past Media: Modelling Media Nostalgia as a Way of Coping with Media Change

Authors

  • Manuel Menke Augsburg University

Keywords:

media nostalgia, memory, new media, media change, coping strategies, digitalization, SEM, online survey

Abstract

Coping with media change is the modus operandi in societies shaped by an ongoing media saturation of everyday lifeworlds. However, demands to participate in media change are sometimes perceived as challenging. In this regard, media nostalgia, understood as the longing for past media culture and technology, is introduced as a resource to cope with media change. Presenting results from an online survey, a structural equation model (SEM) illustrates that those who are stressed by media change draw on media nostalgia as a way of coping whereas media nostalgic engagements become unlikely when individuals feel comfortable with media change. This article argues that certain current individual and societal appearances of media nostalgia are related to people’s coping attempts.

Author Biography

Manuel Menke, Augsburg University

Manuel Menke is research and teaching assistant at the Department for Media, Knowledge and Communication (imwk) at the University of Augsburg, Germany. From 2004 to 2011 he studied communication and politics at the Universities of Mainz and Bamberg, Germany. He is young scholar representative for the ECREA Communication History Section and the German Young Scholars Network for Communication History (NAKOGE). His research interests comprise (theories of) social and media change, media and nostalgia, memory and narratives in media and public sphere(s) and journalism research.

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Published

2017-02-14

Issue

Vol. 11 (2017)

Section

Articles

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