Mediatization theory views media as a semi-autonomous institution that exerts influence across contemporary modern societies.

See Part 1: Media and Mediatization Theory.
See Part 3: Mediation, Medium, Mediatization of Religion Theories, and Secular Media

As a semi-independent institution, media have a particular modus operandi that influences other socio-cultural institutions. These institutions become dependent on the material and symbolic resources that the media both control and make available to them (Hjarvard 2013, 17).

Over time, socio-cultural fields and institutions (politics, religion, the family, etc.) progressively became subsumed under the logic of the media, whereas formerly media had once been used in the service of these other institutions. Transformation occurred from the 1980s in the wake of the deregulation of media industries, the presence of new media technologies, and the emergence of neoliberal policies (Hjarvard 2013, 25). Media gradually grew more commercialized and independent of other socio-cultural institutions, also becoming an institution able to pursue its own interests and maintain its own modus operandi.

Socio-cultural institutions needed to accommodate the demands of the media if they wanted access to a major collective resource that media control, namely public representation. Almost all socio-cultural institutions now use digital and interactive media in some shape or form for communicative purposes across time and space.

Media Logic

Media logic refers to the “dominant processes, established routines, and standardized formats which frame and shape the production of media content, especially its representation or construction of reality and its manufacture of news” (Chandler and Munday 2020).

There are various media logics—commercial, cultural, industrial, informational, organizational, political, and technological—that determine how material is categorized, the choice of mode of presentation, and the selection and portrayal of social experience in the media.

Referring to the “media logic” of journalism specifically, Jesper Strömbäck explains that it “can be taken to mean the dominance in societal processes of the news values and the storytelling techniques the media make use of to take advantage of their own medium and its format, and to be competitive in the ongoing struggle to capture people’s attention” (2008, 233). Strömbäck identifies simplification, polarization, intensification, personalization, visualization, and stereotypization as central components of media logic that frames politics (Strömbäck 2008, 233). Hjarvard cautions that media logic as described here is not universal, as it does not claim there is a single rationality behind all the media (2013, 17).

A Process of High Modernity

Mediatization is not a “grand theory” because it does not refer to a universal process that characterizes all societies, but only those of “high modernity” (Hjarvard 2013, 5, 7, 13, 79, 102, 105, 108, 137, 147, 153, 155).

During late modernity, media contributed to both disembedding social relations from existing contexts and re-embedding them in new social contexts. Whereas socio-cultural institutions, such as the family, school, and the Church, were the most important providers of information, tradition, and moral orientation for members of society, media progressively occupied these roles.

The primary media of this earlier period (e.g., books, journals, newspapers, the telegraph, etc.) were tools utilized by institutions, which included literature, science, politics, commerce, and so on that were largely controlled by political parties and movements (Hjarvard 2013, 6). Some journals and magazines served scientific, cultural, or religious interests. Media became differentiated from these other socio-cultural institutions and formed into a powerful and soon pervasive semi-independent institution.

During the twentieth-century expansion of mass media, film, radio, and newspapers became the subjects of greater analysis, and, particularly in North America and Europe, new specialized disciplines emerged in the form of communication research, mass communication research, and media studies.

References

Asp, Kent. 1986. Powerful Mass Media: Studies in Political Opinion Formation. Stockholm, Sweden: Akademilitteratur.

Chandler, Daniel., and Munday, Rod. 2020. A Dictionary of Media and Communication. Oxford, England, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Finneman, Niels Ole. 2011. “Mediatization theory and digital media.” Communications 36:67–89.

Fornäs, Johan. 2011. “Medialisering: Introduktion.” In Medialisering av kultur, politik, vardag och forskning, edited by Johan Fornäs and Anne Kaun, 5-13. Södertörn, Sweden: Medierstudier vid Södertörn.

Hjarvard, Stig. 2008. “The mediatization of religion A theory of the media as agents of religious change.” Nordic Journal of Media Studies 6:9-26.

Hjarvard, Stig. 2012. “Three Forms of Mediatized Religion Changing the Public Face of Religion.” In Mediatization and Religion: Nordic Perspectives, edited by Stig Hjarvard and Mia Lövheim, 21-44. University of Gothenburg, Sweden: Nordicom.

Hjarvard, Stig. 2013. The Mediatization of Culture and Society. Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom: Routledge.

Hjarvard, Stig. 2016. “Mediatization and the changing authority of religion.” Media, Culture & Society 38(1):8-17.