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Summary Communications as a Social force
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Communications as a Social ForceCM1009
There were only online readings and no book required at the time of making this summary
This summary covers: lecture notes and articles
Articles:
Bratich, J. (2006). “Nothing Is Left Alone for Too Long: Reality Programming and Control
Society Subjects.
Cottle, S. & Nolan, D. (2007). Global Humanitarianism and the Changing Aid-Media Field:
“Everyone was dying for footage.”
Deuze, M. (2011). Media Life
Doyle, J. (2007). Picturing the Clima(c)tic: Greenpeace and the Representational Politics of
Climate Change Communication.
Ekman, M. & Widholm, A. (2017). Political communication in an age of visual connectivity:
Exploring Instagram practices among Swedish politicians.
Hansen, A. (2018). Media, publics, politics and environmental issues.
Hjarvard, S. (2008). The Mediatization of Society
Hobbs, M., Owen, S. & Gerber, L. (2016). Liquid love? Dating apps, seks, relationships and the
digital transformation of intimacy.
Ibrahim, A. & Eltantawy, N. (2017). Egypt’s Jon Stewart: Humorous Political Satire and Serious
Culture Jamming.
Madden, S., Janoske, M., Winkler, R.B. & Harpole, Z. (2018). Who loves consent? Social media
and the culture jamming of Victoria’s Secret.
Strömbäck, J. & Dimitrova, D.V. (2011). Mediatization and Media Interventionism: A
Comparative Analysis of Sweden and the United States
Von Engelhardt, J. & Jansz, J. (2014). Challenging humanitarian communication: An empircal
exploration of Kony 2012.
ESMEE LIEUW ON 1
,Stig Hjarvard – The Mediatization of Society
In contemporary society, the media may no longer be conceived of as being separate from
cultural and other social institutions.
Media influence arises out of the fact that they have become an integral part of other institutions’
operations → degree of self-determination and authority achieved that forces other institutions
to submit to their logic
Media stands between other cultural and social institutions and coordinates their mutual
interaction
The Concept of Mediatization
• Kent Asp spoke first of the mediatization of political life which is ‘a political system to a
high degree is influenced by and adjusted to the demands of the mass media in their
coverage of politics’ (personalizing/polarizing the issues so that the message gets a better
chance of greater media coverage)
• Gudmund Hernes came with ‘media-twisted society’ (much broader): media had a
fundamental impact on all social institutions and their relations with one another
▪ He points out that media challenge both authority and the ability of the schools
and political institutions to regulate access to knowledge and set political agendas
▪ Media have transformed society from a situation of information scarcity to one
of information abundance
• Altheide and Snow (1979, 1988) wanted to show how the logic of the media forms the
fund of knowledge that is generated and circulated in society
▪ They make reference to ‘media logic’, but form and format are their principal
concepts → ‘primacy of form over content’ where media logic for the most part
appears to consist of a formatting logic that determines how material is
categorized, the choice of mode of presentation and selection and portrayal of
social experience in the media
• Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999) characterize mediatization as ‘the problematic concomitants
or consequences of the development of modern mass media’
▪ ‘mediatized politics is politics that has lost its autonomy, has become dependent
in its central functions on mass media and is continuously shaped by interactions
with mass media’
▪ Political institutions continue to control politics, but they have become
increasingly dependent on the media and have had to adapt to the logic of media
• Jansson (2002) takes his starting point in the general mediatization of contemporary
culture which he describes as ‘the process through which mediated cultural products
have gained importance as cultural referents and hence contribute to the development
and maintenance of cultural communities’ → the mediatization of culture is the process
that reinforces and expands the realm of media culture
▪ The media occupy a dominant position as providers of cultural products and
beliefs
• Väliverronen (2001) considers mediatization ‘an ambiguous term which refers to the
increasing cultural and social significance of the mass media and other forms of
technically mediate communication’
▪ So, media play an important role in the production and circulation of knowledge
and interpretations of science
Esmée Lieuw On
2
, • John B. Thompson (1990, 1995) sees the media’s development as an integral part of the
development of modern society
▪ ‘mediatization of modern culture’ = consequence of media influence
▪ Mass communication: senders typically retain control over the content of the
message, but have very little influence over how the receiver makes use of it
• The invention of the printing press institutionalized the mass media (books, newspapers,
magazines, etc.) as a significant force in society and enabled communication and
interaction over long distances and among larger numbers of people, while it also made it
possible as never before to store and accumulate information over time. → mass media
helped to transform an agrarian and feudal society and to create modern institutions such
as the state, the public sphere and science.
• Schulz (2004) identifies four kinds of processes whereby media change human
communication and interaction:
1) They extend human communication abilities in time and space
2) They substitute social activities that previously took place face-to-face
3) They instigate an amalgamation of activities
4) The actors in many different sectors have to adapt their behavior to accommodate
the media’s valuations, formats and routines (ex. Soundbites)
• Krotz (2007) treats mediatization as metaprocess → ‘mediatization is always bound in
time and to cultural context’ → mediatization is an ongoing process where media change
human relations and behavior which also changes society and culture
• Schulz & Krotz draw similarities between mediatization and medium theory (Ong,
McLuhan and Meyrowitz, 1986):
a) Choose to view the impact of media in an overall perspective and focus on other
aspects than media content/use
b) Takes note of the different media’s particular formatting of communication and the
impacts of interpersonal relations it gives rise to
▪ But: medium theory has a tendency toward technological determinism (more
macro level)
▪ Mediatization theory should be more committed to empirical analysis, including
the study of specific mediatization processes among different groups within the
population
• Mediatization characterize a given phase or situation in the overall development of
society and culture in which the logic of the media exerts a particularly predominant
influence on other social institutions
Mediatization in Postmodern Theory
• Fredric Jameson posits that mediatization creates a system that imposes a hierarchy of
artistic media and ascribes new self-reflective properties to them
• Most radical linkage between mediatization and postmodernism is found in the work of
Baudrillard (1994) → media constitute a hyperreality (symbols/signs of media culture to
form simulacra (semblances of reality) that seem more real than physical or social reality
and replace it)
▪ Media representations of reality have assumed such dominance in our society that
both our perceptions and constructions of reality and behavior take their point in
departure in mediated representations and are steered by media
• Mediatization refers to a universe in which the meaning of ontological divisions is
collapsing: divisions between fact and fiction, nature and culture, global and local, science
and art, technology and humanity
Esmée Lieuw On
3
, • Mediatization is an expansion of the opportunities for interaction in virtual spaces and a
differentiation of what people perceive to be real
• Non-mediated reality and forms of interaction still exist, but mediatization means that
they are affected by the presence of media
• Mediated forms of interaction tend to simulate aspects of face-to-face interaction:
alternatives and extensions of face-to-face communication
Definition
• A theory of mediatization has to be able to describe overall developmental trends in
society across different contexts and, by means of concrete analysis, demonstrate the
impacts of media on various institutions and spheres of human activity
• Mediatization of society = the process whereby society to an increasing degree is
submitted to, or becomes dependent on, the media and their logic.
▪ This process is characterized by a duality in that the media have become
integrated into the operations of other social institutions, while they also have
acquired the status of social institutions in their own right
▪ Result: social interaction takes place via the media
• ‘media logic’ = refers to the institutional and technological modus operandi of the
media, including the ways in which media distribute material and symbolic resources and
operate with the help of formal and informal rules.
▪ Influences the form communication takes, such as how politics is described in
media texts (Altheide & Snow, 1979); media logic also influences the nature and
function of social relations as well as the sender, the content and the receivers of
the communication.
• Globalization is related to mediatization in at least two ways:
1) Globalization presumes the existence of the technical means to extend
communication and interaction over long distances
2) It propels the process of mediatization by institutionalizing mediated communication
and interaction in many new contexts.
• Mediatization is non-normative and refers to a long-lasting process, whereby social and
cultural institutions and modes of interaction are changed as a consequence of the
growth of the media’s influence
• Strömbäck: Mediatization ≠ Mediation (communication via a medium, the intervention
of which can affect both the message and the relationship between sender and receiver.)
▪ Describes the concrete act of communication by means of a medium in a specific
social context
▪ Strömbäck argues that mediatization is not linear
• Media are not uniform, so the consequences of mediatization depend on the context and
characteristics of the medium or media in question
• Two forms of mediatization
1) Direct (strong) mediatization refers to situations where formerly non-mediated
activity converts to a mediated form (e.g. online chess; online banking)
2) Indirect (weak) mediatization is when a given activity is increasingly influenced
with respect to form, content or organization by mediagenic symbols or mechanisms;
subtle and general character, does not necessarily affect the ways in which people
perform a given activity
Esmée Lieuw On
4
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