Mediatization of Communication —= 34 7 Critique on mediatization research There are, of course, critical voices raised against the concept of mediatization beyond the clumsy term itself. Don Slater in a recent critique (2013) attacks the media-centrism he finds inherent in mediation and mediatization theories. He is concerned th communication in cultures around the world where technical media does not play a significant role, and saj ‘It is hard to see how terms that emerge from the West's sense of its own problematic modernity, and which rest on differentiating its mediatization from the face-to-faceness of the rest, can help articulate communications in other places” (Slater 2013: 56). He thinks the mediati. ‘s treating their local social problems zation discourse “smacks of western acade as if they were universal” later 2013: 46). He may partly be right in this critique, particularly as mediatization research emerged in North European settings. However, mediatization theory is found rele vant in more and more parts of the world, not the least in emerging economies such as Brazil (for example Martino 2013) and other parts of Latin America (Aver- beck-Lietz 2013), and in respect of development in China (Sun in this volume), Mirca Madianou draws on research in the Philippines (Chapter 14). Karin Knorr Cetina’s study, just mentioned above, also counters Slater's argument. These global networks affect the lives of people in all corners of the world. Some studies based on simple media logic may turn out media-centric. However, the pioneer of media logic theory, David Altheide (2013), brings “the media” into a wider “ecology ‘of communication” similar to the “communicative ecology” Slater (2013: 50) advo. cates. Mediatization studies, in general, turn ta the wider patterns of transforma: tions in culture and society, where “media” obviously play a role. In their critical “afterthought” to the chapters preceding theirs in this volume Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt (in Chapter 31) evaluate mediatization as an emerging paradigm for media and communication research. They find that, today, the concept has earned its place in the wider conceptual field of media and com- munication studies. They outline the dimensions of this emerging paradigm they see, but they miss questions of critique among mediatization scholars, developed in partnership with those experiencing various fields being mediatized. Mediatization is not a normative concept, as stated by Hjarvard (2013: 18). However, there are normative issues to raise, as contributors to this volume do. Risto Kunelius questions the mediatization of climate change (Chapter 3). Other examples: Kjersti Thorbjormsrud and her colleagues discuss normative consequen ces of their finding that career bureaucrats in their daily work both anticipate and adopt media logic (Chapter 17); Bryna Bogoch and Anat Peleg discuss the tension between the normative commitment of legal actors to judicial independence, and to ignoring public opinion and the pressures to mediatization at all stages of the legal process (Chapter 19); Charles Ess raises questions about selfhood and moral agency in mediatized worlds (Chapter 27). While “mediatization” is a non-norma-