Definition and Background
In the Oxford dictionary, A Dictionary of Media and Communication, the term mediatization refers to the “the increasing importance of the mass media in society and culture” including its influence on “communication and content, a factor suggesting the importance of how things are communicated” (Chandler and Munday 2011). In practice, however, the word becomes more difficult to define as there are two different schools of thought on the word. The first is called the institutionalism which views mediatization as a process in which non-media institutions and individuals must adapt to media’s logic to be successful in media culture and society (Deacon and Stanyer 2014: 1033). Media logic is the “rules, aims, production logics, and constraints’ of media” (Deacon and Stanyer 2014: 1033). On the other hand, social constructivism, the second approach, views mediatization as a process in which changes in information and communicative systems impel the “changing communicative construction, of culture and society” (Deacon and Stanyer 2014: 1033. Recently, these traditions have merged to give a more general definition to the term as simply an analysis of the relationship between changes in media and communication systems and changes in society and culture (Couldry and Hepp 2013: 197). Enjoying a broad usage, the concept has been applied to a wide variety of fields such as politics, climate change, religion, and health (Deacon and Stanyer 2014: 1032).
Development of Terminology and Field
According to the Oxford, Living Dictionary, the term mediatization was first used in the early 19th century in The Edinburg Review (Oxford Living Dictionaries 2017). In the media and communication field, the term was used early on, but it did not carry the same theoretical meaning. During the 1990s, the concepts of “medium theory” and “ecology of communication” contributed to the development of mediatization theory (Couldry and Hepp 2013:195). Medium theory highlighted the importance of studying the influence of media in the medium it took, not just the content being communicated. Ecology of communication pointed to the importance of the idea of media logic (Couldry and Hepp 2013:195). These provided the theoretical basis for the institutionalist and social constructivist approaches to form. While the term developed greatly during the 1990s, the study of mediatization as a field and its wide application did not occur until certain circumstances prompted its development and created a necessity for the concept to be used. The first factor was the expansion of the role media plays in people’s lives due to the emergence of new forms of media such as social media and communicative technology such as the internet (Couldry and Hepp 2013: 192-193). The second factor came from the works of prominent media scholars, such as Roger Silverstone and Jesus Martin-Barbero, who diverged from the traditional examination of the media circulation (Couldry and Hepp 2013:193). The third contribution came from new approaches on the study of power. These came Michael Foucault, a French philosopher, the Actor Network Theory(ANT), and anthropologists’ increased interest in the field of media (Couldry and Hepp 2013:193). Finally, during the mid- 2000s, internationalization of the media and communications research field accelerated research in the field. All these factors contributed to the development of mediatization research programs (Couldry and Hepp 2013:194).
Controversy and Perspectives
The definition and usage of mediatization has generated much debate between communications scholars. The arguments between David Deacon and James Stanyer and Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjavard, and Knut Lundby reveal points of contention. David Deacon and James Stanyer voice their concerns in “Mediatization: key concept or conceptual bandwagon?”. Conducting a word search analysis of works from media and communication journals, they found that the term was rarely defined, generating confusion as to whether it was being used in an institutionalist or a social constructivist approach (Deacon and Stranyer 2014). They assert that not defining the term will cause misconceptions and “degrade [its] the analytical value” (Deacon and Stranyer 2014:1034). Additionally, Deacon and Stanyer have trouble seeing the media as something which has the power to create an effect in society without taking in other factors. Such a view is media-centric. Also, they suggest that the field lacks study of negative cases, or instances where mediatization does not occur, and of the historical changes of the mediatization process (Deacon and Stranyer 2014:1039). Finally, they suggest that mediatization is being used as catch-all term. This, they argue, is causing it to lose any real meaning (Deacon and Stranyer 2014:1039). In its present state, they argue it is a pseudo-universal concept (Deacon and Stranyer 2014:1040). A pseudo universal term is a concept that does not have any strict attributes and thus lacks any discriminatory power. To give the concept of mediatization discriminatory power, Deacon and Stranyer declare that definite changes are needed.
“In Mediatzation: Theorizing the Interplay between Media, Culture and Society”, Andreas Hepp, Stig Hjavard, and Knut Lundby respond to Deacon and Stanver’s criticism. They acknowledge that the term is used too casually, should be defined better, and may look like a catch-all phrase. They also agree that studying historical analysis of processes and negative cases would contribute to the field. Nevertheless, they caution that many instances seen as negative cases may not actually be. Yet, Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby reject Deacon and Stanyer’s methods saying that a word search in journals for any broad term, not just mediatization, would yield similar results (Hepp, Hiavard,and Lundby 2015: 2). Then, they disagree with the judgment that the study of mediatization is too media centric. They explain that mediatization is a lens for media and communication scholars to see into the domains of other disciplines. Thus, a media centric outlook is reasonable. Finally, they critique Deacon and Stanyer for missing the “broader perspective of mediatization research” and the growing focus in the media field on examining other factors besides the media (Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby 2015: 6). Furthermore, Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby say that mediatization research is not focused purely on studying the effect of media. Instead, the study is concerned with the bidirectional relationship between media and communication and culture and society (Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby 2015: 8). They also assert that just because mediatization is as a theoretical construct that is not “empirically verifiable in [it’s] entirety”, it is not less universal of a term (Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby 2015: 8). Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby end by stating that they believe that mediatization is part of a promising change within media and communication research to interrelate with other fields and with other concepts within the media and communications theory itself (Hepp, Hiavard, and Lundby 2015).
Mediatization in the Public Health Context
Scholars have applied the concept of mediatization to the study of public health as shown in the work of the Charles Briggs, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Berkeley (Briggs 2011a). In the investigation of the impact and process of mediatization in Why Nation-States and Journalists Can’t Teach People to Be Healthy: Power and Pragmatic Miscalculation in Public Discourses on Health”, Briggs explores how public health media is produced, circulated, and received by analyzing interviews and newspaper articles on the Venezuelan cholera preventative program of 1991. Primarily, he found that through the Ministry of Health, the Venezuela government established a hegemonic structure of control over of the production and circulation of the discourse about cholera. Hegemony is a structure which dominates and reinforces its existence by normalizing ideas and values frequently through the media. This structure was maintained, as in the West Nile Virus campaign, by reporters establishing public officials as the only trustworthy source of information (Briggs 2003:296). Reporters rejected any information that did not come from the regional health official without first validating it with them and intentionally portrayed nonofficial information as less accurate (Briggs 2003:296). At the same time the hegemonic structure was being reinforced through the process of mediatization, health officials and journalists imbedded projections on who should interpellate the health discourses messages (Briggs 2003). Interpellation is willingly but unknowingly accepting the validity of the message or an idea that has been presented to be accepted by recognizing oneself as being a subject of or addressed by that message. This interpellation, or in this case lack thereof, determined the outcome of the cholera campaign. Through the representations of certain population, the imbedded projections of who should interpellate the messages were revealed. The poor, street vendors, and indigenous were portrayed in the media as populations at risk. Public health officials and reporters used stigmatized images of these populations to “naturalize the connections between the disease and these populations” to project these populations as unsanitary citizens (Briggs 2003:300). However, the messages in the prevention campaign was geared towards the middle-class because of “the middle-class images in many of the messages and seeming economic prerequisites for enacting the prevention guidelines” (Briggs 2003:303). This lead to a failure of the public health course to be interpellated. The middle class failed to interpellate the message because they considered themselves sanitary citizens who had been told they were unlikely to contract cholera (Briggs 2003:303). On the other hand, the poor, street vendors, and indigenous also did not interpellate the message because the images in the prevention materials did not represent them as part of the public of its focus. Moreover, they would need to “accept an image of oneself as premodern, dirty, ignorant, superstitious, impoverished, and a threat to the health of the body politic” to interpellate the messages presented by the media (Briggs 2003:303). While the public health campaign failed to be interpellated, the circulation of cholera information had no gaps between production and reception in the eyes of public health officials and the media. Thus, any failures to access public health information and to use it to prevent cholera were not attributed to the public health officials but to the populations they were trying to reach (Briggs 2003:307). Through this analysis, Briggs clearly demonstrates how the process of mediatization reinforces the control of certain institutions and affects the public’s reception and interpretation of an issue.
Relation to Politics of Health
Although the concept of mediatization developed outside of the public health field, the term proves itself to be a relevant addition to the discussion of politics of health. Mediatization relates to politics of heath because of its direct impact on people’s health, its relation to processes of power, and its role as a theoretical framework to study key concepts in politics of health. First, mediatization has a direct impact on the health of individuals in society. The Venezuelan cholera campaign’s circulation of stigmatizing images and the implied audience of the prevention recommendations alienated the poor class and excluded the middle class. Thus, mediatization in this circumstance increased the health risk of certain members of society. In addition, mediatization reflects some of the key aspects of conceptual frameworks central to the study of politics of health by revealing the power interplay between the media, institutions, and individuals. As discussed in Briggs’s analysis, the media reinforces the power and authority of institutions such as the public health department and in turn determines how messages are prepared and released by public health officials. In other words, mediatization provides valuable insight into how the institutions who impact public health use the media to propagate power and are in turn shaped by their relationship to it. Finally, mediazation provides a theoretical framework to analyze how concepts of politics of health are reinforced by media processes. An example of this would be the concept of normativity. Representations of bodies in the media are shaped by what is viewed as normal or healthy by society. However, these representations in turn reinforce and determine which bodies are viewed as normal in society. Normativity then impacts public health as people find inconstancies within themselves to the “normal” body projected in the media. This is just one of the examples of how mediatization’s relationship with politics of health, but the term can be applied to many other concepts such as the connection between direct to consumer advertising and pharmaceuticalization. With the media and media systems influencing the lives of nearly every individual in society, mediatization reveals itself to be an invaluable conceptual tool for analyzing the relationships between institutions and individuals who become the subjects of focus in the study of politics of health.
Bibliography
Briggs, Charles L. “Charles L. Briggs.” Anthropology Department, UC Berkeley. August 28,
2011a. http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/people/charles-l-briggs.
___.”On virtual epidemics and the mediatization of public health.” Language &
Communication 31, no. 3 (July 2011b): 217-28. doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2011.03.003.
___.”Why Nation-States and Journalists Can’t Teach People to Be Healthy: Power
and Pragmatic Miscalculation in Public Discourses on Health.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17, no. 3 (2003): 287-321. doi:10.1525/maq.2003.17.3.287.
Chandler, Daniel, and Rod Munday. “mediatization.” In A Dictionary of Media and
Communication.: Oxford University Press, 2011. http://www.oxfordreference.com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780199568758.001.0001/acref-9780199568758-e-1695.
Couldry, Nick, and Andreas Hepp. “Conceptualizing Mediatization: Contexts, Traditions,
Arguments.” Communication Theory 23, no. 3 (2013): 191-202. doi:10.1111/comt.12019.
Deacon, David, and James Stanyer. “Mediatization: key concept or conceptual
bandwagon?” Media, Culture & Society 36, no. 7 (2014): 1032-044.
Hepp, Andreas, Stig Hjarvard, and Knut Lundby. “Mediatization: theorizing the interplay
between media, culture and society.” Media, Culture & Society 37, no. 2 (2015): 314-24. doi:10.1177/0163443715573835. doi:10.1177/0163443714542218.
« Back to Glossary Index