COMMUNICATION AS A SOCIAL FORCE (CSF)
Hjarvard - The Mediatization of Society
a theory of the media as agents of social and cultural change
Previous different concepts of Mediatization
¨ Mediatization of political life [Kent Asp]: a process whereby a political system to a
high degree is influenced by and adjusted to the demands of the mass media in
their coverage of politics
¨ Primacy of form over content/media logic [Altheide, Snow]: formatting logic that
determines how material is categorized, the choice of mode of presentation, and
the selection and portrayal of social experience in the media
- Desire to explore the extent to which and how technology affects
communication formats
- Traces of pervasive media logic in social institution’s way of doing things
¨ Media’s influence on politics [Mazzoleni, Schulz]: mediatization as a problematic
consequence of the development of modern mass media
- Politics has lost its autonomy: dependent on and shaped by interactions
with mass media
- Negative and normative concept of mediatization
- Media products have become more about sign than about reality
¨ Mediatization of social change/communication and interaction [Schulz]:
1. Media extend human communication abilities in both time and space
2. Media substitute social activities that previously took place face-to-face
3. Media instigate an amalgamation of activities; media coexists and infiltrates
everyday life
4. Media encourage people to accommodate the media’s valuations, formats
and routines
¨ Medium Theory [Marshall McLuhan, Joshua Meyrowitz]: taking note of the
different media’s particular formatting of communication and the impacts on
interpersonal relations it gives rise to; the medium is the message
- Social change is driven by technical agenda, media technologies as
extensions of our senses, new media as different senses/different
affordances, possibilities
¨ Tendency toward technological determinism: circumstance that culture also
forms technology is neglected
¨ Mainly oriented toward changes on the macro level
Three ages of political communication [Blumer & Kavanagh]
- Communication subordinate to strong political institutions and beliefs
- Television as prime political medium
- Conversion to multi-channel TV: abundance, ubiquity, reach, celerity
,¨ Postmodern concept of mediatization [Jean Baudrillard]
Hyperreality, Simulacrum, Pseudo-events: symbols or signs of media culture form
semblances of reality that replace the physical and social reality; the symbolic
world of media has replaced the real world
- The meaning of ontological divisions collapsing; divisions between fact and
fiction, nature and culture, global and local, science and art, technology
and humanity
¨ Lack of empirical confirmation
¨ Exaggerated: more complicated and nuanced
¨ Too grand: there is a reality and there are separate entities
Mediatization theory [Hjarvard]
Dialectic structure/dual process
1. Media have become an integrated part of social institutions (e.g. politics,
family, religion, work)
2. Media have grown into an independent social institution with its own logic
that other social institutions have to accommodate to: rules, attitudes,
practices, professional values (e.g. time limits on political debate on TV)
E.g. Oscars: Media become part of Oscars (e.g. red-carpet show) & media
report about the Oscars as events and institution (e.g. newspapers)
Relevance
- We need a theory that can properly explain why media (because they are used
everywhere and by everyone) can have an influence on how we can do things
- Media can no longer be conceived as being separate from society and culture; in
every sphere of life, media has been integrated, culture and society have
become mediatized to such an extent that you can’t single out these variables
anymore
- Growing independence of media: the media are increasingly influencing other
institutions’ rules attitudes and practices
Mediazation as a given phase/situation: the logic of the media exerts a particularly
predominant influence on other social institutions in the overall development of
society and culture, it does not refer to each process by which the media exert
influence on society and culture
Media logic
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
- Technological and cultural logic that is used in the media
- Influences the form communication takes (e.g. soundbites), the nature and
function of social relations and sender, the content, and the receivers of the
communication
- Invention in another institution: doxa, format, conventions, principles, style,
affordances
Soundbites, 4S-model: Sex, Sports, Sensation, Scandal, commercial logic
,Mediazation is not mediation
Mediation: the concrete act of communication by means of a medium in a specific
social context, can affect the message and the relationship between sender and
receiver
Other characteristics of mediatization
- Expansion of opportunities for interaction in virtual spaces and differentiation of
what people perceive to be real
- Development that has accelerated particularly in the last years of the twentieth
century in modern, highly industrialized, and chiefly western societies
- Non-normative concept: whether mediatization has positive or negative
consequences cannot be determined in general terms
- Empirical research: e.g. through studying traces of media logic from our
everyday life, we need to prove it over and over again
Forms of mediatization
Direct (strong) mediatization: situations where formerly non-mediated activity
converts to a mediated form, from physical place to complete mediatization (digital)
- Makes visible how a given social activity is substituted, it is rather easy to
establish a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ and examine the differences
e.g. chess games, online banking, music
Indirect (weak) mediatization: when a given activity is increasingly influenced with
respect to form, content, or organization by mediagenic symbols or mechanisms; the
products are real, but they contain elements of mediatization
- Does not necessarily affect the ways in which people perform a given
activity, more subtle and general; it relates to the general increase in social
institutions’ reliance on communication resource
e.g. McDonalds toys (media characters), posters and music
, Media as independent institution: stable, predictable elements in modern society;
they constitute the framework for human communication and action in a given sphere
of human life at a given time and place (e.g. family brings upbringing and love,
politics bring discussion)
- Media now have own resources and own rules: increasing independency
[Anthony Giddens] Structuration Theory: two central features that invest the
institution with autonomy in relation to the world around it
1. Rules: implicit and practical or explicit and formal, monitoring compliance
through sanctions (status and norms)
2. Allocations of resources: material resources and authority (power and
capital)
of party press/
terms of public
service
broadcasting
Interests of receivers,
their market demand
and purchasing power
Means of interaction
- Media intervening between individuals within a given institution
- Media intervening between institutions
- Media intervening in society at large
Facilitating, limiting, structuring of communication and action (physical presence)
Affordances [James Gibson]: all the potential uses of an object which structure the
interaction between actor and object
- Human beings approach the world and the objects in it as an action-
oriented and practical mode
- Defined by the user’s motives/objectives; the extent to which the
characteristics of object and user ‘fit;
- Defined by perceived affordance; the user’s psychological evaluation of the
object in relation to his/her objectives (cultural conventions)
Three types of interaction [Thompson]
