Mediatization and Social Change

The main issue which Sting Hjarvard is addressing in the article called “The Mediatization of Society” is to present a theory of the influence exerted by the media on society and culture. He claims that since the modernization of society, the media have been increasingly pervading into our everyday lives (Hjarvard, 2008: 105). We can observe the influence of media any time anywhere in our lives and social institutions such as politics, professional sphere, public sphere, culture, economy, religion, science, education, family, football etc. Thus, the media have become an integral part of the modern society and culture. Because, the media is transforming our perceptions of reality, our point of views, moral, values, conscience, voting behaviours, news consumption habits, shopping preferences, relationships, family interaction and so forth. In brief, the media transform societies and cultures, and other conditions of life, also its future forms and thus we call this meta-process as “mediatization”. If we consider mediatization as a meta-process, which may last for centuries and are not clear at which point in time they start or end, we can better understand what is happening in today’s changing world (Krotz, 2006: 257). Hjarward shares several perspectives of Winfried Schulz and Friedrich Krotz in terms of the mediatization concept.

In this meta-process context, it is suitable to relate with the article called “The meta-process of `mediatization' as a conceptual frame”. According to Friedrich Krotz, “Mediatization means the historical developments that took and take place as a change of (communication) media and the consequences of those changes” (258). The main argument Krotz suggests is that mediatization is an ongoing, long-term process whereby the media change people’s behaviours and sense-making process at a micro level; and also, activities of social institutions and thus change society and culture as a whole at a macro level. As mediatization changes human communication by offering new technologies and possibilities of communication, we change the way we socially construct our everyday lives (259). We need to understand mediatization too like other meta-process such as globalization, individualization and commercialization in order to comprehend the changes in which the whole world is passing through in the 21st century.

In order to observe the process of social change in which the media play an important role, Winfried Schulz suggests four kinds of process by which the media change human communication and interaction, in the article called “Reconstructing Mediatization as an Analytical Concept”. His main point is to give a definition of mediatization by describing the changes that it has created in communication media and to interrogate whether the advent of new media affects the existence of mediatization (Schulz, 2004: 87).

Firstly, the media extend the natural limits of human communication capacities in terms of time and space. Because the media can transfer messages over spatial and temporal distances by their channel and storage capacities whereas human communication is limited by time and space. For example, the media (newspapers, television and radio) are our window opening to the world by which we can access information and news that we cannot see with our own eyes. In this context, the media function as a bridge between people and long distances (88). With the digital media, this information access and consumption process has become more rapid. Because, internet technologies and mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, give us freedom of accessing information and news any time anywhere. When a breaking news happens in the United States, we receive alerts and notifications immediately from Twitter or applications of news organizations and we are informed synchronously with the whole world. Hence, we can see that the media change our distance perception and extend our ability to access information in both time and space.

Secondly, mediated activities substitute social activities that previously took place face-to-face. For instance, telephone, e-mail, SMS communication and more recently with Whatsapp, Skype, FaceTime etc. substitute physical conversation (88-89). On the other hand, media allow instant communication with people anywhere in the world. In this context, media can extend interaction in time and space because mediated interaction does not require people to be in the same place at the same time (Hjarvard, 2008: 122). As a result, we can say that substitution and extension can go hand in hand. Another example can be given in terms of news consumption habits, i.e. social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, are growingly becoming a main source of news and substituting television. Although the content of news is still being produced mostly by newspaper organizations, readership of printed newspapers has declined significantly while online news have become the most frequently accessed via social media sites. One main reason why people prefer consuming news via social media rather than printed newspapers or television is the possibility of sharing and recommending news. Because, social networks are not just important for immediate access to news, they also encourage sharing, discussing and contributing to the news (Newman et al., 2016). According to John B. Thompson, traditionally, people had limited ability to influence the construction of content of the message or communicate with the sender of the message. But with social media (in Thompson’s words “interactive media”), involvement of receiver in selecting, filtering, interpreting, sharing and even producing the content of the news have facilitated (Hjarvard, 2008: 109). In other words, social media extend the ability of creation and exchange of user-generated content. With social media, for the first time, users of online news were capable to discuss the information received with other users or with the sender of the message (by mentions, direct messages etc.) and also create and publish information by themselves, rather than solely relying on the judgement of a news organization or journalist. This means; the media transform consumers of news into producers of news (Fortunati et al., 2014: 124). According to Schulz, although citizens contribute to the content of the news media with their personal web sites or blogs, they have a very little part in the overall volume of news stories and most of the content still comes in a traditional way and from media conglomerates. Moreover, despite the increasing importance of social media as a source of news, most of the content still comes from newspaper and broadcasting organizations. As well as this, various groups use digital native news sources to supplement the traditional media platforms (Schulz, 2004: 97). As a result, in terms of the content, new media do not substitute traditional media, but in terms of the medium, new media technologies have been increasingly displacing printed newspapers, television and radio (Newman et al., 2016).

Thirdly, media activities and non-media activities merge and mingle with one another. Schulz argues: “As media use becomes an integral part of our everyday lives, the media’s definition of reality amalgamates with the social definition of reality.” (Schulz, 2004: 89). Related with his argument, Jean Baudrillard claims that the media constitute a “hyperreality”. According to simulacrum theory, the symbolic world of media does not only seem more real than the physical and social reality, but also replace the “real” world. Mediated reality replaces physical reality and the fact. It is called the mediatization of reality. Baudrillard’s main point is that “media representations of reality have assumed such dominance in our society that both our perceptions and constructions of reality and our behaviour take their point of departure in mediated representations.” Although Hjarvard agrees that mediatization has blurred the distinction between physical reality and reality represented by the media, he does not agree with the term of hyperreality and the disappearance of reality. In addition, he says that in everyday life people still distinguish between fact and fiction (Hjarvard, 2008: 110-111). Even though Baudrillard’s claims in 1994 were found exaggerated and lack of empirical confirmation, in my opinion in 2016, the world’s biggest problem (in terms of news consumption) is fake news and misinformation represented by the media.

Although new media technologies offer people a more individualized media use according to their needs and interests, a number of filtering mechanisms such as algorithms used by search engines like Google and social networking platforms like Facebook, select the content of the information and news (Schulz, 2004: 96). These algorithms select topics based on which contents people have read or liked before. Personalization algorithms used by Google and Facebook display users similar perspectives and ideas and remove opposing viewpoints on behalf of the users without their consent. As a result, users will be placed in ‘‘filter bubbles’’ and they will not even know what they are missing. Because of algorithmic discrimination where news is customized, people might miss important information for example, poor people get little or no financial news (Nielsen, 2016). We are informed about events as far as the media present us. Krotz speaks of a dissolution of boundaries between mediated and non-mediated activities, we are nevertheless stucked in the boundaries of reality represented by the media.

As we mentioned at the beginning, the media transform people’s perception of reality and voting behaviour. Considering amalgamation process, we can understand a larger issue. Here, it is worth giving the example of the United States presidential election of 2016. During the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, a significant number of misinformation were produced and disseminated through social media. Facebook, with its algorithms, showed users only the contents shared by other users who share the same viewpoint with them and users could not distinguish what is fact and what is fiction. People who share consistently misinformation on social media contributed to the election of Trump as the president (Foça, 2016). We can clearly see how misinformation influenced elections and politics in this case. This is the result of mediatization of politics from a normative perspective.

Furthermore, there are some points the authors did not address that those algorithms should raise the questions about limitation of breadth of information people receive. Through a normative perspective, we can say that mediated reality has a negative impact on democracy and political participation. In addition, we should take into account privacy concerns as algorithms are based on collecting individual-level data about users.

Finally, according to Hjarvard “By the mediatization of society, we understand the process whereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to or becomes dependent on the media and their logic.” (Hjarvard, 2008: 113). Because the media have obtained the status of independent institution and are no longer instruments of other institutions (117). On the contrary, as the media have become increasingly important, different actors and social institutions have to adapt their behaviours to accommodate to media’s logic. It means social actors (including institutions) of politics, education, sport, entertainment, professional sphere etc. no longer behave separately from the media (Schulz, 2004: 89). Today we speak of mediated politics, mediated education and so forth. Because, media’s logic and politics’ logic integrate. For instance, nowadays politicians and political parties take into account the “media logic” of social media and algorithms during the election campaigns in order to disseminate their discourses. As the dominant logic is the media’s logic, all social institutions have to adapt their logic to media’s logic. Since, they cannot exist without being mediated. Media also have their own changing logic. For example, with social media and algorithms, media’s logic is changing. Many people say they prefer personalised recommendations based on their past consumptions to get news rather than selected by editors and journalists and thus users see themselves as editors. In the light of mediatization of information, we can raise the question: “Can fact-checking be the new gatekeeper of democracy?”. Because of personalised recommendations, editors and journalists are losing their control over the content presented to people. Many journalists think they should determine what news people get, not search engines or social filters (Nielsen, 2016). But today, production and representation of the fact, people’s relation with information have changed with the media. The public sphere created by journalists where people articulate their opinions and interests, and a diversity of opinion and information can interact, has transformed to a “media-constructed public sphere” where like-minded people come together and constitute echo chambers that reinforce established perspectives and opinions (Schulz, 2004: 91). Now it is more difficult to distinguish the fact and fiction and to control dissemination of misinformation than before. Therefore, the role of fact-checking organizations are becoming increasingly significant.

In conclusion, this social change process is very similar with the epoch of Gutenberg’s technology of printing in the 15th century. With the shift from script to print, information became accessible and affordable for large masses. To understand the social change in the 15th century, we have to examine the medium of print itself (Thompson, 1995: 53). Because, once a society met with a new technology, this society have changed in an irreversible way. This means “mediazation of society”. In the 20th century, television was the medium that changed society and culture. Likewise, to better understand the social change happening in the 21st century, we have to investigate today’s mediums which are new media and algorithms. Mediums of every century are different but their function of transforming society is the same. We can understand how mediatization affects society by observing three kinds of social interaction in which media intervene: interaction between individuals within a given institution (e.g., classmates may communicate in a WhatsApp group), between institutions (e.g., students can have online lectures via Skype from home), and in society at large (e.g., via social media and personal blogs users can produce content and exchange it with other users so every user can become an editor) (Hjarvard, 2008: 120).

On the contrary of the arguments that claim mediatization has come to an end, in the light of these four processes of social change, due to omnipresence characteristic of the media, we observe mediatization still does exist in every part of our everyday lives and increasingly continue to transform societies and cultures. In fact, as new media extend, partly substitute and amalgamate with non-mediated activities and traditional media platforms, they give rise to new forms of mediatization, i.e. mediatization of politics, mediatization of news consumption etc. In brief, mediatization socially constructs people’s everyday lives and social organizations have to accommodate their behaviours to the media’s changing logic.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foça, Mehmet Atakan. “Avrupa’da fact-checking: doğrulama demokrasinin yeni bekçisi mi?” teyit.org. 8th December 2016. Web. 10th December 2016.

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Hjarvard, Stig. "The mediatization of society." Nordicom review 29.2 (2008): 105-134.

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