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ARTICLE: The Mediatization of Society – (Hjavard)
Introduction:
Media can no longer be conceived of as being separate from culture and other
social institutions
Mediatization: double-sided process of high modernity (duality)
o Media have become an integral part of other institution’s operation
o Media as an independent institution
achieved a degree of self- determination and authority that
forces other institutions to submit to their logic
The Concept of Mediatization:
Media’s impact on Politics
Kent Asp: “a political system to a high degree is influenced by and adjusted to the
demands of the mass media in their coverage of politics”
o Ex. Politicians phrase their public statements in terms that personalize and
polarize issues increases the chances of gaining media coverage
Hernes: “media-twisted society”
o Media had a fundamental impact on all social institutions and their
relations with one another
o media has transformed society from a situation of information scarcity to
information abundance (competition for attention)
Altheide& Snow: Traces of pervasive media logic in social institution’s way of
doing things
o “the primacy of form over content”
Schulz: politics lost autonomy, increasingly dependent on the media and have to
adapt to media logic
Stromback, Aalberg: mediatization of conflicts as the “active performative
involvement and constitutive role”
Marketing & Consumer Culture
Media today occupy a dominant position as providers of cultural products and
beliefs
Media’s influence over research
Media play an important role in the production and circulation of knowledge
Media & Modernity
Thompson: “mediatization of modern culture”
o mass media helped to transform an agrarian and feudal society and to
create modern institutions such as the state, the public sphere and science
= role of media in social change
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Schulz & Krotz: Media change human communication
o Schultz: 4 kinds of processes:
Extend human communication abilities in both time and space
Substitute social activities
Ex. Internet banking
Instigate amalgamation of activities
Actors in many different sectors have to adapt their behavior to
accommodate the media’s valuation, formats and routines
o Krotz: mediatization as an ongoing process
Media change human relations and behavior
Change society and culture
Mediatization theory and medium theory are consonant with respect to taking note
of the different media’s particular formatting of communication and the impact
this has on interpersonal relations
o Mc Luhan’s medium theory: Different technologies, different affordances
medium theory has a tendency towards technological determinism and neglects the
interaction between technology and culture
Mediatization theory applies
o An institutional perspective to the media and their interaction with culture
and society
o applied exclusively to the historical situation in which the media at once
have attained autonomy and are crucially interwoven with the functioning
of other institutions
Mediatization as 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:
Mediatization as an expression of postmodern condition
Baudrillard: The cultural saliency of media, symbols, language
o media constitute a “hyperreality”
o Symbolic world of media has replaced the “real” world
o Postmodernity, hyperreality, “explosion of the sign”
▪ We are always looking for authenticity, yet we become more and more
removed from reality itself
▪ Media are everywhere, but they are so full of meaning and asking for
our attention that there is nothing beyond it (Times Square in NYC
where you have posters, billboards and everything but we just walk
through it)
▪ Desert of the real = protests, solidarity, and all that does not really
exist beyond SNS and sharing things with our friend
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o Media representations of reality have assumed such dominance in our society
that both our perceptions and constructions of reality and our behavior take
their point of departure in mediated representations
▪ Media-orchestrated Gulf War was not a war as we once knew war to
be because our perception of the war was steered by the images and
symbols the media presented to us
Hjarvard argues that this postmodern understanding of mediatization
is too simple: implies one single transformation: media suppress reality,
traditional distinctions are dissolved
Media expand the opportunities for interaction
Differientation of what people perceive to be real
too grand: proclaims the disappearance of reality and the disintergration of
distinctions
people still distinguish between fact and fiction
Mediated reality and forms of interaction still exist
Mediatization means that they are affected by the presence of the media
Definition
Mediatization: Society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or becomes
dependent on, the media and their logic
Duality:
o media have become integrated into the operations of other social
institutions
o acquired the status of social institutions in their own right
Social interaction – within the respective institutions, between institutions, and in
society at large – take place via the media
Media logic: 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
o influences the form of communication takes and influences the nature and
function of social relations as well as the sender, the content and the
receivers of the communication
o Doxa, format, style, conventions, frame of references, affordances, 4S
model (sex, sports, sensation, scandal)
NO UNIVERSAL PROCESS THAT CHARACTERIZES ALL
SOCIETIES
IT IS A DEVELOPMENT THAT HAS ACCELERATED IN THE LAST
YEARS OF THE 20TH CENTURY IN MODERN, HIGHLY
INDUSTRIALIZED AND CHIEFLY WESTERN SOCIETIES
Globalization: related to mediatization in at least two ways:
o presumes the existence of technical means to extend communication and
interaction over long distances
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o propels process of mediatization by institutionalized mediated
communication and interaction in many new contexts
NON-NORMATIVE CONCEPT (do not presume it is negative)
DO NOT CONFUSE WITH MEDIATION
o Mediation: communication via a medium, the intervention of which can
affect both the message and the relationship between sender and receiver
o Mediatization refers to a more 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
Consequences of mediatization depend on both the context and the characteristics
of the medium or media in question
Strong (Direct) vs. Weak (Inderect) Mediatization:
o Direct: situation where formerly non-mediated activity converts to a mediated
form
▪ playing chess online
▪ Internet banking
o Indirect: given activity is increasingly influenced with respect to form,
content, or organization by mediagenic symbols/mechanisms
▪ what was mediated before is now being strengthen and expanded
▪ eating a burger at McDonald’s which entails exposure to films and
cartoon animations
Media as Independent Institution (from an instrument - cultural institution
- independent)
An institution stands for a stable, predictable element in modern society
(constitutes framework for human communication and action in a given sphere of
life)
o Giddens→ social structuration theory yet again
▪ Rules and allocation of resources invest the institution with certain
autonomy (sanctions to be applied if rules are broken)
● Rules:
o Implicit and practical or explicit and formal
o Media are steered by rules (regulations and laws), but
media also draft their own codes of good practices and
sanctioning systems (routines, beats, newsworthiness,
etc.)
● Allocation of Resources
o Resources = material and authority
Mediatization implies that other institutions to an increasing
degree become dependent on resources that media controls and
submit to some of the rules the media operate by in order to
gain access to those resources
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