Multidimensional analysis of DID sustainability in the physical-virtual context

The aim of this article is to rethink the approaches and methodologies to investigate the emerging processes of communication in the current physical-virtual context. To this end, it posits the need to develop an integral view that includes the practices of production and use of technologies along with the creation of contents and the materiality of expressive languages. In this vein, it proposes a multidimensional analysis model to evaluate the sustainability processes of dynamic intermedial devices (DID) developed in different socio-institutional frameworks dedicated to communication, education, and cultural management. This model is made up by four interrelated dimensions: political institutional, technological, social, and intermedial. Each dimension interacts with the other and is interwoven with empirical phenomena. We consider that this model constitutes a theoretical-methodological contribution to communication and technology studies, since it has methodological flexibility to adapt to different case studies, allows the integration of different research methods and techniques, and enables a characterization that articulates macro and micro social processes in the same approach. Finally, from a constructivist perspective, it is argued that in order to study the socio-technical sustainability of these devices it is necessary to understand technologies as artefacts and systems that developed, model and resignify themselves in ways in each context.