Mediatization (or medialization) is a method whereby the mass media influence other sectors of society, including politics, business, culture, entertainment, sport, religion, or education. Mediatization is a process of change or a trend, similar to globalization and modernization, where the mass media integrates into other sectors of the society. Political actors, opinion makers, business organizations, civil society organizations, and others have to adapt their communication methods to a form that suits the needs and preferences of the mass media. Any person or organization wanting to spread messages to a larger audience have to adapt their messages and communication style to make it attractive for the mass media.
Introduction The concept of mediatization still requires development, and there is no commonly agreed definition of the term. For example, a sociologist, Ernst Manheim, used mediatization as a way to describe social shifts that are controlled by the mass media, while a media researcher, Kent Asp, viewed mediatization as the relationship between politics, mass media, and the ever-growing divide between the media and government control. Some theorists reject precise definitions and operationalizations of mediatization, fearing that they would reduce the complexity of the concept and the phenomena it refers to, while others prefer a clear theory that can be tested, refined, or potentially refuted.
The concept of mediatization is seen not as an isolated theory, but as a framework that holds the potential to integrate different theoretical strands, linking micro-level with meso- and macro-level processes and phenomena, and thus contributing to a broader understanding of the role of the media in the transformation of modern societies.
Technological developments from newspapers to radio, television, Internet, and interactive social media helped shape mediatization. Other important influences include changes in organization and economic conditions of the media, such as the growing importance of independent market-driven media and a decreasing influence of state-sponsored, public service, and partisan media.
Mass media influence public opinion and the structure and processes of political communication, political decision-making and the democratic process. This political influence is not a one-way influence. While the mass media may influence government and political actors, the politicians also influence the media through regulation, negotiation, or selective access to information.
The increasing influence of economic market forces is typically seen in trends such as tabloidization and trivialization, while news reporting and political coverage diminish to slogans, sound bites, spin, horse race reporting, celebrity scandals, populism, and infotainment.
History
The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan is sometimes associated with the founding of the field. He proposed that a communication medium, not the messages it carries, should be the primary focus of study.McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964].
The Hungarian-born sociologist Ernest Manheim was the first to use the German word Mediatisierung to describe the social influence of the mass media in a book published in 1933, though with little elaboration on the concept.
Mediatisierung already existed in German but had a different meaning (see German mediatisation). In his Theory of Communicative Action, the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas used the word in 1981. Whether Habermas used the word in the old meaning or in the new meaning of media influence is debated. The first appearance of the word mediatization in the English language may be in the English translation of Theory of Communication Action.
The Swedish professor of journalism, Kent Asp, was the first into develop the concept of mediatization to a coherent theory in his seminal dissertation, where he investigated the mediatization of politics. His dissertation was published as a book in Swedish in 1986. Kent Asp described the mediatization of political life, by which he meant 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."
In the tradition of Kent Asp, the Danish media science professor further developed the concept of mediatization and applied it not only to politics but also to other sectors of society, including religion. Hjarvard defined mediatization as a social process whereby the society is saturated and inundated by the media to the extent that the media can no longer be thought of as separated from other institutions within the society.Hjarvard, S. (2008). The Mediatization of Religion: A Theory of the Media as Agents of Religious Change. In Northern Lights 2008. Yearbook of Film & Media Studies. Bristol: Intellect Press.
Mediatization has since gained widespread usage in English despite sounding awkward. Mediatization theory is part of a paradigmatic shift in media and communication research. Following the concept of mediation, mediatization has become a significant concept for capturing how processes of communication transform society in large-scale relationships.
While the early theory building around mediatization had a strong center in Europe, many American media sociologists and media economists made observations about the effects of commercial mass media competition on news quality, public opinion, and political processes. For example, David Altheide discussed how media logic distorts political news, and John McManus demonstrated how economic competition violates media ethics and makes it difficult for citizens to evaluate the quality of the news. The European theorists readily embraced Altheide's concept of media logic, and now the two lines of research are integrated into one standard paradigm.
Modern theorists now believe there is a new form of mediatization developing. This next phase of mediatization has been dubbed "deep mediatization". Industry change caused through mediatization only increase under deep mediatization and may quickly grow out of control.
Schools of mediatization Theorists have distinguished three theoretical schools of mediatization, listed below.
Institutionalist The leading scholars of this school of mediatization, David Altheide and Robert Snow, coined the term media logic in 1979. Media logic refers to the form of communication and the process through which media transmit and communicate information. The logic of media forms the fund of knowledge that is generated and circulated in society.
Building on Marshall McLuhan, Altheide discusses the role of communication formats for the recognition, definition, selection, organization, and presentation of experience. A central thesis is that knowledge affects social activities more than wealth or force. A consequence of this is communication technology influencing power. For example, Gutenberg's printing press enabled the wide distribution of his Bible, which was a threat to the dominance of the Catholic Church.
Altheide has emphasized that social order is communicated. It has severe consequences if this communication is exaggerated and dramatized to fit the media logic. The media may create moral panics by exaggerating and misrepresenting social problems. One example documented by Altheide is a media panic over missing children in the 1980s. The media gave the impression that many children were abducted by criminals, when in fact, most of the children listed as missing were runaways or involved in custody disputes.
The penchant of the media for emotional drama and horror may lead to gonzo journalism and perversion of justice. Altheide describes "gonzo justice" as a process where the media become active players in the persecution of perceived wrongdoers, where public humiliation replaces court trials without concern for due process and civil liberties. Gonzo journalism can have severe consequences for democracy and international relations when, for example, international conflicts are presented by dramatizing the evil of foreign heads of state, such as Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein.
Socio-constructivist The social constructivist school of mediatization theory involves discussions at a high level of abstraction to embrace the complexity of the interaction between mass media and other fields of society. The theorists are not denying the relevance of empirical research of causal connections but warning against a linear understanding of process and change.
The theorists want to avoid the extreme positions of either technological determinism or social determinism. Their approach is not media-centric in the sense of a one-sided approach to causality, but media-centered in the sense of a holistic understanding of the various intersecting social forces at work, allowing a particular perspective and emphasis on the role of the media in these processes.
The concept of media logic is criticized with the argument that there is not one media logic but many media logics, depending on the context.
Andreas Hepp, a leading theorist of the constructivist school of mediatization theory, describes the role of the mass media not as a driving force but as a molding force. This force is not a direct effect of the material structure of the media. The molding force of the media only becomes concrete in different ways of mediation that are highly contextual.
Hepp does not see mediatization as a theory of media effects, but as a sensitizing concept that draws our attention to fundamental transformations we experience in today's media environment. This concept provides a panorama of investigating the meta-process of interrelation between media communicative change and sociocultural change. These transformations are seen in three ways in particular: the historical depth of the process of media-related transformations, the diversity of media-related transformations in different domains of society, and the connection of media-related transformations to further processes of modernization.
Hepp is deliberately avoids precise definitions of mediatization by using metaphors such as molding force and panorama. He argues that precise definitions may limit the complexity of the interrelations where it is important to consider both the material and the symbolic domain. However, materialists argue that such a loosely defined concept may too easily become a matter of belief rather than a proper theory than can be tested.
The process of media change is coupled with technological change. The emergence of digital media has brought a new stage of mediatization, which can be called deep mediatization. Deep mediatization is an advanced stage of the process in which all elements of our social world are intricately related to digital media and their underlying infrastructures, and where large IT corporations play a greater role.
Materialist The materialist school of mediatization theory studies how society, to an increasing degree, becomes dependent on the media and their logic. The studies combine results from different areas of science to describe how changes in the media and society are interrelated. In particular, they are focusing on how the political processes in Western democracies are changing through mediatization.
The mediatization of politics can be characterized by four different dimensions, according to the Swedish professor of political communication Jesper Strömbäck and the Swiss professor of media research Frank Esser:
The first dimension refers to the degree to which the media constitute the most important source of information about politics and society.
The second dimension refers to the degree to which the media have become independent from other political and social institutions.