User:Chickadee101/Mediatization (media)
This is the sandbox page where you will draft your initial Wikipedia contribution.
If you're starting a new article, you can develop it here until it's ready to go live. If you're working on improvements to an existing article, copy only one section at a time of the article to this sandbox to work on, and be sure to use an edit summary linking to the article you copied from. Do not copy over the entire article. You can find additional instructions here. Remember to save your work regularly using the "Publish page" button. (It just means 'save'; it will still be in the sandbox.) You can add bold formatting to your additions to differentiate them from existing content. |
- (copied from Mediatization (media)#Influence of media technologyarticle)
Lead
- Wikipedia article needs a lead.
- Fixed passive voice
- Sections of the article's Introduction fit better as a Lead (a general overview of the topic)
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 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 its messages to larger audiences must adapt their messages and communication style to make it attractive to the mass media.
Technological developments from newspapers to radio, television, the internet, and interactive social media helped shape mediatization. Other important influences include changes in the 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.
Introduction
- verify that it outlines every sections in the article (history, schools of mediatization, influence of media technology, sociocultural change).
- fix passive voice
The concept of mediatization still requires development, and there is no commonly agreed definition of the term. Ernst Manheim, used mediatization as a way to describe social shifts that are controlled by the mass media, while the French sociologist, Jean Baudrillard, used the term to describe the disconnect a message has from reality[1]. 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.
There are currently three theoretical schools of mediatization:
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.
Mass media significantly 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
- change title from 'origins' to 'history'
The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan is sometimes associated with the founding of the field. He proposed that a communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, should be the primary focus of study.
The Hungarian-born sociologist Ernest Manheim was the first to use the German word Mediatisierung to describe social influence of the mass media in a book published in 1933, though without much elaboration on the concept.
The German sociologist Jürgen Habermas also used the German word Mediatisierung in 1981 in his Theory of Communicative Action. This word already existed in the German language with a different meaning (see German mediatisation). It is debated whether Habermas used the word in the old meaning or in the new meaning of media influence. The first appearance of the word mediatization in the English language may be in the English translation of this book.
The Swedish professor of journalism Kent Asp was the first to 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 Stig Hjarvard 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 cannot longer be thought of as separated from other institutions within the society.
The term 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 major 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 the 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 the two lines of research are now integrated into one common paradigm.
The Schools of Mediatization
Theorists have distinguished three theoretical schools of mediatization, listed below.
Institutionalist
The main scholars of this school of mediatization are David Altheide and Robert Snow who 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 is discussing the role of communication formats for the recognition, definition, selection, organization, and presentation of experience. A central thesis is that social activities are affected more by knowledge than by wealth and force. A consequence of this is that power is influenced by the technology of communication. For example, Gutenberg's printing press enabled 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 impressions 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 in order 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 they are 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, but 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, is describing the role of the mass media not as a driving force but as a molding force. This 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 the context of today’s media environment. This 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 avoiding precise definitions of mediatization by using metaphors such as molding force and panorama because 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 to technological change. The emergence of digital media has seen us emerge into 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 is studying how society to an increasing degree becomes dependent on the media and their logic. The studies are combining results from different areas of science to describe how changes in the media and changes in 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.
The third dimension refers to the degree to which media content and the coverage of politics and current affairs is guided by media logic rather than political logic. This dimension deals with the extent to which the media’s own needs and standards of newsworthiness, rather than those of political actors or institutions, are decisive for what the media cover and how they cover it.
The fourth dimension refers to the extent to which political institutions, organizations, and actors are guided by either media logic or political logic.
This four-dimensional framework makes it possible to break down the highly complex process of the mediatization of politics into discrete dimensions that can be studied empirically. The relationship between these four dimensions can be described as follows: If the mass media provide the most important source of information and the media are relatively independent, then media will be able to shape their contents to fit their own demand for optimizing the number of readers and viewers, i.e. the media logic, while politicians have to adjust their communication to fit this media logic. The media are never completely independent, of course. They are subject to political regulation and dependent on economic factors and news sources. Scholars are debating where the balance of powers between media and politicians lies.
The central concept of media logic contains three components: professionalism, commercialism, and technology. Media professionalism refers to the professional norms and values that guide journalists, such as independence and newsworthiness. Commercialism refers to the result of economic competition between commercial news media. The commercial criteria can be summarized as the least expensive mix of content that protects the interests of sponsors and investors while garnering the largest audience advertisers will pay to reach. Media technology refers to the specific requirements and possibilities that are characteristic of each of the different media technologies, including newspapers with their emphasis on print, radio with its emphasis on audio, television with its emphasis on visuals, and digital media with their emphasis on interactivity and instantaneousness.
Mediatization plays a key role in a social change that can be defined by four tendencies: extension, substitution, amalgamation, and accommodation. Extension refers to how communication technology extends the limits of human communication in terms of space, time, and expressiveness. Substitution refers to how media consumption replaces other activities by providing an attractive alternative, or simply by consuming time that might otherwise have been spent on, for example, social activities. Amalgamation refers to how media use is woven into the fabric of everyday life so that the boundaries between mediated and nonmedia activities and between mediated and social definitions of reality are becoming blurred. Accommodation refers to how actors and organizations of all sectors of society, including business, politics, entertainment, sport, etc., are adapting their activities and modes of operation to fit the media system.
There is a vigorous discussion about the role of mediatization in society. Some argue that we live in a mediatiated society where all spheres of society are deeply penetrated by mass media and where the media are complicit in the rising political populism, while others warn against inflating mediatization to a meta-process or a superordinate process of social change. The media should not be seen as powerful agents of change because it is rare to observe consequences of intentional actions by the media. The social consequences of mediatiation are more often to be seen as unintended consequences of the media structure.
Influence of media technology[edit]
Newspapers
Newspapers have been available since the 18th century and became more widespread in the early 20th century due to improvements in printing technology (see history of journalism).
Four typical types of newspapers can be distinguished: popular, quality, regional, and financial newspapers. The popular or tabloid newspapers typically contain a high proportion of soft news, personal focus, and negative news. They often use sensationalism and attention-catching headlines to increase single-copy sales from newsstands and supermarkets, while quality newspapers are generally considered to have a higher quality of journalism. Relying more on subscription than on single copy sales, they have less need for sensationalism. Regional newspapers have more local news, while financial newspapers have more international news of interest to their readers.
Early newspapers were often partisan, associated with a particular political party, while today they are mostly controlled by free market forces.
Telegraph
The introduction of the electric telegraph in the US in the mid-19th century had a significant influence on the contents of newspapers, giving them easy access to national news. This increased voter turnout for presidential elections.
Radio
When radio became commonly available prior to World War II, it turned out to be an efficient medium for news, education of the public, and also for propaganda. Exposure to radio programs with educational content significantly increased children's school performance. Campaigns about the health effects of tobacco smoking and other health issues have been effective.
The effects of radio programs may be unintended. For example, soap opera programs in Africa that portrayed attractive lifestyles had an effect on people's norms and behaviors and their political preferences for redistribution of wealth.
The radio can also facilitate political activism. Radio stations targeting a black audience had a strong effect on political activism and participation in the civil rights movement in the southern US states in the 1960s.
The radio could also be a strong medium for propaganda in the years before television became available. The Roman Catholic priest Charles Coughlin in Michigan embraced radio broadcasting when radio was a new and rapidly expanding technology during the 1920s. The new possibility for reaching a mass audience was initially used by Coughlin for religious sermons, but after the onset of the Great Depression, he switched to mainly voicing his controversial political opinions, which were often antisemitic and fascistic. The radio was also a powerful tool for propaganda in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and during the war. The Nazi government facilitated the distribution of cheap radio receivers (Volksempfänger) which enabled Adolf Hitler to reach a large audience through his frequent propaganda speeches, while it was illegal for the Germans to listen to foreign radio stations. In Italy, Benito Mussolini used the radio for similar propaganda speeches.
Television
The social impact of radio was reduced after the war when television outcompeted the radio. Kent Asp, who studied the interaction of television with politics in Sweden, has identified a history of increasing mediatization. The politicians recognized in the 1960's that television had become a predominant channel for political communication. A process of gradual acclimatization, adjustment, and finally adoption of media logic in political communication took place through the following decades. By the 2000's, the political institutions had almost completely integrated the logic of television and other mass media into their procedures.
Television has not only outcompeted newspapers and radio, but also crowded out other activities such as play, sports, study, and social activities. This has led to lower school performance for children who have access to entertainment TV programs.
TV viewers tend to imitate the lifestyle of role models that they see on entertainment shows. This has resulted in lower fertility and higher divorce rates in various countries.
Television is delivering strong messages of patriotism and national unity in China where the media are state controlled.
Toys/Play
- add more to this using -- The Mediatization of Culture and Society
Although children still have access to and use physical toys within their play, this way of growing up is perishing. Due to play becoming mediatized, many children and even parents now, will resort to sources of entertainment in the form of a screen or software.
Internet
The advent of the internet has created new opportunities and new conditions for the traditional newspapers as well as online-only news providers. Many newspapers are now publishing their news not only on paper but also online. This has enabled a more diverse assembly of both breaking news, longer reports, and traditional magazine journalism. The increased competition on a diversified media market has led to more human interest and lifestyle stories and less political news, especially in the online versions of the newspapers.
Social media
Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., have enabled a new form of mass communication that is more interactive. The new form of internet media that allow user-generated content has been called Web 2.0. The possibilities for user involvement has greatly increased the possibilities for networking, collaboration, and civic engagement. Protest movements, in particular, have benefited from an independent communication infrastructure.
The circulation of messages on social media relies to a great extent on users who like, share, and re-distribute messages. This kind of circulation of messages is controlled less by the logic of market economics, and more by the principles of memetics. Messages are selected and recirculated based on a new set of criteria that are very different from the selection criteria of newspapers, radio, and television. People tend to share the messages that are psychologically appealing and attention-catching. Social media users are remarkably bad at evaluating the truth of the messages they share. In fact, studies show that false messages are shared more often than true messages because the false messages are more surprising and attention-catching. This has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories on social media. Attempts to counter misinformation by fact checking has had limited effect.
People prefer to follow the internet forums, pages, and groups that they agree with. At the same time, the media prefer topics that are already popular. This has led to the large scale occurrence of echo chambers and filter bubbles. A consequence of this is that the political arena has become more polarized because different groups of citizens are attending to different news sources, though the evidence of this effect is mixed.
Further information: Social media § Political polarization, and Social media and political communication in the United States
Other forms of communication channels
Online political participation may affect the political standpoints of frequent media consumers, due to mass mediatization which is becoming increasingly prevalent. Blogs, videos and websites are all examples of alternative communication channels, as opposed to traditional media, such as newspapers and television. Through the means of blog, video and website communication, individuals can gain a further connection to political institutions through freely expressing their own views and opinions. This is because the Internet is bringing elites and members of the public closer together. Any ordinary person can send e-mails to a politician or a political journalist, expecting a response, or even generate millions of impressions upon regular viewers on YouTube or on the Internet through publishing their own opinions.
Through these alternative means of communication, many people find that online participation with politics and even high-status politicians is becoming increasingly common and easier to engage with. Expressive communication through the Internet proves to be more effective than communication through traditional sources, as prosumers (a combination of a producer and consumer making their own media as a consumer) are becoming powerful through their reach. This makes it more likely for false information to spread online, however, through sources that are unreliable and that anybody can post on, such as TikTok, and political participation can be damaged by this or corrupted through ideas or concepts that are not true.
Online participation has led to in-person political activities and contribution of political activists. An example is Howard Dean's Blog for America, which served as a forum for people from all sorts of backgrounds to get involved and coordinate events in the 2004 election. Online communication breeds offline communication through activism organised online, which takes place in the real world.
Physical resources
Media materialism is a theory that addresses the media's impact on the physical environment. Media materialism covers three aspects:
- The consumption of natural resources for industrial production of modern communication technology
- The energy consumption of communication technology in residential and institutional sectors
- The waste that is created by discarded cell phones, televisions, computers, etc.
Influence of market forces
The economic mechanisms that influence the mass media are quite complex because commercial mass media are competing on many different markets at the same time:
- Competition for consumers, i.e. readers, listeners, and viewers
- Competition for advertisers and sponsors
- Competition for investors
- Competition for access to information sources, such as politicians, experts, etc.
- Competition for content providers and access rights, e.g. transmission rights for sports events
The economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian wrote that information commodity markets don't work. There are several reasons for this. An important characteristic that makes information markets different from most other markets is that the fixed costs are high while the variable costs are low or zero. The fixed costs are the costs of producing content. This includes journalistic work, research, production of educational content, entertainment, etc. The variable costs are the marginal costs of adding one more consumer. The costs of broadcasting a TV show are the same whether there is one viewer or a million viewers, hence the variable costs are zero. In general, the variable costs for digital media is virtually zero because information can be copied at very low costs. The variable costs for newspapers are the costs of printing and selling one more copy, which are low but not zero.
Commercial mass media are competing for a limited supply of advertising money. The more media companies that compete for advertising money, the lower the price of advertising, and the less money each company has for covering the fixed costs of producing content. Free competition in a media market with many competitors can lead to ruinous competition where the revenue for each company is hardly enough to produce content of the lowest possible quality.
The news media are not only competing for advertisers with other news media, they are also competing for advertisers with other companies that mainly facilitate communication rather than produce information, such as search engines and social media. IT companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. are dominating the advertising market, leaving less than half of the revenue for news media.
The strong dependence on advertising money is forcing commercial mass media to mainly target audiences that are profitable to the advertisers. They tend to avoid controversial content and avoid issues that the advertisers dislike.
The competition for access to politicians, police, and other important news sources can enable these sources to manipulate the media by providing selective information and by favoring those media that give them positive coverage.
Competition between TV stations for transmission rights to the most popular sports events, the most popular entertainment formats, and the most popular talk show hosts can drive up prices to extreme levels. This is often a winner-takes-it-all market where perhaps a pay TV channel is able to outbid the public broadcast channels. The result is that for example a popular sports event will be available to fewer viewers at higher prices than would result if competition was limited.
Thus, competition on media markets is very different from competition on other markets with higher variable costs. Many studies have shown that fierce competition between news media results in trivialization and poor quality. We are seeing a large amount of cheap entertainment, gossip, and sensationalism, and very little civic affairs and thorough journalistic research. Newspapers are particularly affected by the increasing competition, resulting in lower circulation and lower journalistic quality.
Classical economic theory would predict that competition leads to diversity, but this is not always the case with media markets. Moderate competition may lead to niche diversification, but there are many examples where fierce competition instead leads to wasteful sameness. Many TV channels are producing the same kind of cheap entertainment that appeals to the largest possible audience.
The high fixed costs favor large companies and large markets. Unregulated media markets often lead to concentration of ownership, which can be horizontal (same company owning multiple channels) or vertical (content suppliers and network distributors under same owner). Economic efficiency is improved by the concentration of ownership, but it may reduce diversity by excluding unaffiliated content suppliers.
Unregulated markets tend to be dominated by a few large companies, while smaller firms may occupy niche positions. Large markets are characterized by monopolistic competition where each company offers a slightly different product. The cable TV companies are differentiated along political lines in the USA where the fairness doctrine no longer applies.
We may expect that a company that runs multiple broadcast channels would produce different content on the different channels to avoid competing with itself, but the evidence shows a mixed picture. Some studies show that market concentration increases diversity and innovation, while other studies show the opposite.
A market where multiple companies own one TV channel each does not guarantee diversity either. On the contrary, we often see wasteful duplication where everybody is trying to reach the same mainstream audience with the same kind of programs. The situation is different for publicly funded TV channels. The non-commercial Danish national TV, for example, has multiple broadcast channels sending different kinds of content in order to meet its public service obligation.
European countries have a tradition for public service radio and television that is funded fully or partially by government subsidies or mandatory license payment for everybody who has a radio or TV. Historically, these public service broadcasters have delivered high quality programmes including news based on thorough journalistic investigation, as well as educational programmes, public information, debate, special programs for minorities, and entertainment. However, broadcasters who depend on government funding or mandatory license payments are vulnerable to political pressure from the incumbent government. Some media are protected from political pressure through strong charters and arms-length oversight organizations, while those with weaker protection are more influenced by pressure from politicians.
The public service broadcasters in several European countries initially had monopoly on broadcasting, but the strict regulation was relaxed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Competition from commercial radio and TV stations had a strong impact on the public service broadcasters. In Greece, the new competition from commercial TV led to lower quality and less diversity, contrary to the expectation of the economists. The contents of the public channels became similar to the commercial channels with less news and more entertainment. In the Netherlands, diversity of TV programs increased in periods with moderate competition, but decreased in periods with ruinous competition. In Denmark, the degree of dependence on advertising and private investors influenced the amount of trivialization, but even a publicly financed advertisement-free TV channel became more trivialized as a result of competition with commercial channels. In Finland, the government has avoided ruinous competition by strict regulation of the TV market. The result is more diversity.
References (that I want to add)
- Cody, F. (2023). The news event : popular sovereignty in the age of deep mediatization. The University of Chicago Press.
- Comer, J. (2022). Discourses of Global Queer Mobility and the Mediatization of Equality. Taylor & Francis.
- Frandsen, Kirsten. (2020). Sport and Mediatization. Routledge
- Frostenson, M., & Grafström, M. (2022). Mediatisation and the construction of what is morally right and wrong in contemporary business. Media, Culture & Society, 44(3), 532-548. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437211048369
- Leong, P. P. Y. (2021). Digital mediatization and the sharpening of Malaysian political contests. ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. https://doi.org/10.1355/9789814951883
- Neubauer, T. (2023). Mediatization of the O.J. Simpson Case : From Reality Television to Filmic Adaptation. transcript Verlag.
- Toni G. L. A. van der Meer, Anne C. Kroon, Piet Verhoeven & Jeroen Jonkman (2019) Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News, Journalism Studies, 20:6, 783-803, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2018.1423632
- ^ Couldry, Nick; Hepp, Andreas (2020-12-22), "Conceptualizing Mediatization:", Mediatization(s), Intellect Books, pp. 14–24, ISBN 978-1-78938-368-3, retrieved 2023-11-27