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Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293

ORI GI NAL ARTI CLE


Denitive and Sensitizing
Conceptualizations of Mediatization
Klaus Bruhn Jensen
Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen S DK-2300,
Denmark
Departing from H. Blumers (1954) distinction between denitive and sensitizing con-
cepts, this article suggests that the mediatization literature has overemphasized denitive
approaches to conceptualizing media change. Analyzing 2 representative instances, and
comparing them with 3 sensitizing approaches, the article argues that future research
should clarify several processes entering into mediatization, including social structuration,
technological momentum, and the embedding of communication into social contexts as
well as physical objects. In conclusion, the essay notes that greater attention to the ongoing
digitalization of the contemporary media environment could help both to explain the timing
of the turn to mediatization in communication research and to focus future theorizing
about the very idea of mediatization.
doi:10.1111/comt.12014
Communication theory is heir to a distinctive philosophical legacy regarding the
nature of conceptualization (Jensen, 2010). On one hand, philosophy since Antiquity
has asked, What does the world consist of? What are the elements and processes
that may be conceived as the constituents of reality? On the other hand, modern
philosophy, from Immanuel Kant onward, began to ask, in more modest terms,
What can be known about the world? What are the conditions, the potentials,
as well as the limitations of what might be conceived by humansphilosophers,
scientists, and laypersonsthrough personal introspection, empirical studies, or
public argumentation? During the 20th century, communication theories such as
cybernetics and semiotics joined the so-called linguistic turn of analytic philosophy
(Rorty, 1967) in asking further, What is meant by know and world? Part of
the brief of contemporary communication theory is this self-reective endeavor
of considering how communication and related phenomena could and should be
denoted and understood in the rst place, and for what purposes.
This article interrogates practices of conceptualization in communication theory.
My aim is to probe different notions of mediatization (Lundby, 2009b), their
implicit premises, and their implications for the larger enterprise of mediatization
Corresponding author: Klaus Bruhn Jensen; e-mail: kbj@hum.ku.dk
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Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
research. As a rst step, consider the distinction between concepts and conceptions.
In his classic treatise on justice as fairness, Rawls (1999) noted that although
people may disagree vehemently about the specic ends as well as the concrete
means of justice, they commonly have a shared understanding of the phenomenon
at issue:
Thus it seems natural to think of the concept of justice as distinct from the
various conceptions of justice and as being specied by the role which these
different sets of principles, these different conceptions, have in common. Those
who hold different conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutions
are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the
assigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a proper
balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life. (p. 5,
emphasis added)
According to this line of reasoning, concepts unite, whereas conceptions divide.
Also less contested domains than those of law or ethics witness overlaps and
interactions between their dening concepts and conceptions. The eld of commu-
nication research is united by the concept of communication, and divided by diverse
conceptions and models of its elements and processes. For decades, the eld has
debated the relationship between transmission and ritual models of communication,
as articulated by Carey (1989/1975). Even though different traditions of scholarship
may advocate one or the other, individual scholars are perfectly able to grasp both
conceptions and, ideally, to present an even-handed account of the two prototypical
positions to their students. The history of the idea of communication, as chronicled
by Peters (1999), further suggests that the concept as well as the conceptions have
remained variable, and have been shaped, in important ways, by the analytical tasks
and practical applications for which they have been devised, whether administrative
or critical (Lazarsfeld, 1941).
Conceptualization takes a third step in the process of articulating the interrelations
between phenomena in the world, ideas in the mind, and the signs and symbols
through we may examine and communicate about both the phenomena and the
ideas. Conceptualization can be dened as an intellectual operation that is oriented
toward an explicit analytical purpose or goal, anticipating conclusions and actions.
As such, it is associated particularly with disciplines and elds that are dened less
by their formal approaches than by their substantive domains of inquiry. If logic and
ethics emphasize concepts and conceptions, conceptualization takes center stage in
much social-scientic and humanistic research.
In one respect, conceptualization carries over to methodological operationaliza-
tion in empirical studies, not least in the case of quantitative forms of research.
To assess an instance of communication as transmission, a conceptualization of a
message content and its potential reception, coupled with a rendition of each of these
constituents as variables that can be measured on appropriate scales, is standard
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K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
procedure in communication research of the hypothetico-deductive variety (Gunter,
2012; Wimmer & Dominick, 2011).
It should be re-emphasized, however, that conceptualization is constitutive of
other communication research, as well, including interpretive and critical forms of
scholarship, even while the move fromconceptualization to operationalization works
differently in each case. In their textbook on qualitative communication research
methods, Lindlof and Taylor (2011) note both the place of conceptualization in
the transition from general rationales to specic research questions (pp. 128130)
and the role of operationalization, including sampling (pp. 109118), in conducting
in-depth eld studies. For example, to study community as a contemporary category,
and to establish the experienced differences and similarities between online and
ofine community, it is essential to specify the distinctive characteristics of each kind
of community as articulated, in part, in the communication rituals that are observed,
documented, and conceptualized through online ethnography (Baym, 1999, 2000;
Hine, 2000).
Also in critical scholarship, conceptualization is key when it comes to capturing
not just the communicative practices that already exist but also those that might
come about in the future. A case in point is action research involving participatory
forms of digital media (Hearn, Tacchi, Foth, & Lennie, 2009), in which the ambition
is to conceive and literally construct new media and communicative practices. Here,
the process of conceptualization is informed, in large part, by the stakeholders
within the communities or organizations being examined, who thus become, at
once, informants and coresearchers, objects as well as subjects of research. By
identifying and articulating both problems and potential solutions, they participate
in conceptualizing what communication might be.
In review, conceptualization represents a comparatively ambitious or demand-
ing level of theorizing communication. Beyond consensual concepts and conicted
conceptions, conceptualization opens the eld for empirical inquiry and sustained
argument concerning the explanatory value of notions such as mediatization. Meta-
considerations like these, of course, are not unique to the present eld. If classical
philosophy helped set the agenda of communication theory, a more recent ancestor
is social theory. Around the time of the formation of the eld of communication,
an article by Blumer (1954) asked frankly, What Is Wrong With Social The-
ory? His reply involved a distinction between two kinds of conceptsdenitive
and sensitizingand a plea for addressing an imbalance between the two. The
following section revisits these concepts, elaborating their relevance for contem-
porary issues in communication theory. Next, the article critically assesses two
main conceptualizations of mediatization in the literature, both of which can be
considered denitive in Blumers terms. The last section of the article presents
several alternative conceptualizations of mediatization that represent sensitizing
approaches to theory development, and which may better capture the variety of
phenomena that have been collected and, arguably, conated under the heading of
mediatization.
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Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
Denitive and sensitizing concepts
Blumer (1954) argued that certain key difculties associated with social theory of his
time could be attributed to the unresolved status of the concept:
In my judgment the appropriate line of probing is with regard to the concept.
Theory is of value in empirical science only to the extent to which it connects
fruitfully with the empirical world. Concepts are the means, and the only means
of establishing such connection, for it is the concept that points to the empirical
instances about which a theoretical proposal is made. (p. 4)
While thus recognizing the centrality of the concept, Blumer worried that the
clarication of concepts does not come from piling up mountains of research
ndings (pp. 56), which he found to be characteristic of much social science. As
one illustration, he pointed to the hundreds of studies of attitudes and the thousands
of items they have yielded; these thousands of items of ndings have not contributed
one iota of clarication to the concept of attitudes (p. 6).
To advance social theory, Blumer (1954) identied and criticized what he saw as
a dominant approach to the formation of concepts:
The most serious attempts to grapple with this problem in our eld take the
form of developing xed and specic procedures designed to isolate a stable and
denitive empirical content, with this content constituting the denition or the
reference of the concept. The better known of these attempts are the formation
of operational denitions, the experimental construction of concepts, factoral
analysis, the formation of deductive mathematical systems and, although slightly
different, the construction of reliable quantitative indexes. (p. 6)
The outcome of this approach is denitive concepts: A denitive concept refers
precisely to what is common to a class of objects, by the aid of a clear denition
in terms of attributes or xed bench marks (p. 7). Even though such concepts
may furnish precise and efcient instruments of analysis, they could be considered
insufciently sensitive to empirical instances and their contexts, and they might
result in circular arguments as in the statement that, Intelligence is the intelligence
quotient (p. 6). Blumer recognized that his question was perhaps heretical, but
he nevertheless asked whether denitive concepts are suited to the study of our
empirical social world (p. 7). He responded by elaborating a distinct alternative:
sensitizing concepts.
A sensitizing concept gives the user a general sense of reference and guidance in
approaching empirical instances (p. 7). Blumer (1954) emphasized that sensitizing
concepts do not merely represent pilots for a research design or early drafts of a
theoretical framework, characterized by immaturity and lack of scientic sophisti-
cation (p. 7). Instead, they represent necessary conditions of access to our natural
social world (p. 10) in the rst place, and they lend themselves to incremental
enrichment: Sensitizing concepts can be tested, improved and rened. Their validity
can be assayed through careful study of empirical instances which they are presumed
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K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
to cover (p. 8). At issue, to Blumer, were two general strategies of conceptualization
and theory development, what he referred to as two modes of attack sets (p. 10).
He unequivocally preferred the sensitizing mode:
Its success depends on patient, careful and imaginative life study, not on quick
short-cuts or technical instruments. While its progress may be slow and tedious,
it has the virtue of remaining in close and continuing relations with the natural
social world. (p. 10)
In a longer historical perspective, Blumers (1954) article rehearsed a classic
set of arguments from the theory of science, which is another part of the legacy of
communication theory. In addition to being central to Chicago-School sociology
and a founding gure of symbolic interactionism, Blumer was an early contributor
to communication research in the context of the Payne Fund studies on the effects
of movies on children and youth (Blumer & Hauser, 1933). Blumers article can
be understood as, in part, an intervention into struggles during the 1950s over the
denition of (one or more) appropriate social-scientic methods (Murdock, 2012).
Since then, debates have been ebbing and owing, also in the eld of communication
research, between hypothetico-deductive and grounded research designs, experimen-
tal and naturalistic methodologies, and conceptions of theories as either explanatory
or interpretive devices. Blumers dichotomy of denitive versus sensitizing concepts
bears witness to the conicted nature of such foundational debates.
In retrospect, the dichotomy may be reformulated, rst of all, as a continuum.
While sensitizing procedures for capturing social reality as lived and experienced
remain both necessary and legitimate, this does not rule out more denitive measures
that recognize the stability of many social practices and structures. Blumers (1954)
reference tothe fact that sensitizing concepts canbe tested, improvedandrened (p.
8) suggested as much. Furthermore, the relevance of different kinds of concepts along
such a continuum depends on the variable aims of studies describing, interpreting,
explaining, or critiquing either society or communication. What Blumer dened as
two kinds of concepts can be redened, then, as two conceptions of what researchers
may hope to gain from the concept in the rst place, or what it yields for different
analytical and intellectual purposes. In the practice of research, these purposes are
articulated in further detail through conceptualizations, which are multiple, even if
they may be assigned, for comparative purposes, to particular points on a denitive-
sensitizing continuum. In the case of mediatization, it is instructive to group a range
of existing and possible conceptualizations with reference to this continuum. As
such, the continuum may itself serve as a sensitizing device, and one that allows
for denitive conceptualizations. Reading Blumer against the grain, one might even
conclude that he contradicted himself by making a denitive rather than a sensitizing
distinction between his two kinds of concepts.
As noted by Hepp (2009), two main approaches to work on mediatization can be
identied. One approach focuses on the media as institutions, exploring a media
logic that is active in various social elds, whereas the other approach departs
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Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
from these social elds, emphasizing other acts of appropriation, interpretation,
and resistance that are not necessarily media related (p. 139), a position to which
Hepp (2013) himself has been a central contributor. The next part of the article
examines representative instances of each approach, suggesting that both instances
lay claim to denitive conceptualizations of mediatization that are not warranted.
The following part turns to sensitizing conceptualizations, which can be considered
more appropriate for the diverse issues that mediatization researchers have proposed
to tackle.
Two denitive conceptualizations
Mediatization as institutionalization
One of the most clearly and systematically developed accounts of mediatization
has been presented by Hjarvard (2008). His analysis highlights the institutional
consequences of the omnipresence of media in contemporary society: The media
are at once part of the fabric of society and culture and an independent institution that
stands between other cultural and social institutions and coordinates their mutual
interaction (p. 106). Following a balanced review of previous contributions, he
species the duality of his mediatization concept, which is applied exclusively to the
historical situation in which the media at once have attained autonomy as a social
institutionand are crucially interwovenwith the functioning of other institutions (p.
110). Conceptualized in this way, mediatization is said to capture distinctive features
of the present historical epoch, notably in the industrialized west. Hjarvard further
claries that his conceptualization of mediatization is nonnormative, in contrast to
widespread notions of media having perpetrated or reinforced a cultural decline,
as most prominently associated with Habermas (1989/1962). However, Hjarvard
considers his conceptualization denitive enough to predict that, as globalization
progresses, more and more regions and cultures will be affected by mediatization
(p. 113) in this particular sense.
Hjarvards conceptualization of mediatization is grounded in classic sociology, as
synthesized by Giddens (1984). At the same time, Hjarvard (2008) seeks to redress
the comparative neglect of media and communication in sociology, both classic
and contemporary, continuing recent steps toward rapprochement between the
two disciplines (p. 132), for example, in the work of Castells (2001). Departing
from Giddens characterization of institutions in terms of rules and resources,
Hjarvard notes, on one hand, that media are subject to specic formal and informal
rulesfrom legislation regarding editorial responsibility, to professional norms and
codes of practicethat regulate the relationship between the media and the rest
of society. On the other hand, media manage material and symbolic resources,
both in their internal operations of producing and distributing content and, most
important, in their interactions with individuals, groups, and other institutions in
society. Media constitute a communicative infrastructure that assigns more or less
exposure and legitimacy to diverse social agents and, hence, affect the privilege and
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power that these agents enjoy and command. The central claim, then, is that media
have emerged as an independent institution (p. 115) with distinctive informative
and communicative functions and with decisive consequences for local interactions
as well as global structures of society.
While Hjarvard (2008) also offers insightful illustrations of some of the ways
in which mediatization could be said to reshape interactions in domains such as
politics, religion, and play (see further, for instance, Hjarvard, 2004, 2011b), the
wider argument is that mediatization enters into the increasing differentiation and
division of labor that characterizes many spheres and aspects of modern society
(Hjarvard, 2008, p. 117). Concretely, mediatization has been a social force on a par
with urbanization and industrialization (p. 127). These and other formulations hold
three ambiguities that call into question the epochal, denitive conceptualization of
mediatization as institutionalization.
First, the text vacillates between a long and a short historical perspective. As
already noted, the theory is said, in some instances, to apply exclusively (Hjarvard,
2008, p. 110) to the historical situation in which the media have become an institution
unto themselves; in a summarizing table (p. 120), this period is said to have begun
c. 1980. In other instances, the terminology of mediatization is used regarding a
much longer time span, as suggested by the proposed parallel with urbanization
and industrialization (p. 127). Mediatization is also said to denote the process
whereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or becomes dependent
on, the media and their logic (p. 113), a process which, in Hjarvards framework,
covers three periods since at least the late 19th century. When it is later suggested
that mediatization is an important concept in modern sociology as it relates to the
overriding process of modernization of society and culture (p. 132), this would
seem to require a much broader conceptualization of mediatization than the one
otherwise being advocated. Thus, it is not clearly specied whether mediatization
is meant to capture a state of society during recent decades or a historical process
extending across centuries.
Second, mediatization is said to arise from a whole range of media, including
newspapers, radio, television and internet (Hjarvard, 2008, p. 119). Mediatization,
notably, is not associated here with the new, digital media forms that had their social
breakthrough after c. 1980. Hjarvards point is well taken that, in each case,
the medium links different physical localities and social contexts in a single
interactive space, but it does not do away with the reality of the separate physical
and social contexts. Television, telephones and internet all bridge distances, but
the users have hardly left their sofas or desks to enter into the interactive space.
(p. 124)
It is questionable, however, whether, as institutions, all these media operate according
to identical or comparable principles of following rules and managing resources.
Certainly, classic mass mediafrom newspapers to broadcastingcould be seen
to follow legal, professional, and market-based rules that made for a comparatively
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Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
centralized media logic assigning resourcesattention, legitimacy, and, in time,
material benetsto other cultural, political, and economic institutions. But, such
a central perspective hardly applies to the totality of communicative uses to which
either telephones or the Internet are put across private and public settings. To be clear,
my aim is not to celebrate new media that might decenter an old media logic
(e.g., Jenkins, 2006; Rheingold, 2002). The point is that Hjarvards (2008) preferred
conceptualization extrapolates from the epoch of mass mediatization to an emerging
digital media environment, without considering the extent to which relevant rules
and resources may be recongured, perhaps even in epochal ways.
Third, Hjarvard (2008) repeatedly refers to media as having become an inde-
pendent institution (p. 105ff.) in the singular. Both theoretical and commonsensical
notions of the media as one entity became widespread from the 1960s (Scannell,
2012, p. 222). At the same time, research has sometimes sought to distinguish between
different institutions, or institutional aspects of media, notably in the understanding
of the press as a political Fourth Estate (Cater, 1959), but also with reference to
television ction as a cultural forum (Newcomb & Hirsch, 1983) in which existential
and ethical issues can be articulated and negotiated. Although it might be appropriate,
within a mass media system, to treat diverse genres and media as constituents of one
institution, it is not apparent that the Internet can be joined seamlessly with the press
or cinema in one institution, or that the Internet itself constitutes one institution.
The Internet is the site of any and all of the social interactions that individuals,
groups, and institutions engage in: a bank, an auction hall, a general practitioners
consultation, and a dating service, in addition to being an arena of political debate
and a source of aesthetic experience.
Tosumup, Hjarvards conceptualizationof mediatizationas institutionalizationis
situated toward the denitive end of the denitive-sensitizing spectrum, overempha-
sizing an (ambiguous) epochal understanding of mediatization, while simultaneously
neglecting media developments during recent decades. Regarding the span of media
history from sometime in the 19th century to the present day, his conceptualization
entails the claim that, for example, the period 19801995 is continuous with the
period since 19952010, but epochally distinct from 19651980, which is prima
facie untenable. In the section, Mediatization as social structuration, I return to an
alternative interpretation of much of the background to Hjarvards position.
Mediatization as hegemony
If Hjarvard (2008) represents a media-centric position, grounded in classic sociology,
Couldry (2008) proposes a society-centric approach to the media-society juncture,
departing from critical cultural studies. By way of introduction, it should be noted
that Couldry prefers the term mediation, which derives from the work of Silverstone
(2002). As indicated by Lundby (2009a), however, the general understanding of
mediatization is fairly close to Silverstones use of mediation (p. 13). As I
further demonstrate, Couldrys argument, in fact, implies a conceptualization of
mediatization that is denitive on an even grander scale than that advanced by
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K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
Hjarvard, thus approaching the denitive end of the denitive-sensitizing spectrum.
(For present purposes, I use the term mediatization to refer to Couldrys position.)
Couldry (2008) presents his argument in the context of a critical assessment of
the potentials of digital storytelling, which occurs when
people who have never done so before are telling personal stories through digital
forms, storing and exchanging those stories in sites and networks that would not
exist without the world wide web and which, because of the remediation capacity
of digital media, have multiple possibilities for transmission, retransmission and
transformation available to them. (p. 374)
To gauge such potentials, Couldry is concerned to avoid what he sees as the linear
nature of the logic that underlies theories of mediatization (p. 377), as associated by
him with the work of Hjarvard and others. In a rst step, then, Couldrys argument
highlights the complexity of the process, especially when analyses involve not just
discursive forms, but social practices and institutions, as well:
The reservations expressed in this article with the theory of mediatization begin
only when it is extended in this way to cover transformations that go far beyond
the adoption of media forms or formats to the broader consequences of
dependence upon media exposure. (p. 377)
In a next step, Couldry begins to address the wider process of digital storytelling,
which cannot be contained within a single logic of mediatization, since involved also
are logics of use and social expectation that are evolving alongside digital narrative
forms (p. 383). The hope is that digital storytelling, ideally, could empower media
users far beyond the moment of communication as consumption:
Digital storytelling is perhaps particularly important as a practice because it
operates outside the boundaries of mainstream media institutions, although it
can work on the margins of such institutions . . . .In that sense, digital storytelling
contributes to a wider democratization of media resources and possibly to the
conditions of democracy itself. (p. 386)
To examine such prospects, Couldry nds, additional and, in part, alternative
questions to those raised by self-described mediatization researchers must be asked:
Questions about how the availability of digital storytelling forms enable
enduring habits of exchange, archiving, commentary and reinterpretation, and
on wider spatial and social scales than otherwise possible; questions about the
institutional embedding of the processes of producing, distributing and
receiving digital stories. (p. 388)
It is this kind of questions that might be accommodated in Silverstones approach:
Mediation, in the sense in which I am using the term, describes the
fundamentally, but unevenly, dialectical process in which institutionalized
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Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
media of communication (the press, broadcast radio and television, and
increasingly the World Wide Web) are involved in the general circulation of
symbols in social life. (Silverstone, 2002, p. 762)
Despite his preference for Silverstones framework, Couldry (2008) is quick
to qualify some of its implications. When citing the passage above, he italicizes
fundamentally, but unevenly, dialectical process (p. 380) to underscore not just its
nonlinear, but also its conicted nature. He follows up with an explicit reservation:
Arguably, Silverstones term dialectic is too friendly to capture all aspects of the
non-linearity of mediation. It disarms us from noticing certain asymmetric
interrelations between actors in the media process, and even the impossibility of
certain actors or outputs inuencing other actors or outputs. (p. 380)
Couldry goes on to sharpen his qualication of Silverstones framework, before it
may serve his own analytical purposes: The very term the media is the result of
a long historical construction that legitimates particular concentrations of symbolic
resources in institutional centres (p. 381).
As it turns out, the questions raised by Couldry tend to be answered on the
basis of a very specic set of premises. A bit further on in the text, the particular
concentrations of symbolic resources in institutional centres in the last quotation
have become the extreme concentration of symbolic resources in media institutions
(p. 386, emphases added), which further brackets the dialectic. Hopes become fears:
The feararticulated abstractly in the earlier adjustment to Silverstones notion
of the dialectic of mediationis that digital storytelling is, and will remain, a
largely isolated phenomenon cut off from broader media and, more importantly,
cut off from the broader range of everyday life, both private and public/political.
(pp. 388389)
In the end, the fear justies what appears to have been a foregone conclusion.
Although Couldry duly notes the need to follow closely through extended empirical
work (p. 388) both the forms and the contexts of digital storytelling, his conclusions
and projections hinge on rather different factors. Referring to the hope articulated by
Joe Lambert, one of the key gures of digital storytelling, Couldry concludes that the
realization of that hope depends on many other types of transformation . . . which
in turn will require major shifts in the political and economic landscape (p. 389).
Throughthe steps of his argument, the potential of digital storytelling andthe dialectic
of mediatizationare continuously canceledby structural factors overdeterminingboth
communicative practices and media institutions.
This line of argument represents an established tradition of inquiryfrom
Karl Marx, via the Frankfurt School, to critical cultural studies. Couldrys own
important contributions include an earlier attempt at reclaiming the concept of
ritual for critical purposes, emphasizing the afnities between social integration and
ideological dominance (Couldry, 2003). A key concept in the tradition, implicit in
Couldry (2008), is that of hegemony (Gramsci, 1971). Under present political and
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K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
economic circumstances, media could only ever serve as agents of hegemony, in a
process of mediatization that constitutes an inherently uneven dialectic.
Couldry (2008) is happy to acknowledge mediatization as a broadly descriptive
term: Of course, there is no problem if we use mediatization merely as a catch-all
term to cover any and all changes in social and cultural life consequent upon media
institutions operations (p. 378). Clearly, his primary aim is not description, but
theory development with a critical purpose. In this process, social critique trumps
communication theory, despite the introductory protestation that at stake here is
not so much the liberatory potential of digital storytelling, but the precision with
which we understand the complex social consequences of media (p. 375). I conclude
that Couldry advances a conceptualization of mediatization toward the far denitive
end of the spectrum, premised on the media-facilitated hegemony and wider political
economy of neoliberal democracies (p. 389). Arguably, it couldnot be otherwise ina
perspective that is at once society-centric andcritical, because, as Winston(1998) sums
up the general position, the societies in question are subject to the law of the sup-
pression of radical potential (p. 11) inherent in new communication technologies.
In recent work, Couldry (2012) has aligned himself more explicitly with the
terminology of mediatization (p. 134). While extending and differentiating the
argument from Couldry (2008), his 2012 volume reiterates key premises and arrives
at similar conclusions. Hegemony or domination is plural, having an economic
dimensionbut always alsoa symbolic dimension (p. 31). Neoliberal politics inmany
countries is connected to . . . a attening of political values (p. 148). In the end, the
worldis becoming more unequal andour ability tolookandstill not see that inequality
is growing (p. 210). In the section, Mediatization as technological momentum, I
return to an alternative interpretation of some aspects of Couldrys argument.
The following section outlines three sensitizing conceptualizations of mediati-
zation, locating these, as well, along the denitive-sensitizing continuum. While
necessarily brief, the three treatments suggest the potential of sensitizing strategies
for further research on mediatization.
Three sensitizing conceptualizations
Mediatization as social structuration
Communication researchers have long complained that sociologists and other social
scientists tend to disregard media and communication as constituents of practically
any aspect of social life, as also noted by Hjarvard (2008). Communicationresearchers
have pointed to Giddens (1984) as one of the prime candidates for a reunion between
the two elds and, simultaneously, as an illustration of the opportunities missed
(Jensen, 1995; Silverstone, 1999; Thompson, 1995). Because of the generality of
Giddens frameworkit can be considered a metatheory rather than a theory
of societyit is useful in considering the interrelations of various social and
communicative processes.
Giddens framework is summed up in the idea of a duality of structure, which
seeks to overcome the classic dichotomy of structure versus agency. Human agency,
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Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
accordingly, is not the manifestation of an individuals free will, nor does social
structure amount to external constraints on individuals actions. Instead, agency
and structuresubjects and social systemsare each others enabling conditions.
Accordingly, societies are structured by, and they simultaneously structure, all of
the interactions that individuals, groups, and institutions constantly engage in. To
exemplify, the press exists bothinandthroughits structural propertiesits economic,
legal, and technological manifestationsand in and through the distributed actions
of journalists, advertisers, regulators, and audiences according to relatively stable, if
negotiable rules. Like other institutions in society, the press is reenacted day by day.
To begin a sensitizing conceptualization, it is helpful to take the analysis up a
conceptual notch compared to Hjarvards focus on the institutional level of Giddens
framework. Whereas Giddens tries to transcend the dyad of agency and structure
by conceiving these as two aspects of one process called structuration, a triad
incorporating media on a par with structure and agency is better suited to capture the
interchange between structure and agency. Such an intermediate conceptual entity
draws attention to the role of communication in orienting and reorienting agency
on a continuous basis; it also recognizes communication as a way of anticipating
structures as either limits to or facilitators of agency, and as discursive means of
iteratively evaluating actions and their outcomes. In this perspective, communication
mediates structure and agency across time and space, depending on the historically
available media. Communication lends meaning both to structures emanating from
the past and to agency shaping the future.
Mediatization, thus, can be conceptualized as a constitutive component and
a necessary condition of social structuration throughout the history of human
communication and media technologies. Located toward the far sensitizing end of
the denitive-sensitizing continuum, such a conceptualization would leave open,
initially, the denition of its technological, institutional, and discursive elements
and processes. It would allow for the inclusion of face-to-face communication in
a perspective of mediatization, both in oral cultures (Goody & Watt, 1963; Ong,
1982) and with reference to the interdependence between mass and interpersonal
communication in conditions of copresence (Gumpert & Cathcart, 1986). It would
also avoid the identication of mediatization with particular epochs, long or short, in
favor of a renewed focus on the communicative practices that different media types
afford (Gibson, 1979; Hutchby, 2001), and which may or may not materialize in the
concrete course of both media development and social structuration.
This conceptualization recalls the tradition of mediumtheory (Meyrowitz, 1994),
from which mediatization researchers have regularly distanced themselves as an
other. Hjarvard (2008), for one, nds that mediatization theory is thus consonant
with medium theory with respect to taking note of the different medias particular
formatting of communication and the impacts on interpersonal relations it gives rise
to, but he immediately refers approvingly to other research criticizing a tendency
toward technological determinism (p. 109) and a weak commitment to empirical
analysis in medium theory. In his introduction to the rst summary volume on
214 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association
K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
mediatization research, Lundby (2009a) does indicate that medium theory has
more nuanced arguments about interactions between media and society rather than
simple statements about media wholly shaping society (p. 3). Nevertheless, he
describes the work of the Canadian medium theorists as early attempts (p. 2),
apparently suggesting that the mediatization literature is superseding, or has perhaps
already superseded, these origins.
For the record, the foundational texts by Innis (1951, 1972/1950) anda classic such
as Meyrowitz (1985) cannot accurately be dubbed technological determinism; each of
these authors also provides substantial empirical evidence to support their theoretical
arguments. Mediatization research may offer a major reworking, a minor addition, or
a footnote to 60 years of medium theory. For the time being, mediatization scholars
could benet from recognizing, and capitalizing on, its profound debt to medium
theory.
Mediatization as technological momentum
The question concerning technology is central to any conceptualization of mediatiza-
tion, with or without a medium-theory perspective. What is the relationship between
the potential and actual uses of technologies as embedded in media institutions
and communicative practices? Alongside his primary emphasis on institutionaliza-
tion, Hjarvard (2008) helpfully elaborates how communication technologies serve to
recongure social interaction across time and space, with institutional consequences,
for better or worse. Also, Couldry (2008) recognizes technological factors, to the
extent that the framework deriving from Silverstone (2002) highlights the incorpo-
ration of a sequence of new technologies into old social conditions, which is
referred to as domestication (Silverstone, 2006). However, perhaps to avoid charges
of determinism, mediatization research has given relatively little attention to the
concrete physical structures conditioning and, in some sense, causing mediatization.
In the eld of the history of technology (for overview, see Biagioli, 1999), Hughes
(1983) has examined what he described as technological systems, rather than tech-
nologies as distinct objects or artifacts. His point of departure was a history of the
introduction of electricity in Western societies 18801930. Lightingin the home,
the workplace, and the streetmade for a more secure and comfortable way of
life; electricity is a precondition, for instance, of contemporary media. Technologi-
cal systems become second nature, circumscribing individuals, groups, institutions,
nations, and the planet. Once in place, such systems hold what Hughes called momen-
tuman almost glacial force. Momentumderives not so much fromthe quantitative
scale or qualitative complexity of the system as such, but from its integration with
other social institutions and practices. Electricity plants, broadcasting corporations,
and digital networks all require economic investments and social planning. Public
access to light, communication, and other necessities of life typically raises ideological
questions, and the answers, in the shape of legislation, infrastructures, and standards,
will be socially binding.
Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 215
Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
One of the key insights of Hughes (1983) was that the impact of new technologies
should be assessed not as events, but as processes that are worked out over time. In
the standoff between technological determinism and social constructionism, Hughes
articulated and elaborated a middle ground. For one thing, he distinguished the
various phases of transforming a material resource into a technological system.
For another thing, he suggested, in a later article, that a social-constructionist
perspective may capture the malleability of young technological systems, whereas
the characteristics of mature systems may be better explained by a moderate
technological determinism (Hughes, 1994). Determination, then, can be conceived
and conceptualized, for empirical research and historical argument, as a layered and
cumulative process with multiple causal agents and contingent structural outcomes.
Other elds of inquiry have addressed comparable processes with reference to
overdetermination. The concept was introduced by Sigmund Freud in The Interpre-
tation of Dreams (Freud, 1911/1899) to suggest how everyday events mix with past
and perhaps repressed experiences in ones dreams, in their content as well as in
their form. Althusser (1977/1965) transferred Freuds idea to critical social theory
in order to question an economic determinism prevalent in traditional Marxism,
emphasizing the multiple determinants of social life, including cultural factors. In
the cultural studies tradition, Hall (1983) elaborated a similar point with reference
to determination in the rst instance. Questioning a conception of economic deter-
minism in the nal instancewhen all is said and done, money talks Halls
conception suggested that economic determination delineates a eld of potential
social developments. Determination in the rst instance determines what cannot
happen, but it does not pregure in any detail what will actually happen.
For the conceptualization of mediatization, technological momentum holds a
sensitizing potential, recalling the simple, but crucial fact that each communication
technology is a material resource whose distinctive features help to explain the media
institutions and communicative practices that have emerged, or which may emerge
in the future. By committing itself to the material efcacy of specic technologies, a
conceptualization of mediatization as technological momentum entails several steps
away from the far sensitizing end of the denitive-sensitizing continuum, even while
stopping short of denitive conceptualizations that ascribe an epochal status to one
or more technologies, or that claim particular empowering or repressive uses of these
technologies as necessary outcomes of their social embedding.
Mediatization as embedded communication
While the mediatization literature refers liberally to both analog and digital media,
it has tended, as argued, to give priority to a logic deriving either from mass media
(Hjarvard, 2008) or from a social system in which political and economic conditions
are said to perpetuate the traditional conditions of mass communication (Couldry,
2008). Again, my aim is not to celebrate the potentials of recent digital media, but
to clarify some of the ways in which current media developments require additional
conceptual efforts. The common denominator for the three following points is the
216 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association
K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
variable boundaries of the concept of media, andhence of mediatization, as familiar
elements and processes of communication are being recongured.
First, digitalizationhas entaileda reconsiderationof what a mediumis, because the
digital computer can reproduce or simulate all other known media. Via networked
digital devices, users can access the equivalent of books, newspapers, magazines,
radio, cinema, and television. In practice, the content becomes accessible to the
general public in a layered structure, so that, at the time of writing, the World Wide
Web typically represents an intermediate level in between the general protocols of
the Internet and the specic services that depend on additional design and software
administering usage and payment. In an early theoretical contribution, Kay and
Goldberg (1999/1977) proposed the concept of metamedia to suggest the way in
which existing media are embedded ina newtechnological infrastructure. Other work
has highlighted the ways in which the discursive and aesthetic forms of expression
deriving from analog media are being remediated (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) on
digital platforms. In both cases, theorizing is piggybacking on the concept of media,
which has served the eld well since the 1960sa strategy that may not be sustainable
for another 50 years. Metamedia might bear witness to an incapacity, so far, to
fully articulate the implications of a new kind of communication resource. It is fair
to say that no agreed or comprehensive typology of metamedia, media, genres, texts,
hypertextuality, etc. in the digital media environment has yet been established. One
task for further mediatization research would be a more focused dialogue on the
nature of this embedding of old media and genres into new communication
resources.
Second, a further embedding of media and communicative practices into new
contexts of action is also in progress (Greeneld, 2006). One early account referred
to ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991), which involves the integration of media
interfaces in diverse natural objects, artifacts, and social contexts. A current and
related buzzword is the Internet of things (ITU, 2005), which promises to facilitate
mundane everyday activities through media that are distributed across and integrated
into multiple objects and settings. Such location-dependent and practice-oriented
communication returns the eld to the denition of foundational concepts such
as information, communication, and action. In what sense, for example, am I
communicating with the Global Positioning System (GPS) when I am nding my
way to an unfamiliar destination? And, in what sense are the service providers that
rely on GPS communicating with me and other customers when they accumulate
feedback from our trips and adjust their services for future communications? What
is the medium, and what is being mediatized?
Third and nally, communication is transgressing boundaries of the physical
world, becoming embedded in both the natural environment and the human body.
On the human side, mobile media include not just the ubiquitous cell phone but also
devices outside as well as inside the human body, for purposes of physical exercise
or life support. The mediatized body monitors and communicates with itself and,
perhaps, with online tness communities or health services. On the environmental
Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 217
Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations K. B. Jensen
side, digital hardware systems are moving beyond silicon (Munakata, 2007),
embedding computing and communication at the molecular and atomic levels
of reality. While the time frames of such developments are very hard to predict,
their theoretical as well as their practical implications are considerable. For future
research, a recognition of the embedding of communication in digital systems, social
contexts, and physical matter implies additional steps toward the midpoint of the
denitive-sensitizing continuum. Digital technologies, arguably, hold a momentum
that is different in kind from that of analog media technologies, and which may
affect social structuration in radically new ways, even if we are not yet in a position
to explain or interpret the implications of this ongoing process in any denitive
conceptualization.
Why conceptualize mediatization now?
This article has focused on different types of conceptualization of mediatization. I
conclude that the two main perspectives in the literature, as represented here by
Hjarvard (2008) and Couldry (2008), have pursued denitive strategies, and that
these strategies do not warrant the kind of epochal and critical theories being claimed.
Although Hjarvard (2011a) has initiated a research project on the challenge of new
media to the notion of mediatization, and although the recent volume by Couldry
(2012) elaborates on the interrelations between media theory and social theory, it
remains uncertain whether the mediatization literature could deliver a coherent,
robust, and operational conceptual framework for a durable research program. For
one thing, the two main perspectives that claim the mantle of mediatization are
mutually inconsistent (Couldry, 2012, p. 136). For another thing, the mediatization
literature has produced an additional range of less demanding, but still internally
disparate conceptions of mediatization with variable interpretive, explanatory, and
critical ambitions (Hepp, Hjarvard, & Lundby, 2010; Lundby, 2009a). Instead,
mediatization is best understood as a broad and inclusive concept: a consensual,
even commonsensical characterization of contemporary society and culture. No
communication researcher or media user today would deny the centrality of media
technologies and communicative practices at the individual, group, and institutional
levels. To support further theory development about the general concept and, indeed,
the very idea of mediatization, I have argued that a plurality of sensitizing strategies
holds the greatest promise.
The relevance of sensitizing strategies is suggested, further, by the timing of
mediatization research. It is remarkable how many researchers with distinct theoret-
ical backgrounds and focal interests have converged on the notion of mediatization
over the last decade. One probable explanation can be stated with reference to
Anthony Giddens concept of the double hermeneutic (Giddens, 1979). A cen-
tral task of communication research is to reinterpret the interpretations that
communicatorsindividuals, groups, and institutionshave of how and why
they communicate. Although communication research, thus, feeds its theoretical
218 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association
K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations
interpretations back into communicative practices, these practices, equally, circum-
scribe and condition the theoretical business of research. When communicative
practices change, so may communication theories. Peters (1999) famously suggested
that mass communication came rst (p. 6)communication technologies from
the telegraph onward prompted a new, general idea of communication from the
last half of the 19th century. Digitalization invites a new round of reinterpretation,
perhaps with a comparable scope. Although mediatization research has emphasized
a process of social transformation across analog and digital media, that schol-
arly enterprise likely has been prompted by the conditions and consequences of
digitalization.
A present and future challenge for mediatization research, and for the eld as
such, is to clarify the distinctive features of digital media and their implications for
communication theory (see further Finnemann, 2011). If, as noted, digitalization
gives rise to a new type of metamedia (Kay & Goldberg, 1999/1977), this calls for a
reconsideration of what mediatization entails. Equally, because digital media enable
their users to act at a distance in unprecedented ways, also the denition of commu-
nication is, once again, in question. The digital media environment presents excellent
opportunities for theory development about both human communication and media
technologies, and the mediatization literature has been instrumental in raising a
variety of questions in these regards. The record suggests, however, that answers
are more likely to follow from sensitizing than from denitive conceptualizations of
mediatization in future research.
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