Recent trends in the study of personal life have tried to build alternative conceptual frameworks to account for the diversity and fluidity of contemporary relationships. Among these, both the sociology of personal lives and media and communication studies have aimed at looking at the many ways in which people relate meaningfully to each other, across space and time, with different levels of commitment and emotional intensity, regardless any pre-given genetic or legal bonds. Personal life therefore encompasses actors and practices that include kin and non-kin, friendships, workmates, acquaintanceships, relationships across households, generations, cultures, workplaces and species. The scientific gaze turns both to how they connect in time and space, building memory and identity; and to how they are made in everyday life, by concrete daily life practices, where media are included.

 

Personal life has therefore been much studied as structured around the domestic space, the privatization of practices and its tensions with public space and public display. However, this same domestic space is deeply connected, in modern life, to commodification processes, within the context of a consumer global culture in which the media play a determinant part both in the private and public sphere. This is also why contemporary personal experience cannot be understood outside the context of cultural and economic globalization.

Many empirical studies have already developed, within a communication or (social) psychology framework, specific issues that can be included in the broader category of “personal life”, exploring its relation with the media. Examples include studies about children’s uses of the internet, online intimacies, dating and friendships. However, not only have they remained quite dispersed, but also have they focused mainly on the impact of new communication technologies, such as internet in general, or social media in particular. It seems, therefore, that we face a scientific challenge: to bring together the contributions of social sciences that focus increasingly on intimacy and personal life, but often disregarding their inevitable intertwining with the media; and those of communication and media studies, which focus mainly in media use as a means to establish, enhance or disrupt intimacy, but outside the boundaries of a personal life framework. This spring course aims to address these gaps and bring together these current trends, related to the study of intimacy and personal life, in the context of everyday life practices, which should also be considered as media practices.

 

The third International Spring School in Communication Studies brings together researchers from different parts of Europe and welcomes participants that are interested in the study of intimacy and personal life, and its overlaps with the public sphere, crossing boundaries to encompass the meanings it assumes when looked at in the context of media cultures.