Towards a critique of mediatisation

Amon Prodnik, Jernej (author)

Mediatisation has established itself in the last decade as a key approach in media and communication studies. Its aim is to explain the vast transformations of social relations caused by the growing power of the media. I provide a theoretical and empirical critique of this approach, with a particular focus on the institutionalist (strong) approach to mediatisation. As I argue, one of the biggest problems of mediatisation is that it perceives the power of the media in a wholly abstract manner. Even though authors advocating for the mediatisation approach typically preach about holism, their works often narrowly focus on the media, without embedding them in the social totality. This leads to a flawed approach, primarily due to the excessive media-centrism. For a critique of the ontological, epistemological and theoretical failures of mediatisation, I largely base the article on two critical approaches to the media and communication research: critical sociology of the media and political economy of communication. Empirically and mostly for illustrative purposes, the article is based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of Slovenian political parties. Three fundamental issues are identified based on this focus of the paper: mediatisation fails to distinguish between the form and con- tent of communication; it does not make a proper distinction between public political communication and political activity; and it ignores the non-public parts of politics and deep inequalities, which influence the political process. Mediatisation generally bypasses these issues, in turn also ignoring the wider relations of power in capitalist society and how they change.

• Language: English
• Keywords: mediatisation, political communication, media logic, political parties, sociology of the media, political economy of communication
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 476-497
• Numbering: Vol. 22, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-165037
• UDC: 316.774:329(497.4)
• ISSN on article: 1726-670X
• DOI: 10.31269/triplec.v22i1.1505
• COBISS.SI-ID: 198312963
• Publication date in RUL: 21.11.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: TripleC
• Publisher: Institute of Design and Technology Assessment
• ISSN: 1726-670X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 28025693

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
• Description: You are free to reproduce and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: mediji, politično komuniciranje, politične stranke, Slovenija