Hepp, Andreas. Cultures of Mediatization.
Soukup, Paul A.
Hepp, Andreas. Cultures of Mediatization. (K. Tribe, Trans.)
Malden, MA and Cambridge, UK: Polity (2013). Pp. ix, 166. ISBN
978-0-7456-6226-8 (cloth) $64.95; 978-0-7456-6227-5 (paper) $22.95;
978-07456-6349-4 (e-book) $18.99.
This English translation of Andreas Hepp's German work
(originally published in 2011) provides an excellent introduction to and
summary of much of the literature on mediatization, including discussion
of Hepp's own work. The term, "mediatization," may appear
somewhat unfamiliar to U.S. English speakers, though the concept itself
runs through much current communication research. Hepp argues that media
cultures are many layered and include, at minimum, the concepts of
communication, medium, and culture. Since all three interact in complex
ways, he seeks to develop a way to study them. He explains, "I
would in this book like to show that media cultures are those cultures
whose primary resources are mediated by technological means of
communication, and in this process are 'molded' in various
ways that must be carefully specified. That is the reason why I call
them 'cultures of mediatization'" (p. 5). These cultures,
which "have increasingly left their mark on our everyday life, our
identity, and the way in which we live together" deserve study
"because the significance of this transition [to a media culture]
is underrated" (p. 1).
Hepp organizes the book straightforwardly. Chapter 2 presents a
"via negativa," explaining what media culture is not; Chapter
3, a look at an initial definition of mediatization; Chapter 4, a more
in-depth examination of media culture in the light of mediatization;
Chapter 5, "how we live in different forms of translocal
communities" (p. 6), made possible by mediatization; and Chapter 6,
an exploration of methodological approaches to studying such media
cultures.
Chapter 2--the negative approach--begins with the direct statement,
"media culture is neither a mass culture, nor the culture of a
particular dominating medium (either books, TV, or the world-wide web);
nor is it a program that integrates us into one society, or a
cyberculture that gradually enmeshes us and turns us into cyborgs or
cyberpunks" (p. 7). To support this statement, Hepp reviews media
studies from the work of the Frankfurt School to the present, examining
the work of scholars such as Horkheimer and Adorno; Innis, McLuhan, and
Meyrowitz; Beniger and Schmidt; Silver, Rheingold, Gauntlett, and
Jenkins. His chapter subheadings provide a quick guide to his thought as
to what does not characterize a media culture. At the risk of
repetition, the scholars whose work he reviews follow the headings:
* omnipresent, but not a mass culture (Horkheimer and Adorno)
* marked by the medium, but not dominated by one medium (Innis,
McLuhan, Meyrowitz)
* constitutive of reality, but no integrative program (Beniger,
Schmidt)
* technologized, but not a cyberculture (Silver, Rheingold,
Gauntlett, Jenkins)
The chapter offers a good introduction to the arc of media studies
most relevant to Hepp's thesis.
Chapter 3 introduces the thought of a number of researchers who get
at the idea of mediatization in various ways. These include John B.
Thompson, Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone, Otto Groth, Jesus
Martin-Barbero, Roger Silverstone, David Altheide, Robert Snow, Stig
Hjarvard, Friedrich Krotz, Bruno Latour, and Raymond Williams. From each
he draws one or another aspect of the role and impact of media on
society to develop the larger concept. Two important definitions or
descriptions anchor the discussion. Quoting Thompson, Hepp accepts an
initial concept:
If we focus ... not on values, attitudes, and beliefs, but rather
on symbolic forms and their modes of production and circulation in the
social world, then we shall see that, with the advent of modern
societies in the late medieval and early modern periods, a systematic
cultural transformation began to take hold. By virtue of a series of
technical innovations associated with printing and, subsequently, with
the electrical codification of information, symbolic forms were
produced, reproduced, and circulated on a scale that was unprecedented.
Patterns of communication and interaction began to change in profound
and irreversible ways. These changes, which comprise what can loosely be
called the "mediazation of culture," had a clear institutional
basis: namely, the development of media organizations, which first
appeared in the second half of the 15th century and have expanded their
activities ever since. (Thompson, 1995, p. 46, quoted in Hepp, p. 30)
After careful development, Hepp moves from Thompson's
"mediazation" to a more nuanced sense of mediatization, this
time quoting the work of Friedrich Krotz:
A differentiated and formalized definition of mediatization can and
should not be presented here, because mediatization qua definition in a
given form is always specific to a particular time and culture, so that
any definition has to be based upon historical investigation.
Mediatization as a process cannot be decontextualized, not on the
historical, social, and cultural planes. (Krotz, 2007, p. 39, emphasis
in original, quoted in Hepp, p. 51)
Mediatization emerges as a social and cultural process, connected
to the media and the ways in which media interact with societies.
Chapter 4 builds on this. "Mediatization is ... more a
conceptual construct, like individualization, commercialization, or
globalization; and to be understood as a panorama of a sustained
metaprocess of change" (p. 69). Here, Hepp follows the pattern of
introducing the work of various media scholars and drawing on them to
flesh out the concepts. Here he examines the ideas of mediatized worlds,
networks of communication, and the figurations of communication. The
challenge for communication theorists lies in describing such complex
realities. This connects to the discussion of Chapter 5 on how various
communities and social movements connect to or exist within the media
cultures. How does community formation occur within such powerful
overarching configurations of media? How does personality emerge or
distinguish itself? In this chapter, Hepp considers the ideas of
locality and translocality, and territory and de-territorialization,
again drawing on a variety of communication and sociological research.
Chapter 6 offers idea on ways to study mediatization. Acknowledging
that such a methodological description would require another book, Hepp
offers a briefer overview. "Something different can be done here:
we can outline a methodological framework for empirical research into
cultures of mediatization, and this is what the following seeks to do.
As an outline, it will be organized into four phases: the development of
theory; decentering; pattern analysis; and, finally, transcultural
comparison" (p. 127). The latter point, though only described in
outline, lies at the heart of Hepp's way into mediatization--a
comparison of various media cultures.
Cultures of Mediatization provides, in a short book, a very
comprehensive introduction to an overarching theory of media and
society. Just the summaries of the various strands of thought from which
Hepp draws the idea of mediatization repay careful study. Each situates
the larger history of communication research, showing how the study of
communication has developed through time. The book belongs on every
advanced media studies syllabus.
As expected, the book contains a reference list and an index.
References
Krotz, F. (2007). Mediatisierung: Fallstudenien zum Wandel von
Kommunikation. Wiesbaden: VS.
Thompson, J. B. (1995). The media and modernity: A social theory of
the media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
--Paul A. Soukup, S.J.
Santa Clara University
