미디어 이용자 패러다임의 재구성: ‘비판적 제작’의 기술 수행적 함의

This study is a critical overview of the contemporary user studies, one of the key themes in cultural studies. This paper regards ‘critical making’ as the keyword as an important topic to solve the tangled threads of the technological environment that overwhelms us. ‘Critical making’ refers to the contact processes of using human hands and bodies to feel and touch the technical objects, so as to reach to the reflective wisdom on the technological objects. This can be called as the technocultural study in order to practically read the nature of ‘materiality’ upon the technical objects surrounding our world in a critical and reflective manner and, by dosing so, to redesign them. This study confirms that, in the academic tradition of user studies, ‘critical making’ could provide an opportunity for an escape from the lethargy of the so-called ‘active user’ approach, which relies mostly on content interpretation or participation under the capitalist environment of technological consumption. Among others, this research purposes to actively incorporate the radical technoculture of ‘critical making’ into the current media user studies. For doing this, this study explores what the new areas of technocultural studies and the new horizons of the critically applied practices of technology, which have been largely opened by the ‘material turn’ that emphasizes critical making of technical objects, would be.