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Dynamics of Mediatization: Institutional Change and Everyday Transformations in A Digital Age 1st Edition Olivier Driessens
Dynamics of Mediatization: Institutional Change and Everyday Transformations in A Digital Age 1st Edition Olivier Driessens
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TRANSFORMING COMMUNICATIONS – STUDIES IN CROSS-MEDIA RESEARCH
editors
Olivier Driessens
Göran Bolin
Andreas Hepp
Stig Hjarvard
DYNAMICS OF
MEDIATIZATION
Institutional
Change and
Everyday
Transformations
in a Digital Age
Transforming Communications – Studies
in Cross-Media Research
Series Editors
Uwe Hasebrink
Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research
University of Hamburg
Germany
Andreas Hepp
ZeMKI, University of Bremen
Germany
We live in times that are characterised by a multiplicity of media:
Traditional media like television, radio and newspapers remain important,
but have all undergone fundamental change in the wake of digitalization.
New media have been emerging with an increasing speed: Internet
platforms, mobile media and the many different software-based com-
munication media we are recently confronted with as ‘apps’. This pro-
cess is experiencing yet another boost from the ongoing and increasingly
fast sequence of technological media innovations. In our modern social
world, communication processes take place across a variety of media.
As a consequence, we can no longer explain the influences of media by
focusing on any one single medium, its content and possible effects. In
order to explain how media changes are related to transformations in
culture and society we have to take into account the cross-media charac-
ter of communications.
In view of this, the book series ‘Transforming Communications’ is
dedicated to cross-media communication research. It aims to support all
kinds of research that are interested in processes of communication taking
place across different kinds of media and that subsequently make media’s
transformative potential accessible. With this profile, the series addresses a
wide range of different areas of study: media production, representation
and appropriation as well as media technologies and their use, all from
a current as well as a a historical perspective. The series ‘Transforming
Communications’ lends itself to different kinds of publication within a
wide range of theoretical and methodological backgrounds. The idea is
to stimulate academic engagement in cross-media issues by supporting
the publication of rigorous scholarly work, text books, and thematically-
focused volumes, whether theoretically or empirically oriented.
Dynamics Of
Mediatization
Institutional Change and Everyday Transformations
in a Digital Age
Editors
Olivier Driessens Andreas Hepp
The Department of Sociology ZeMKI Centre for Media,
University of Cambridge Communication and Information
Cambridge, UK Research
Universität Bremen
Göran Bolin Bremen, Germany
Department of Media and
Communication Studies Stig Hjarvard
Södertörn University Department of Media, Cognition,
Huddinge, Sweden and Communication
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
The idea for this book originates from recent discussions in the European
Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). The
Temporary Working Group “Mediatization” was established in 2011 and
became a permanent section of ECREA in 2016. It has provided a very
important forum for the development of the agenda of mediatization
research as well as an organizational framework for workshops and publi-
cations. This book is the latest addition to these activities. The editors of
this book all served as management members of the working group and
section at various points in time, and we would like to thank all of the
participants and annual workshop organizers during the last years for their
invaluable contribution to the advancement of the study of mediatization.
v
Contents
vii
viii Contents
Part IV Conclusion
Index 333
Editors and Contributors
xi
xii Editors and Contributors
Contributors
xvii
List of Tables
xix
CHAPTER 1
O. Driessens (*)
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
e-mail: od252@cam.ac.uk
S. Hjarvard
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
e-mail: stig@hum.ku.dk
and also extend their semiotic palette of expression. Social practices may
also be substituted by mediated practices, such as when online banking
replaces face-to-face encounters between customers and employees in
the bank around the corner. Amalgamation implies that mediated forms
of interactions blend seamlessly with non-mediated forms, such as when
children’s play integrates narratives of popular media (e.g. Star Wars)
into physical forms of play. Finally, accommodation denotes the recipro-
cal adjustments of institutional and organizational structures and norms
between various social domains; political parties’ accommodation to the
norms and structures of the news media is an obvious case in point.
These four general dynamics provide a first and general understand-
ing of processes of mediatization. Although they are important, they do
not suffice to understand the specific ways in which media are involved
in cultural and social change and how they come to condition human
communication. Media-related dynamics of change are not isolated
mechanisms, but socially and culturally contextualized and interactional.
Therefore, a central concern of this volume is how exactly mediatiza-
tion and its dynamics are related to other (meta-)processes such as com-
mercialization, politicization or globalization and—as some authors in
this volume argue—also “musicalization” (Pontara and Volgsten, Chap.
12) or even “audiencization” (Schrøder, Chap. 5). Granted, explaining
the interrelationships between such meta-processes is a major task that
cannot be completed in a single volume, but we trust that the differ-
ent chapters in this book will encourage scholars to continue to pursue
this agenda in future research. This research agenda is important to pre-
vent attributing observed changes only or mainly to media, which would
make “mediatization” a container concept of little analytical value, some-
thing several scholars (Deacon and Stanyer 2014; Lunt and Livingstone
2016) have already alluded to.
Added to our non–media-centric approach, we greatly value an open
research agenda in terms of media, technologies and communications
that are relevant for mediatization studies. This explains the inclusion of
chapters on music (Pontara and Volgsten, Chap. 12) and the automo-
bile (Miller, Chap. 10), for example. Also, questions on data and datafi-
cation are at the core of mediatization studies and scholars have begun to
address these questions in terms of “deep mediatization” (Couldry and
Hepp 2017). Several chapters in this volume also speak to this topic. As
such, we argue that scholars who are studying processes such as datafi-
cation can greatly benefit from a mediatization framework. It is vital to
1 INTRODUCTION: SITUATING DYNAMICS OF MEDIATIZATION 3
chapters on fashion, music and (space and) the automobile have been
referred to already, but there are also important contributions on muse-
ums and cultural heritage. In the first of these, Christian Hviid (Chap.
13) points out that the intertwining of media and museums allows for
new ways of engaging with history and memory. Arno van der Hoeven
(Chap. 14) demonstrates how mediatization may accentuate already-
existing trends towards inclusiveness and participation in articulating
urban cultural heritage allowing local users to actively contribute to the
construction of cultural heritage.
Another dimension on the horizontal axis is the spatial context of the
studies and its authors. Although traditionally mediatization studies has
been dominated by Nordic and German scholars, followed by scholars in
the UK, for several years we have been able to observe a wider engage-
ment with this body of work around the world. This is also reflected in
this volume, which has contributions from Poland (Brodzińska-Mirowska
and Wojtkowski), Croatia (Peruško), the US (Miller) and Chile
(Orchard). Given recent conferences on mediatization in Latin America
and Asia, there are hopeful signs that eventually we might de-Westernize
mediatization studies and have a global conversation on social change
related to media and communicative change.
Next, we conceive of this volume as yet another step in the further
rapprochement of the different strands within mediatization research
(see also Couldry and Hepp 2013). These are often labelled the insti-
tutionalist perspective, the socio-cultural perspective and the materialist
perspective (Lundby 2014; Finnemann 2011). Each of these perspec-
tives involves an emphasis on specific levels of analysis (macro, meso or
micro), a particular understanding of the relationship between structure
and agency, or different views on the temporality of change. We argue
that, notwithstanding some insurmountable differences, what these dif-
ferent perspectives have in common is much greater than what divides
them. To some extent, we can think of the three perspectives more as a
reflection of the different origins of various researchers, of their intellec-
tual trajectory so to speak. Therefore, we should appreciate the strengths
and complementarity of the different approaches while continuing to
work on their improvements, as has also been suggested in Chap. 2 by
Adolf and Chap. 3 by Andersson. The complementarity and fluidity of
approaches are also reflected in this volume. Some articles that focus on
organizations blend the institutionalist with the socio-cultural perspective
(e.g. Chap. 6 by Fredriksson and Pallas and Chap. 5 by Kim Schrøder),
1 INTRODUCTION: SITUATING DYNAMICS OF MEDIATIZATION 7
References
Averbeck-Lietz, Stefanie. 2014. Understanding mediatization in “First moder-
nity”: Sociological classics and their perspectives on mediated and mediatized
societies. In Mediatization of communication: Handbook of communication sci-
ence, ed. Knut Lundby, 109–130. Boston: de Gruyter Mouton.
Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. 2013. Conceptualizing mediatization:
Contexts, traditions, arguments. Communication Theory 23 (3): 191–202.
Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. 2017. The mediated construction of reality.
Cambridge: Polity.
Deacon, David, and James Stanyer. 2014. Mediatization: Key concept or concep-
tual bandwagon? Media, Culture and Society 36 (7): 1032–1044.
Driessens, Olivier, Karin Raeymaeckers, Hans Verstraeten, and Sarah
Vandenbussche. 2010. Personalization according to politicians: A practice
theoretical analysis of mediatization. Communications 35 (3): 309–326.
Ekström, Mats, Johan Fornäs, André Jansson, and Anne Jerslev. 2016. Three
tasks for mediatization research: Contributions to an open agenda. Media,
Culture and Society 38 (7): 1090–1108.
8 O. Driessens and S. Hjarvard
Marian T. Adolf
2.1 Introduction
Mediatization research arguably has become one of the most vibrant
fields of international media and communication research. Drawing on a
wide range of theoretical resources and phenomenal domains, it attracts
scholars from a variety of scholarly backgrounds and disciplinary tradi-
tions. In the course of its development, we witness mounting debates
over orientations and concepts and an increase in self‐reflection about
theoretical foundations and analytical perspectives. Against this back-
ground, this contribution seeks to discuss the self-understanding of
mediatization studies as it navigates between congruity and disparity.
Based on a review of mediatization literature and related fields such as
media sociology as well as a discussion of the criticisms that have been
brought to its doorstep, I analyse the dynamics of mediatization with
regard to the field’s quest for conceptual and theoretical identity.
I begin by (2.2) assembling a number of prevalent self‐descriptions of
mediatization as pertaining to the dynamics of media and social change
and discuss earlier attempts at mapping and defining the scope, aims and
approaches to mediatization. The following section (2.3) argues that
subordinate social‐theoretical differences are used in categorizing media-
tization approaches that are rather indicative of programmatic struggles
over distinction instead of substantial differences. Instead, I suggest that
much graver issues lie with (2.4) divergent definitions of the media which
spawn (2.5) unresolved discrepancies on an epistemological level. A sug-
gestion for a more (2.6) differentiated approach to understanding the
media is made before I (2.7) conclude by proposing an alternative way to
map and systematize the burgeoning field of mediatization research.