Conceptualizing Mediatization : using the framework of communicative theory to help establish a more comprehensive understanding
Establishing how we may possibly interpret 'mediatization' by delving into theoretical framework of constructive communication.
Quotes of interest:
Although the notion of mediatization lacks certainly an exact definition, it seems doubtlessly useful indicating some of the fundamental social transformations that have occurred in our lives in the last decades. Intuitively, the word seems to capture the changes that occur in our perceptions of the world and how we act in it. (297)
On the one hand, mediatization refers to ‘‘a metaprocess of the change of media,’’ on the other hand, it is a ‘‘microprocess affecting human actors and their social relation’’ (Krotz, 2012, p. 36). (297)
Tomasello (2008) demonstrates that both lack what he calls ‘‘shared intentionality,’’ that is, ‘‘joint attention, joint intention, and communicative intention, we see humans’ cooperative motives for communication turn into mutual assumptions, and even norms of cooperation; and we see humans’ ‘natural’ communicative gestures turn into human communicative conventions’'.(304)
If mediatization is framed in terms of action theory, it must necessarily be related to the notion of mediation. As Hepp (2012a, 2012b) stresses, mediatization and mediation must not be considered in opposition. Rather, as I want to suggest, they can be considered as complementary features of communicative action. (307)
As opposed to Latour’s view that networks of things and humans do the work in these centers (Latour & Hermant, 1998), this research shows that framing and contextualization is achieved not just by the actors but through the temporal coordination of actions, both human and technological, and their performance. Hence, Latour does not only neglect this kind of performative aspect of action, he also seems to miss the observation emphasized by the workplace studies that the sequence of actions (or the association of actors) is dependent on the knowledge of the actors and their interpretation. (309)
As opposed to these views, communicative constructivism considers objects and technologies as an integral part of communicative action which are intrinsically and meaningfully linked to the human actors via the pivotal role of the body. Seen from this perspective, the proliferation of objects and technologies does not reduce sociality. Rather sociality can be seen to be enforced or enlarged by mediatization in all its aspects, so as to increase the importance of communicative action. The inclusion of new technologies into communicative action does not only allow for new medialized forms of communicative action, including a massive expansion of visualization and the secondary sensualization of the life world (Krotz, 2001). The current form of mediatization, based on digital technologies of communication, legitimated since the 1960s by a huge range of privately and state financed programs to create the information society, dissolves knowledge (‘‘stored’’ in subjective consciousness) into communicative action and increases the frequency, performance and speed of communicative action to such an extent that one may dare to diagnose a profound transformation into ‘‘a culture of communication for the sake of communication’’ (Castells, 2009, p. 38) in which more and more knowledge is transformed into communicative forms. (311)
The idea that meaning is an active accomplishment of subjective consciousness (which, one must stress, should not be misunderstood, as often happens in superficial receptions of Schutz, as ‘‘cognitivist’’). Whereas Husserl had assumed that subjectively constituted meaning becomes social by another subjective act, that is, as ‘‘transcendental intersubjectivity’’(300)
Classical Marxist ‘‘production paradigm’’ (which, in his view, reduces action to the production of objects), there is another more basic problem inherent in his notion of communicative action—namely, the distinction between instrumental and communicative action that builds an artificial wall between two sides of the same coin. (301)
The problem with this distinction becomes particularly pertinent in the harsh duality of his ‘‘doctrine of the two realms,’’ that is, the separation between the ‘‘sociocultural life world’’ (constituted by communicative action and guided by ‘‘communicative rationality’’), and the ‘‘system’’ (constituted by strategic and teleological action which is guided by instrumental rationality). (302)
While semiotics and structuralism stressed the role of the material character of objectivations as the grounds for their ‘‘structure,’’ pragmatism stressed
the fact that objectivation is embedded in action. This becomes particularly evident in bodily expressions, that is, if objectivations are nothing but temporally fleeting forms of communicative action.
The duality of objectivation, referring both to objects ‘‘produced’’ by actions and to the ‘‘production’’ of objectivations, is neither an accident nor a mystery. While Habermas accounts for the way in which communicative actions ‘‘produce’’ objects in such a way as to allow the process to be reconstructed using instrumental rationality, the role of the body in communicative action is largely ignore (302)
Communicative action is action embodied in time in such a way that the body not only ‘‘affects’’ something in its working acts but also allows sensory perception and experience of these very acts of working during their performance. (303)
It is the temporal course of embodied action, that is, its ‘‘sequentiality,’’ that is, therefore, the basis for social order. (303)
Consider all these forms of action to have been acquired by processes of consciousness such as sedimentation, routinization, and habitualization (303)
Material objectivations which carry the marks of actors, that is, ‘‘cultural products,’’ objects, and technologies, are one way to stabilize objectivations, and, consequently, also communicative actions. For this reason they are also reference points in the discussion of mediatization to which I shall refer later. Before this, I should at least hint at the most important presupposition in the stabilization of communicative action into communicative forms which construct the social order. (305)
I want to approach mediatization on the basis of the notion communicative action, as outlined above, and determine it with particular respect to the notion of mediation and medialization. In doing so, I essentially agree with Krotz (2001, p. 23) that the ‘‘starting point [of the analysis of mediatization] must be communication or communicative action.’’ (307)
They draw a distinction between ‘‘immediate’’ forms of social action and ‘‘mediated’’ forms as basic dimensions of social action (cf. Gebhardt, 2008) (308)
In the study of communication media, have stressed that technologies of mediation allow us to cross the ‘‘orbits’’ and enter into the face-to-face situation. Thus Thompson (1994), Ho ̈flich (2005) and Krotz (2001) suggest a mixed form of interpersonal mediated interaction which accounts for the massive ‘‘penetration’’ of communication technologies into face- to-face interaction and their ‘‘domestication’’ (Lundby, 2009). Within the sociology of technology, this intersection of social action with technology has been said to cause a differentiation of actions and the creation of a form of social action through technologies called ‘‘interactivity’’ (Rammert, 2012). Probably the most radical reaction to the mediating role of technologies has been formulated by Latour as part of the ‘‘Actor Network Theory.’’ His radicalism is not only due to the fact that he accepts technologies as ‘‘actors’’ in the same (‘‘symmetrical’’) sense as human actors. He also allows us to address the question of the role of ‘‘objectivations,’’ which lies at the core of the theory proposed here.9 (308)
Mediators belong to the category of actors who link the ‘local’ and ‘translocal’ or the ‘situational’ and the ‘extrasituational.’ (308)
The body figures as the crucial reference point for mediatization, with respect to both experience and active conduct. Mediatization thus refers to the fact that media are not just ‘‘extensions of our
sensory apparatus’’ (Meyrowitz, 1994, p. 58) but also extensions of actions (how does opera industry deal with this? extension of sensory apparatus) (309)
Moreover, they allow to reconcile the two diverging dimensions of mediatization mentioned in the introduction. On the one hand, they locate mediatization as a fundamental feature of social life, that is, communicative action. In this respect, they closely relate the analysis of media and technology to human actors and their perspective. On the other hand, they delineate mediatization as an encompassing ‘‘meta process’’ constructed by communicative actions. In disregarding the distinction between micro and macrolevel or situation and structures as an ontological fact, mediatization becomes a crucial aspect of analysis, particularly in contemporary society.
If one asks why mediatization became so important in ‘‘mediatized modernity’’ (Lash in Lundby, 2009), one cannot escape the role of interactivity. Interactivity is most often identified as the exchange of behavioral sequences between human actors and technologies. As clearly as the observation of these sequences focuses on the body, it typically neglects the very forms of communicative action which are performed in these sequences. (310)
As the electronic mass media seem to make social spheres ‘‘more permeable’’ (Meyrowitz, 1994, p. 67), the increasingly multimodal interactivity fostered by digital technology is one of the most salient features of mediatization in contemporary society. It results in the transgression of what used to be the ‘‘primacy of the face-to-face situation.’’ This includes several aspects: transgression between the local and the global, transgression of social structure and interaction order and, closer to the discussion of mediatization, the transgression (or dissolution of the distinction between) of immediate and mediated social situations which turn into ‘‘scopic’’ situations.10 Mediatization, however, does not only mean that the structure of coordinating communicative actions is changing, as the notion of interactivity suggests. The transgression also results in the transformation and creation of communicative forms, patterns and genres, such as computer games, messages on answering machines and powerpoint presentations, to name but a few. In this way, it contributes to the transformation of the communicative cultures of contemporary society.
The transgression of the face-to-face situation is not a totally new phenomenon. However, the fact that communicative action can increasingly be performed in a translocal common environment inherently decreases the relevance of localized social relations and affects what is called community, the public and public communication and even presence that turns or ‘‘liveness’’ (Auslander, 1999; Couldry, 2008b). Some authors argue that mediatization results in the increased importance of objects and, therefore, postsociality. According to Knorr Cetina (2001), for example, postsociality is due to the insertion of objects into the ‘social.’ Also Latour (2005) assumes that sociality must be extended to ‘‘interobjectivity’’ in order to incorporate ‘‘object. (310)
Knoblauch, Hubert. "Communicative constructivism and mediatization."Communication Theory 23.3 (2013): 297-315.
