Klaus Jensen

Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Definitive and SensitizingConceptualizations of Mediatization

Klaus Bruhn Jensen

Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen S DK-2300,Denmark

Departing from H. Blumer’s (1954) distinction between definitive and sensitizing con-cepts, this article suggests that the mediatization literature has overemphasized definitiveapproaches to conceptualizing media change. Analyzing 2 representative instances, andcomparing them with 3 sensitizing approaches, the article argues that future researchshould clarify several processes entering into mediatization, including social structuration,technological momentum, and the embedding of communication into social contexts aswell as physical objects. In conclusion, the essay notes that greater attention to the ongoingdigitalization of the contemporary media environment could help both to explain the timingof the turn to mediatization in communication research and to focus future theorizingabout the very idea of mediatization.

doi:10.1111/comt.12014

Communication theory is heir to a distinctive philosophical legacy regarding thenature of conceptualization (Jensen, 2010). On one hand, philosophy since Antiquityhas asked, ‘‘What does the world consist of?’’ What are the elements and processesthat may be conceived as the constituents of reality? On the other hand, modernphilosophy, from Immanuel Kant onward, began to ask, in more modest terms,‘‘What can be known about the world?’’ What are the conditions, the potentials,as well as the limitations of what might be conceived by humans—philosophers,scientists, and laypersons—through personal introspection, empirical studies, orpublic argumentation? During the 20th century, communication theories such ascybernetics and semiotics joined the so-called linguistic turn of analytic philosophy(Rorty, 1967) in asking further, ‘‘What is meant by ‘know’ and ‘world’?’’ Part ofthe brief of contemporary communication theory is this self-reflective endeavorof considering how communication and related phenomena could and should bedenoted and understood in the first place, and for what purposes.

This article interrogates practices of conceptualization in communication theory.My aim is to probe different notions of mediatization (Lundby, 2009b), theirimplicit premises, and their implications for the larger enterprise of mediatization

Corresponding author: Klaus Bruhn Jensen; e-mail: [email protected]

Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203–222 © 2013 International Communication Association 203

Definitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen

research. As a first step, consider the distinction between concepts and conceptions.In his classic treatise on justice as fairness, Rawls (1999) noted that althoughpeople may disagree vehemently about the specific ends as well as the concretemeans of justice, they commonly have a shared understanding of the phenomenonat issue:

Thus it seems natural to think of the concept of justice as distinct from thevarious conceptions of justice and as being specified by the role which thesedifferent sets of principles, these different conceptions, have in common. Thosewho hold different conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutionsare just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in theassigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a properbalance between competing claims to the advantages of social life. (p. 5,emphasis added)

According to this line of reasoning, concepts unite, whereas conceptions divide.Also less contested domains than those of law or ethics witness overlaps and

interactions between their defining concepts and conceptions. The field of commu-nication research is united by the concept of communication, and divided by diverseconceptions and models of its elements and processes. For decades, the field hasdebated the relationship between transmission and ritual models of communication,as articulated by Carey (1989/1975). Even though different traditions of scholarshipmay advocate one or the other, individual scholars are perfectly able to grasp bothconceptions and, ideally, to present an even-handed account of the two prototypicalpositions to their students. The history of the idea of communication, as chronicledby Peters (1999), further suggests that the concept as well as the conceptions haveremained variable, and have been shaped, in important ways, by the analytical tasksand practical applications for which they have been devised, whether administrativeor critical (Lazarsfeld, 1941).

Conceptualization takes a third step in the process of articulating the interrelationsbetween phenomena in the world, ideas in the mind, and the signs and symbolsthrough we may examine and communicate about both the phenomena and theideas. Conceptualization can be defined as an intellectual operation that is orientedtoward an explicit analytical purpose or goal, anticipating conclusions and actions.As such, it is associated particularly with disciplines and fields that are defined lessby their formal approaches than by their substantive domains of inquiry. If logic andethics emphasize concepts and conceptions, conceptualization takes center stage inmuch social-scientific and humanistic research.

In one respect, conceptualization carries over to methodological operationaliza-tion in empirical studies, not least in the case of quantitative forms of research.To assess an instance of communication as transmission, a conceptualization of amessage content and its potential reception, coupled with a rendition of each of theseconstituents as variables that can be measured on appropriate scales, is standard

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K. B. Jensen Definitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations

procedure in communication research of the hypothetico-deductive variety (Gunter,2012; Wimmer & Dominick, 2011).

It should be re-emphasized, however, that conceptualization is constitutive ofother communication research, as well, including interpretive and critical forms ofscholarship, even while the move from conceptualization to operationalization worksdifferently in each case. In their textbook on qualitative communication researchmethods, Lindlof and Taylor (2011) note both the place of conceptualization inthe transition from general rationales to specific research questions (pp. 128–130)and the role of operationalization, including sampling (pp. 109–118), in conductingin-depth field studies. For example, to study community as a contemporary category,and to establish the experienced differences and similarities between online andoffline community, it is essential to specify the distinctive characteristics of each kindof community as articulated, in part, in the communication rituals that are observed,documented, and conceptualized through online ethnography (Baym, 1999, 2000;Hine, 2000).

Also in critical scholarship, conceptualization is key when it comes to capturingnot just the communicative practices that already exist but also those that mightcome about in the future. A case in point is action research involving participatoryforms of digital media (Hearn, Tacchi, Foth, & Lennie, 2009), in which the ambitionis to conceive and literally construct new media and communicative practices. Here,the process of conceptualization is informed, in large part, by the stakeholderswithin the communities or organizations being examined, who thus become, atonce, informants and coresearchers, objects as well as subjects of research. Byidentifying and articulating both problems and potential solutions, they participatein conceptualizing what communication might be.

In review, conceptualization represents a comparatively ambitious or demand-ing level of theorizing communication. Beyond consensual concepts and conflictedconceptions, conceptualization opens the field for empirical inquiry and sustainedargument concerning the explanatory value of notions such as mediatization. Meta-considerations like these, of course, are not unique to the present field. If classicalphilosophy helped set the agenda of communication theory, a more recent ancestoris social theory. Around the time of the formation of the field of communication,an article by Blumer (1954) asked frankly, ‘‘What Is Wrong With Social The-ory?’’ His reply involved a distinction between two kinds of concepts—definitiveand sensitizing—and a plea for addressing an imbalance between the two. Thefollowing section revisits these concepts, elaborating their relevance for contem-porary issues in communication theory. Next, the article critically assesses twomain conceptualizations of mediatization in the literature, both of which can beconsidered definitive in Blumer’s terms. The last section of the article presentsseveral alternative conceptualizations of mediatization that represent sensitizingapproaches to theory development, and which may better capture the variety ofphenomena that have been collected and, arguably, conflated under the heading ofmediatization.



Definitive and sensitizing concepts

Blumer (1954) argued that certain key difficulties associated with social theory of histime could be attributed to the unresolved status of ‘‘the concept’’:

In my judgment the appropriate line of probing is with regard to the concept.Theory is of value in empirical science only to the extent to which it connectsfruitfully with the empirical world. Concepts are the means, and the only meansof establishing such connection, for it is the concept that points to the empiricalinstances about which a theoretical proposal is made. (p. 4)

While thus recognizing the centrality of ‘‘the concept,’’ Blumer worried that ‘‘theclarification of concepts does not come from piling up mountains of researchfindings’’ (pp. 5–6), which he found to be characteristic of much social science. Asone illustration, he pointed to ‘‘the hundreds of studies of attitudes and the thousandsof items they have yielded; these thousands of items of findings have not contributedone iota of clarification to the concept of attitudes’’ (p. 6).

To advance social theory, Blumer (1954) identified and criticized what he saw asa dominant approach to the formation of concepts:

The most serious attempts to grapple with this problem in our field take theform of developing fixed and specific procedures designed to isolate a stable anddefinitive empirical content, with this content constituting the definition or thereference of the concept. The better known of these attempts are the formationof operational definitions, the experimental construction of concepts, factoralanalysis, the formation of deductive mathematical systems and, although slightlydifferent, the construction of reliable quantitative indexes. (p. 6)

The outcome of this approach is definitive concepts: ‘‘A definitive concept refersprecisely to what is common to a class of objects, by the aid of a clear definitionin terms of attributes or fixed bench marks’’ (p. 7). Even though such conceptsmay furnish precise and efficient instruments of analysis, they could be consideredinsufficiently sensitive to empirical instances and their contexts, and they mightresult in circular arguments ‘‘as in the statement that, ‘Intelligence is the intelligencequotient’’’ (p. 6). Blumer recognized that his question was perhaps ‘‘heretical,’’ buthe nevertheless asked ‘‘whether definitive concepts are suited to the study of ourempirical social world’’ (p. 7). He responded by elaborating a distinct alternative:sensitizing concepts.

A sensitizing concept ‘‘gives the user a general sense of reference and guidance inapproaching empirical instances’’ (p. 7). Blumer (1954) emphasized that sensitizingconcepts do not merely represent pilots for a research design or early drafts of atheoretical framework, characterized by ‘‘immaturity and lack of scientific sophisti-cation’’ (p. 7). Instead, they represent necessary conditions of access to ‘‘our naturalsocial world’’ (p. 10) in the first place, and they lend themselves to incrementalenrichment: ‘‘Sensitizing concepts can be tested, improved and refined. Their validitycan be assayed through careful study of empirical instances which they are presumed



to cover’’ (p. 8). At issue, to Blumer, were two general strategies of conceptualizationand theory development, what he referred to as ‘‘two modes of attack sets’’ (p. 10).He unequivocally preferred the sensitizing mode:

Its success depends on patient, careful and imaginative life study, not on quickshort-cuts or technical instruments. While its progress may be slow and tedious,it has the virtue of remaining in close and continuing relations with the naturalsocial world. (p. 10)

In a longer historical perspective, Blumer’s (1954) article rehearsed a classicset of arguments from the theory of science, which is another part of the legacy ofcommunication theory. In addition to being central to Chicago-School sociologyand a founding figure of symbolic interactionism, Blumer was an early contributorto communication research in the context of the Payne Fund studies on the effectsof movies on children and youth (Blumer & Hauser, 1933). Blumer’s article canbe understood as, in part, an intervention into struggles during the 1950s over thedefinition of (one or more) appropriate social-scientific methods (Murdock, 2012).Since then, debates have been ebbing and flowing, also in the field of communicationresearch, between hypothetico-deductive and grounded research designs, experimen-tal and naturalistic methodologies, and conceptions of theories as either explanatoryor interpretive devices. Blumer’s dichotomy of definitive versus sensitizing conceptsbears witness to the conflicted nature of such foundational debates.

In retrospect, the dichotomy may be reformulated, first of all, as a continuum.While sensitizing procedures for capturing social reality as lived and experiencedremain both necessary and legitimate, this does not rule out more definitive measuresthat recognize the stability of many social practices and structures. Blumer’s (1954)reference to the fact that ‘‘sensitizing concepts can be tested, improved and refined’’ (p.8) suggested as much. Furthermore, the relevance of different kinds of concepts alongsuch a continuum depends on the variable aims of studies describing, interpreting,explaining, or critiquing either society or communication. What Blumer defined astwo kinds of concepts can be redefined, then, as two conceptions of what researchersmay hope to gain from ‘‘the concept’’ in the first place, or what it yields for differentanalytical and intellectual purposes. In the practice of research, these purposes arearticulated in further detail through conceptualizations, which are multiple, even ifthey may be assigned, for comparative purposes, to particular points on a definitive-sensitizing continuum. In the case of mediatization, it is instructive to group a rangeof existing and possible conceptualizations with reference to this continuum. Assuch, the continuum may itself serve as a sensitizing device, and one that allowsfor definitive conceptualizations. Reading Blumer against the grain, one might evenconclude that he contradicted himself by making a definitive rather than a sensitizingdistinction between his two kinds of concepts.

As noted by Hepp (2009), two main approaches to work on mediatization can beidentified. One approach focuses on the media as institutions, exploring ‘‘a ‘medialogic’ that is active in various social fields,’’ whereas the other approach departs



from these social fields, emphasizing ‘‘other acts of appropriation, interpretation,and resistance that are not necessarily media related’’ (p. 139), a position to whichHepp (2013) himself has been a central contributor. The next part of the articleexamines representative instances of each approach, suggesting that both instanceslay claim to definitive conceptualizations of mediatization that are not warranted.The following part turns to sensitizing conceptualizations, which can be consideredmore appropriate for the diverse issues that mediatization researchers have proposedto tackle.

Two definitive conceptualizations

Mediatization as institutionalizationOne of the most clearly and systematically developed accounts of mediatizationhas been presented by Hjarvard (2008). His analysis highlights the institutionalconsequences of the omnipresence of media in contemporary society: ‘‘The mediaare at once part of the fabric of society and culture and an independent institution thatstands between other cultural and social institutions and coordinates their mutualinteraction’’ (p. 106). Following a balanced review of previous contributions, hespecifies the duality of his mediatization concept, which ‘‘is applied exclusively to thehistorical situation in which the media at once have attained autonomy as a socialinstitution and are crucially interwoven with the functioning of other institutions’’ (p.110). Conceptualized in this way, mediatization is said to capture distinctive featuresof the present historical epoch, notably in the industrialized west. Hjarvard furtherclarifies that his conceptualization of mediatization is nonnormative, in contrast towidespread notions of media having perpetrated or reinforced a cultural decline,as most prominently associated with Habermas (1989/1962). However, Hjarvardconsiders his conceptualization definitive enough to predict that, ‘‘as globalizationprogresses, more and more regions and cultures will be affected by mediatization’’(p. 113) in this particular sense.

Hjarvard’s conceptualization of mediatization is grounded in classic sociology, assynthesized by Giddens (1984). At the same time, Hjarvard (2008) seeks to redressthe comparative neglect of media and communication in sociology, both classicand contemporary, continuing recent ‘‘steps toward rapprochement between thetwo disciplines’’ (p. 132), for example, in the work of Castells (2001). Departingfrom Giddens’ characterization of institutions in terms of rules and resources,Hjarvard notes, on one hand, that media are subject to specific formal and informalrules—from legislation regarding editorial responsibility, to professional norms andcodes of practice—that regulate the relationship between the media and the restof society. On the other hand, media manage material and symbolic resources,both in their internal operations of producing and distributing content and, mostimportant, in their interactions with individuals, groups, and other institutions insociety. Media constitute a communicative infrastructure that assigns more or lessexposure and legitimacy to diverse social agents and, hence, affect the privilege and



power that these agents enjoy and command. The central claim, then, is that mediahave emerged as ‘‘an independent institution’’ (p. 115) with distinctive informativeand communicative functions and with decisive consequences for local interactionsas well as global structures of society.

While Hjarvard (2008) also offers insightful illustrations of some of the waysin which mediatization could be said to reshape interactions in domains such aspolitics, religion, and play (see further, for instance, Hjarvard, 2004, 2011b), thewider argument is that mediatization enters into ‘‘the increasing differentiation anddivision of labor that characterizes many spheres and aspects of modern society’’(Hjarvard, 2008, p. 117). Concretely, ‘‘mediatization has been a social force on a parwith urbanization and industrialization’’ (p. 127). These and other formulations holdthree ambiguities that call into question the epochal, definitive conceptualization ofmediatization as institutionalization.

First, the text vacillates between a long and a short historical perspective. Asalready noted, the theory is said, in some instances, to apply ‘‘exclusively’’ (Hjarvard,2008, p. 110) to the historical situation in which the media have become an institutionunto themselves; in a summarizing table (p. 120), this period is said to have begunc. 1980. In other instances, the terminology of mediatization is used regarding amuch longer time span, as suggested by the proposed parallel with urbanizationand industrialization (p. 127). Mediatization is also said to denote ‘‘the processwhereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or becomes dependenton, the media and their logic’’ (p. 113), a process which, in Hjarvard’s framework,covers three periods since at least the late 19th century. When it is later suggestedthat ‘‘mediatization is an important concept in modern sociology as it relates to theoverriding process of modernization of society and culture’’ (p. 132), this wouldseem to require a much broader conceptualization of mediatization than the oneotherwise being advocated. Thus, it is not clearly specified whether mediatizationis meant to capture a state of society during recent decades or a historical processextending across centuries.

Second, mediatization is said to arise from a whole range of media, including‘‘newspapers, radio, television and internet’’ (Hjarvard, 2008, p. 119). Mediatization,notably, is not associated here with the new, digital media forms that had their socialbreakthrough after c. 1980. Hjarvard’s point is well taken that, in each case,

the medium links different physical localities and social contexts in a singleinteractive space, but it does not do away with the reality of the separate physicaland social contexts. Television, telephones and internet all bridge distances, butthe users have hardly left their sofas or desks to enter into the interactive space.(p. 124)

It is questionable, however, whether, as institutions, all these media operate accordingto identical or comparable principles of following rules and managing resources.Certainly, classic mass media—from newspapers to broadcasting—could be seento follow legal, professional, and market-based rules that made for a comparatively



centralized media logic assigning resources—attention, legitimacy, and, in time,material benefits—to other cultural, political, and economic institutions. But, sucha central perspective hardly applies to the totality of communicative uses to whicheither telephones or the Internet are put across private and public settings. To be clear,my aim is not to celebrate ‘‘new’’ media that might decenter an ‘‘old’’ media logic(e.g., Jenkins, 2006; Rheingold, 2002). The point is that Hjarvard’s (2008) preferredconceptualization extrapolates from the epoch of mass mediatization to an emergingdigital media environment, without considering the extent to which relevant rulesand resources may be reconfigured, perhaps even in epochal ways.

Third, Hjarvard (2008) repeatedly refers to media as having become ‘‘an inde-pendent institution’’ (p. 105ff.) in the singular. Both theoretical and commonsensicalnotions of ‘‘the media’’ as one entity became widespread from the 1960s (Scannell,2012, p. 222). At the same time, research has sometimes sought to distinguish betweendifferent institutions, or institutional aspects of media, notably in the understandingof the press as a political Fourth Estate (Cater, 1959), but also with reference totelevision fiction as a cultural forum (Newcomb & Hirsch, 1983) in which existentialand ethical issues can be articulated and negotiated. Although it might be appropriate,within a mass media system, to treat diverse genres and media as constituents of oneinstitution, it is not apparent that the Internet can be joined seamlessly with the pressor cinema in one institution, or that the Internet itself constitutes one institution.The Internet is the site of any and all of the social interactions that individuals,groups, and institutions engage in: a bank, an auction hall, a general practitioner’sconsultation, and a dating service, in addition to being an arena of political debateand a source of aesthetic experience.

To sum up, Hjarvard’s conceptualization of mediatization as institutionalization issituated toward the definitive end of the definitive-sensitizing spectrum, overempha-sizing an (ambiguous) epochal understanding of mediatization, while simultaneouslyneglecting media developments during recent decades. Regarding the span of mediahistory from sometime in the 19th century to the present day, his conceptualizationentails the claim that, for example, the period 1980–1995 is continuous with theperiod since 1995–2010, but epochally distinct from 1965–1980, which is primafacie untenable. In the section, ‘‘Mediatization as social structuration,’’ I return to analternative interpretation of much of the background to Hjarvard’s position.

Mediatization as hegemonyIf Hjarvard (2008) represents a media-centric position, grounded in classic sociology,Couldry (2008) proposes a society-centric approach to the media-society juncture,departing from critical cultural studies. By way of introduction, it should be notedthat Couldry prefers the term mediation, which derives from the work of Silverstone(2002). As indicated by Lundby (2009a), however, ‘‘the general understanding of‘mediatization’ is fairly close to Silverstone’s use of ‘mediation’’’ (p. 13). As Ifurther demonstrate, Couldry’s argument, in fact, implies a conceptualization ofmediatization that is definitive on an even grander scale than that advanced by



Hjarvard, thus approaching the definitive end of the definitive-sensitizing spectrum.(For present purposes, I use the term mediatization to refer to Couldry’s position.)

Couldry (2008) presents his argument in the context of a critical assessment ofthe potentials of ‘‘digital storytelling,’’ which occurs when

people who have never done so before are telling personal stories through digitalforms, storing and exchanging those stories in sites and networks that would notexist without the world wide web and which, because of the remediation capacityof digital media, have multiple possibilities for transmission, retransmission andtransformation available to them. (p. 374)

To gauge such potentials, Couldry is concerned to avoid what he sees as ‘‘the linearnature of the logic that underlies theories of mediatization’’ (p. 377), as associated byhim with the work of Hjarvard and others. In a first step, then, Couldry’s argumenthighlights the complexity of the process, especially when analyses involve not justdiscursive forms, but social practices and institutions, as well:

The reservations expressed in this article with the theory of ‘mediatization’ beginonly when it is extended in this way to cover transformations that go far beyondthe adoption of media forms or formats to the broader consequences ofdependence upon media exposure. (p. 377)

In a next step, Couldry begins to address the wider process of digital storytelling,which ‘‘cannot be contained within a single logic of mediatization, since involved alsoare logics of use and social expectation that are evolving alongside digital narrativeforms’’ (p. 383). The hope is that digital storytelling, ideally, could empower mediausers far beyond the moment of communication as consumption:

Digital storytelling is perhaps particularly important as a practice because itoperates outside the boundaries of mainstream media institutions, although itcan work on the margins of such institutions . . . .In that sense, digital storytellingcontributes to a wider democratization of media resources and possibly to theconditions of democracy itself. (p. 386)

To examine such prospects, Couldry finds, additional and, in part, alternativequestions to those raised by self-described mediatization researchers must be asked:

Questions about how the availability of digital storytelling forms enableenduring habits of exchange, archiving, commentary and reinterpretation, andon wider spatial and social scales than otherwise possible; questions about theinstitutional embedding of the processes of producing, distributing andreceiving digital stories. (p. 388)

It is this kind of questions that might be accommodated in Silverstone’s approach:

Mediation, in the sense in which I am using the term, describes thefundamentally, but unevenly, dialectical process in which institutionalized



media of communication (the press, broadcast radio and television, andincreasingly the World Wide Web) are involved in the general circulation ofsymbols in social life. (Silverstone, 2002, p. 762)

Despite his preference for Silverstone’s framework, Couldry (2008) is quickto qualify some of its implications. When citing the passage above, he italicizes‘‘fundamentally, but unevenly, dialectical process’’ (p. 380) to underscore not just itsnonlinear, but also its conflicted nature. He follows up with an explicit reservation:

Arguably, Silverstone’s term ‘dialectic’ is too friendly to capture all aspects of thenon-linearity of mediation. It disarms us from noticing certain asymmetricinterrelations between actors in the media process, and even the impossibility ofcertain actors or outputs influencing other actors or outputs. (p. 380)

Couldry goes on to sharpen his qualification of Silverstone’s framework, before itmay serve his own analytical purposes: ‘‘The very term ‘the media’ is the result ofa long historical construction that legitimates particular concentrations of symbolicresources in institutional centres’’ (p. 381).

As it turns out, the questions raised by Couldry tend to be answered on thebasis of a very specific set of premises. A bit further on in the text, the ‘‘particularconcentrations of symbolic resources in institutional centres’’ in the last quotationhave become ‘‘the extreme concentration of symbolic resources in media institutions’’(p. 386, emphases added), which further brackets the dialectic. Hopes become fears:

The fear—articulated abstractly in the earlier adjustment to Silverstone’s notionof the dialectic of mediation—is that digital storytelling is, and will remain, alargely isolated phenomenon cut off from broader media and, more importantly,cut off from the broader range of everyday life, both private and public/political.(pp. 388–389)

In the end, the fear justifies what appears to have been a foregone conclusion.Although Couldry duly notes the need ‘‘to follow closely through extended empiricalwork’’ (p. 388) both the forms and the contexts of digital storytelling, his conclusionsand projections hinge on rather different factors. Referring to the hope articulated byJoe Lambert, one of the key figures of digital storytelling, Couldry concludes that ‘‘therealization of that hope depends on many other types of transformation . . . whichin turn will require major shifts in the political and economic landscape’’ (p. 389).Through the steps of his argument, the potential of digital storytelling and the dialecticof mediatization are continuously canceled by structural factors overdetermining bothcommunicative practices and media institutions.

This line of argument represents an established tradition of inquiry—fromKarl Marx, via the Frankfurt School, to critical cultural studies. Couldry’s ownimportant contributions include an earlier attempt at reclaiming the concept ofritual for critical purposes, emphasizing the affinities between social integration andideological dominance (Couldry, 2003). A key concept in the tradition, implicit inCouldry (2008), is that of hegemony (Gramsci, 1971). Under present political and



economic circumstances, media could only ever serve as agents of hegemony, in aprocess of mediatization that constitutes an inherently uneven dialectic.

Couldry (2008) is happy to acknowledge mediatization as a broadly descriptiveterm: ‘‘Of course, there is no problem if we use ‘mediatization’ merely as a catch-allterm to cover any and all changes in social and cultural life consequent upon mediainstitutions operations’’ (p. 378). Clearly, his primary aim is not description, buttheory development with a critical purpose. In this process, social critique trumpscommunication theory, despite the introductory protestation that ‘‘at stake here isnot so much the liberatory potential of digital storytelling, but the precision withwhich we understand the complex social consequences of media’’ (p. 375). I concludethat Couldry advances a conceptualization of mediatization toward the far definitiveend of the spectrum, premised on the media-facilitated hegemony and wider politicaleconomy of ‘‘neoliberal democracies’’ (p. 389). Arguably, it could not be otherwise in aperspective that is at once society-centric and critical, because, as Winston (1998) sumsup the general position, the societies in question are subject to ‘‘the ‘law’ of the sup-pression of radical potential’’ (p. 11) inherent in new communication technologies.

In recent work, Couldry (2012) has aligned himself more explicitly with theterminology of mediatization (p. 134). While extending and differentiating theargument from Couldry (2008), his 2012 volume reiterates key premises and arrivesat similar conclusions. Hegemony or ‘‘domination is plural,’’ having ‘‘an economicdimension but always also a symbolic dimension’’ (p. 31). ‘‘Neoliberal politics in manycountries is connected to . . . a flattening of political values’’ (p. 148). In the end, ‘‘theworld is becoming more unequal and our ability to look and still not see that inequalityis growing’’ (p. 210). In the section, ‘‘Mediatization as technological momentum,’’ Ireturn to an alternative interpretation of some aspects of Couldry’s argument.

The following section outlines three sensitizing conceptualizations of mediati-zation, locating these, as well, along the definitive-sensitizing continuum. Whilenecessarily brief, the three treatments suggest the potential of sensitizing strategiesfor further research on mediatization.

Three sensitizing conceptualizations

Mediatization as social structurationCommunication researchers have long complained that sociologists and other socialscientists tend to disregard media and communication as constituents of practicallyany aspect of social life, as also noted by Hjarvard (2008). Communication researchershave pointed to Giddens (1984) as one of the prime candidates for a reunion betweenthe two fields and, simultaneously, as an illustration of the opportunities missed(Jensen, 1995; Silverstone, 1999; Thompson, 1995). Because of the generality ofGiddens’ framework—it can be considered a metatheory rather than a theoryof society—it is useful in considering the interrelations of various social andcommunicative processes.

Giddens’ framework is summed up in the idea of a duality of structure, whichseeks to overcome the classic dichotomy of structure versus agency. Human agency,



accordingly, is not the manifestation of an individual’s free will, nor does socialstructure amount to external constraints on individuals’ actions. Instead, agencyand structure—subjects and social systems—are each other’s enabling conditions.Accordingly, societies are structured by, and they simultaneously structure, all ofthe interactions that individuals, groups, and institutions constantly engage in. Toexemplify, the press exists both in and through its structural properties—its economic,legal, and technological manifestations—and in and through the distributed actionsof journalists, advertisers, regulators, and audiences according to relatively stable, ifnegotiable rules. Like other institutions in society, the press is reenacted day by day.

To begin a sensitizing conceptualization, it is helpful to take the analysis up aconceptual notch compared to Hjarvard’s focus on the institutional level of Giddens’framework. Whereas Giddens tries to transcend the dyad of agency and structureby conceiving these as two aspects of one process called structuration, a triadincorporating media on a par with structure and agency is better suited to capture theinterchange between structure and agency. Such an intermediate conceptual entitydraws attention to the role of communication in orienting and reorienting agencyon a continuous basis; it also recognizes communication as a way of anticipatingstructures as either limits to or facilitators of agency, and as discursive means ofiteratively evaluating actions and their outcomes. In this perspective, communicationmediates structure and agency across time and space, depending on the historicallyavailable media. Communication lends meaning both to structures emanating fromthe past and to agency shaping the future.

Mediatization, thus, can be conceptualized as a constitutive component anda necessary condition of social structuration throughout the history of humancommunication and media technologies. Located toward the far sensitizing end ofthe definitive-sensitizing continuum, such a conceptualization would leave open,initially, the definition of its technological, institutional, and discursive elementsand processes. It would allow for the inclusion of face-to-face communication ina perspective of mediatization, both in oral cultures (Goody & Watt, 1963; Ong,1982) and with reference to the interdependence between mass and interpersonalcommunication in conditions of copresence (Gumpert & Cathcart, 1986). It wouldalso avoid the identification of mediatization with particular epochs, long or short, infavor of a renewed focus on the communicative practices that different media typesafford (Gibson, 1979; Hutchby, 2001), and which may or may not materialize in theconcrete course of both media development and social structuration.

This conceptualization recalls the tradition of medium theory (Meyrowitz, 1994),from which mediatization researchers have regularly distanced themselves as an‘‘other.’’ Hjarvard (2008), for one, finds that ‘‘mediatization theory is thus consonantwith medium theory with respect to taking note of the different media’s particularformatting of communication and the impacts on interpersonal relations it gives riseto,’’ but he immediately refers approvingly to other research criticizing a ‘‘tendencytoward technological determinism’’ (p. 109) and a weak commitment to empiricalanalysis in medium theory. In his introduction to the first summary volume on



mediatization research, Lundby (2009a) does indicate that ‘‘medium theory hasmore nuanced arguments about interactions between media and society rather thansimple statements about media wholly shaping society’’ (p. 3). Nevertheless, hedescribes the work of ‘‘the Canadian ‘medium theorists’’’ as ‘‘early attempts’’ (p. 2),apparently suggesting that the mediatization literature is superseding, or has perhapsalready superseded, these origins.

For the record, the foundational texts by Innis (1951, 1972/1950) and a classic suchas Meyrowitz (1985) cannot accurately be dubbed technological determinism; each ofthese authors also provides substantial empirical evidence to support their theoreticalarguments. Mediatization research may offer a major reworking, a minor addition, ora footnote to 60 years of medium theory. For the time being, mediatization scholarscould benefit from recognizing, and capitalizing on, its profound debt to mediumtheory.

Mediatization as technological momentumThe question concerning technology is central to any conceptualization of mediatiza-tion, with or without a medium-theory perspective. What is the relationship betweenthe potential and actual uses of technologies as embedded in media institutionsand communicative practices? Alongside his primary emphasis on institutionaliza-tion, Hjarvard (2008) helpfully elaborates how communication technologies serve toreconfigure social interaction across time and space, with institutional consequences,for better or worse. Also, Couldry (2008) recognizes technological factors, to theextent that the framework deriving from Silverstone (2002) highlights the incorpo-ration of a sequence of ‘‘new’’ technologies into ‘‘old’’ social conditions, which isreferred to as domestication (Silverstone, 2006). However, perhaps to avoid chargesof determinism, mediatization research has given relatively little attention to theconcrete physical structures conditioning and, in some sense, causing mediatization.

In the field of the history of technology (for overview, see Biagioli, 1999), Hughes(1983) has examined what he described as technological systems, rather than tech-nologies as distinct objects or artifacts. His point of departure was a history of theintroduction of electricity in Western societies 1880–1930. Lighting—in the home,the workplace, and the street—made for a more secure and comfortable way oflife; electricity is a precondition, for instance, of contemporary media. Technologi-cal systems become second nature, circumscribing individuals, groups, institutions,nations, and the planet. Once in place, such systems hold what Hughes called momen-tum—an almost glacial force. Momentum derives not so much from the quantitativescale or qualitative complexity of the system as such, but from its integration withother social institutions and practices. Electricity plants, broadcasting corporations,and digital networks all require economic investments and social planning. Publicaccess to light, communication, and other necessities of life typically raises ideologicalquestions, and the answers, in the shape of legislation, infrastructures, and standards,will be socially binding.



One of the key insights of Hughes (1983) was that the impact of new technologiesshould be assessed not as events, but as processes that are worked out over time. Inthe standoff between technological determinism and social constructionism, Hughesarticulated and elaborated a middle ground. For one thing, he distinguished thevarious phases of transforming a material resource into a technological system.For another thing, he suggested, in a later article, that a social-constructionistperspective may capture the malleability of ‘‘young’’ technological systems, whereasthe characteristics of ‘‘mature’’ systems may be better explained by a moderatetechnological determinism (Hughes, 1994). Determination, then, can be conceivedand conceptualized, for empirical research and historical argument, as a layered andcumulative process with multiple causal agents and contingent structural outcomes.

Other fields of inquiry have addressed comparable processes with reference tooverdetermination. The concept was introduced by Sigmund Freud in The Interpre-tation of Dreams (Freud, 1911/1899) to suggest how everyday events mix with pastand perhaps repressed experiences in one’s dreams, in their content as well as intheir form. Althusser (1977/1965) transferred Freud’s idea to critical social theoryin order to question an economic determinism prevalent in traditional Marxism,emphasizing the multiple determinants of social life, including cultural factors. Inthe cultural studies tradition, Hall (1983) elaborated a similar point with referenceto determination in the first instance. Questioning a conception of economic deter-minism in the final instance—‘‘when all is said and done, money talks’’—Hall’sconception suggested that economic determination delineates a field of potentialsocial developments. Determination in the first instance determines what cannothappen, but it does not prefigure in any detail what will actually happen.

For the conceptualization of mediatization, technological momentum holds asensitizing potential, recalling the simple, but crucial fact that each communicationtechnology is a material resource whose distinctive features help to explain the mediainstitutions and communicative practices that have emerged, or which may emergein the future. By committing itself to the material efficacy of specific technologies, aconceptualization of mediatization as technological momentum entails several stepsaway from the far sensitizing end of the definitive-sensitizing continuum, even whilestopping short of definitive conceptualizations that ascribe an epochal status to oneor more technologies, or that claim particular empowering or repressive uses of thesetechnologies as necessary outcomes of their social embedding.

Mediatization as embedded communicationWhile the mediatization literature refers liberally to both analog and digital media,it has tended, as argued, to give priority to a logic deriving either from mass media(Hjarvard, 2008) or from a social system in which political and economic conditionsare said to perpetuate the traditional conditions of mass communication (Couldry,2008). Again, my aim is not to celebrate the potentials of recent digital media, butto clarify some of the ways in which current media developments require additionalconceptual efforts. The common denominator for the three following points is the



variable boundaries of the concept of media, and hence of ‘‘mediatization,’’ as familiarelements and processes of communication are being reconfigured.

First, digitalization has entailed a reconsideration of what a medium is, because thedigital computer can reproduce or simulate all other known media. Via networkeddigital devices, users can access the equivalent of books, newspapers, magazines,radio, cinema, and television. In practice, the content becomes accessible to thegeneral public in a layered structure, so that, at the time of writing, the World WideWeb typically represents an intermediate level in between the general protocols ofthe Internet and the specific services that depend on additional design and softwareadministering usage and payment. In an early theoretical contribution, Kay andGoldberg (1999/1977) proposed the concept of ‘‘metamedia’’ to suggest the way inwhich existing media are embedded in a new technological infrastructure. Other workhas highlighted the ways in which the discursive and aesthetic forms of expressionderiving from analog media are being ‘‘remediated’’ (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) ondigital platforms. In both cases, theorizing is piggybacking on the concept of media,which has served the field well since the 1960s—a strategy that may not be sustainablefor another 50 years. ‘‘Metamedia’’ might bear witness to an incapacity, so far, tofully articulate the implications of a new kind of communication resource. It is fairto say that no agreed or comprehensive typology of metamedia, media, genres, texts,hypertextuality, etc. in the digital media environment has yet been established. Onetask for further mediatization research would be a more focused dialogue on thenature of this embedding of ‘‘old’’ media and genres into ‘‘new’’ communicationresources.

Second, a further embedding of media and communicative practices into newcontexts of action is also in progress (Greenfield, 2006). One early account referredto ‘‘ubiquitous computing’’ (Weiser, 1991), which involves the integration of mediainterfaces in diverse natural objects, artifacts, and social contexts. A current andrelated buzzword is ‘‘the Internet of things’’ (ITU, 2005), which promises to facilitatemundane everyday activities through media that are distributed across and integratedinto multiple objects and settings. Such location-dependent and practice-orientedcommunication returns the field to the definition of foundational concepts suchas information, communication, and action. In what sense, for example, am Icommunicating with the Global Positioning System (GPS) when I am finding myway to an unfamiliar destination? And, in what sense are the service providers thatrely on GPS communicating with me and other customers when they accumulatefeedback from our trips and adjust their services for future communications? Whatis the medium, and what is being mediatized?

Third and finally, communication is transgressing boundaries of the physicalworld, becoming embedded in both the natural environment and the human body.On the human side, mobile media include not just the ubiquitous cell phone but alsodevices outside as well as inside the human body, for purposes of physical exerciseor life support. The mediatized body monitors and communicates with itself and,perhaps, with online fitness communities or health services. On the environmental



side, digital hardware systems are moving ‘‘beyond silicon’’ (Munakata, 2007),embedding computing and communication at the molecular and atomic levelsof reality. While the time frames of such developments are very hard to predict,their theoretical as well as their practical implications are considerable. For futureresearch, a recognition of the embedding of communication in digital systems, socialcontexts, and physical matter implies additional steps toward the midpoint of thedefinitive-sensitizing continuum. Digital technologies, arguably, hold a momentumthat is different in kind from that of analog media technologies, and which mayaffect social structuration in radically new ways, even if we are not yet in a positionto explain or interpret the implications of this ongoing process in any definitiveconceptualization.

Why conceptualize mediatization now?

This article has focused on different types of conceptualization of mediatization. Iconclude that the two main perspectives in the literature, as represented here byHjarvard (2008) and Couldry (2008), have pursued definitive strategies, and thatthese strategies do not warrant the kind of epochal and critical theories being claimed.Although Hjarvard (2011a) has initiated a research project on ‘‘the challenge of newmedia’’ to the notion of mediatization, and although the recent volume by Couldry(2012) elaborates on the interrelations between media theory and social theory, itremains uncertain whether the mediatization literature could deliver a coherent,robust, and operational conceptual framework for a durable research program. Forone thing, the two main perspectives that claim the mantle of mediatization aremutually inconsistent (Couldry, 2012, p. 136). For another thing, the mediatizationliterature has produced an additional range of less demanding, but still internallydisparate conceptions of mediatization with variable interpretive, explanatory, andcritical ambitions (Hepp, Hjarvard, & Lundby, 2010; Lundby, 2009a). Instead,mediatization is best understood as a broad and inclusive concept: a consensual,even commonsensical characterization of contemporary society and culture. Nocommunication researcher or media user today would deny the centrality of mediatechnologies and communicative practices at the individual, group, and institutionallevels. To support further theory development about the general concept and, indeed,the very idea of mediatization, I have argued that a plurality of sensitizing strategiesholds the greatest promise.

The relevance of sensitizing strategies is suggested, further, by the timing ofmediatization research. It is remarkable how many researchers with distinct theoret-ical backgrounds and focal interests have converged on the notion of mediatizationover the last decade. One probable explanation can be stated with reference toAnthony Giddens’ concept of the double hermeneutic (Giddens, 1979). A cen-tral task of communication research is to reinterpret the interpretations thatcommunicators—individuals, groups, and institutions—have of how and whythey communicate. Although communication research, thus, feeds its theoretical



interpretations back into communicative practices, these practices, equally, circum-scribe and condition the theoretical business of research. When communicativepractices change, so may communication theories. Peters (1999) famously suggestedthat ‘‘mass communication came first’’ (p. 6)—communication technologies fromthe telegraph onward prompted a new, general idea of communication from thelast half of the 19th century. Digitalization invites a new round of reinterpretation,perhaps with a comparable scope. Although mediatization research has emphasizeda process of social transformation across analog and digital media, that schol-arly enterprise likely has been prompted by the conditions and consequences ofdigitalization.

A present and future challenge for mediatization research, and for the field assuch, is to clarify the distinctive features of digital media and their implications forcommunication theory (see further Finnemann, 2011). If, as noted, digitalizationgives rise to a new type of metamedia (Kay & Goldberg, 1999/1977), this calls for areconsideration of what mediatization entails. Equally, because digital media enabletheir users to act at a distance in unprecedented ways, also the definition of commu-nication is, once again, in question. The digital media environment presents excellentopportunities for theory development about both human communication and mediatechnologies, and the mediatization literature has been instrumental in raising avariety of questions in these regards. The record suggests, however, that answersare more likely to follow from sensitizing than from definitive conceptualizations ofmediatization in future research.

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