Three tasks for mediatization research: contributions to an open agenda

TLDR

Mediatization, a concept that can synthesize media‑related social transformations, is empirically studyable through sub‑processes that map how culture and everyday life evolve amid media saturation. The article argues that overstated claims of mediatization as a unitary theory should be discarded and instead promotes an open agenda built on historicity, specificity, and measurability. It proposes three transdisciplinary, transparadigmatic tasks—historicity, specificity, and measurability—to guide contemporary mediatization research. These grand claims have caused confusion, and the authors recommend abandoning them in favor of the proposed open agenda.

Abstract

Based on the interdisciplinary experience of a Swedish research committee, this article discusses critical conceptual issues raised by the current debate on mediatization – a concept that holds great potential to constitute a space for synthesized understandings of media-related social transformations. In contrast to other, more metaphorical constructions, mediatization can be studied empirically in systematic ways through various sub-processes that together provide a complex picture of how culture and everyday life evolve in times of media saturation. The first part of this article argues that mediatization researchers have sometimes formulated too grand claims as to mediatization’s status as a unitary approach, a meta-theory or a paradigm. Such claims have led to problematic confusions around the concept and should be abandoned in favour of a more open agenda. In line with such a call for openness, the second part of the article introduces historicity, specificity and measurability as three transdisciplinary and transparadigmatic tasks for the contemporary mediatization research agenda.