This article suggests that the mediatization literature has overemphasized definitive approaches to conceptualizing media change. Greater attention to the ongoing digitalization of the contemporary media environment could help explain the timing of the turn to mediatization. Communication theory is heir to a distinctive philosophical legacy regarding the nature of conceptualization.
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Definitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations of Mediatization-Klaus-Jensen
This article suggests that the mediatization literature has overemphasized definitive approaches to conceptualizing media change. Greater attention to the ongoing digitalization of the contemporary media environment could help explain the timing of the turn to mediatization. Communication theory is heir to a distinctive philosophical legacy regarding the nature of conceptualization.
This article suggests that the mediatization literature has overemphasized definitive approaches to conceptualizing media change. Greater attention to the ongoing digitalization of the contemporary media environment could help explain the timing of the turn to mediatization. Communication theory is heir to a distinctive philosophical legacy regarding the nature of conceptualization.
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 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 203 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 204 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 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. Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 205 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 206 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 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 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 207 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 208 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association K. B. Jensen Denitive and Sensitizing Conceptualizations 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 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 209 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 210 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 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 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 211 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 212 Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 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, Communication Theory 23 (2013) 203222 2013 International Communication Association 213 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. References Althusser, L. (1977). For Marx. 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