Mediatization

The media are ubiquitous and constantly changing, causing social and cultural shifts. This book examines how processes of mediatization affect almost all areas of contemporary social and cultural life, and takes the theoretical debate on mediatization in communication studies and media sociology to a critical edge.

Andreas Hepp takes an integrative look at one of the biggest questions in media and communications research: how digital media is changing society. Often, such questions are discussed in isolation, losing sight of the overarching context in which they are situated. Hepp has developed a theory of the re-figuration of society by digital media and their infrastructures, and provides an understanding of how profound today’s media-related changes are, not only for institutions, organizations and communities, but for the individual as well. Rooted in the latest research, this book does not stop at a description of media-related change; instead, it raises the normative challenge of what deep mediatization should look like so that it might just stimulate a 'good life' for all. Providing original and critical research, the book introduces deep mediatization to students of media and cultural studies, as well as neighboring disciplines like sociology, political science and other cognate disciplines.

Mediatization has emerged as a key concept to reconsider old, yet fundamental questions about the role and influence of media in culture and society. In particular the theory of mediatization has proved fruitful for the analysis of how media spread to, become intertwined with, and influence other social institutions and cultural phenomena like politics, play and religion. This book presents a major contribution to the theoretical understanding of the mediatization of culture and society. This is supplemented by in-depth studies of: The mediatization of politics: From party press to opinion industry; The mediatization of religion: From the faith of the church to the enchantment of the media; The mediatization of play: From bricks to bytes; The mediatization of habitus: The social character of a new individualism. Mediatization represents a new social condition in which the media have emerged as an important institution in society at the same time as they have become integrated into the very fabric of social and cultural life. Making use of a broad conception of the media as technologies, institutions and aesthetic forms, Stig Hjarvard considers how characteristics of both old and new media come to influence human interaction, social institutions and cultural imaginations.

This handbook on Mediatization of Communication uncovers the interrelation between media changes and changes in culture and society. This is essential to understand contemporary trends and transformations. “Mediatization” characterizes changes in practices, cultures and institutions in media-saturated societies, thus denoting transformations of these societies themselves. This volume offers 31 contributions by leading media and communication scholars from the humanities and social sciences, with different approaches to mediatization of communication. The chapters span from how mediatization meets climate change and contribute to globalization to questions on life and death in mediatized settings. The book deals with mass media as well as communication with networked, digital media. The topic of this volume makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of contemporary processes of social, cultural and political changes. The handbook provides the reader with the most current state of mediatization research.

What does it mean that we can be reached on our mobile phones wherever we are and at all times? What are the cultural consequences if we are informed about ‘everything and anything important’ via television? How are our political, religious and ethnic belongings impacted through being increasingly connected by digital media? And what is the significance of all this for our everyday lives? Drawing on Hepp’s fifteen-year research expertise on media change, this book deals with questions like these in a refreshingly straightforward and readable way. ‘Cultures of mediatization’ are described as cultures whose main resources are mediated by technical media. Therefore, everyday life in cultures of mediatization is ‘moulded’ by the media. To understand this challenging media change it is inappropriate to focus on any one single medium like television, the press, mobile phones, the Internet or other forms of digital media. One has to capture the ‘mediatization’ of culture in its entirety. Cultures of Mediatization outlines how this can be done critically. In so doing, it offers a new way of thinking about our present-day media-saturated world.

The first book-long analysis of the 'mediatization of politics', this volume aims to understand the transformations of the relationship between media and politics in recent decades, and explores how growing media autonomy, journalistic framing, media populism and new media technologies affect democratic processes.

Contemporary society is highly media-saturated, and no sector more so than sport. Drawing on case studies from the Tour de France to fitness apps, this book introduces the concept of ‘mediatization’ and examines how media - historically and currently – are significant drivers for social and cultural change in sport. Utilizing different analytical approaches, case studies illustrate how so-called legacy media have historically been involved in the establishment of the institution of sport and have persistently been heavily involved in structural changes in the same domain. However, digital media currently add significantly to the development of a more complex picture of globalized interdependencies and still growing media presence in all aspects of the everyday lives of both sporting organizations, athletes and audiences/fans. The book seeks to eschew media centrism, acknowledging that changes are not only ’driven’ by media but also related to other macro-social forces of change, such as globalization, commercialization, and individualization. Offering a new analytical framework, Sport and Mediatization enables students and scholars in the transdisciplinary field of media and sports studies to analyze and understand the influence of media in a much more complex environment.