#mediatization

Hot take from this week's reading: the internet did NOT completely revolutionise society. I know. Controversial.

Ralph Schroeder's Social Theory after the Internet (2018) basically argues that scholars have been overcomplicating and over-hyping what the internet actually does. Here's the breakdown.

The problem? Most communication theories were built for either mass media (TV, newspapers — one to many) or interpersonal media (phone calls — one to one). The internet does BOTH simultaneously, so old theories just… don't fit anymore (Schroeder, 2018).

Schroeder looks at three big theories and explains why each falls short:

Castells' network theory — ignores how different countries (China, Sweden, Malaysia) have completely different media systems.

Mediatization theory — useful but too vague; doesn't distinguish between politics, culture, and the economy.

Actor-network theory — so focused on individual contexts that you can't generalize anything useful.

Instead, Schroeder (2018) proposes we look at the internet's role across three separate social orders:

🏛️ Politics — the internet lets leaders bypass traditional media gatekeepers (hello, politicians going live on TikTok), but it also fuels populism and disinformation. Dobber et al. (2022) found that micro-targeted political ads online can directly influence how people vote. Scary.

📱 Culture & Everyday Life — Schroeder (2018) calls this "tethered togetherness", we are constantly connected to people and information via our phones. Not revolutionary, just… more intense. The anxiety of leaving your phone at home? That's tethered togetherness.

💰 Economy — big data allows companies to target us with disturbing precision. Every ad that feels like your phone was listening? That's the economic internet at work.

The key takeaway: the internet intensifies existing social patterns, it doesn't replace them. It's a powerful tool shaped by the society it operates in.

References

Dobber, T., Fathaigh, R. Ó., & Borgesius, F. J. Z. (2022). The regulation of online political micro-targeting in Europe. Internet Policy Review, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.14763/2022.1.1614

Schroeder, R. (2018). Social theory after the internet: Media, technology and globalization. UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787351226

Environciousness

Environciousness comes from environment and consciousness and it means care, concern and protection of the environment.

Mediatization

Mediatization comes from Media and realization and it is the brainwashing of people hooked on social media.

Mediaocracy

In the article by Horkheimer and Adorno, the authors argue that capitalism has invaded the modern society to the extent that culture has been commodified and transformed into a key instrument for the market forces of capitalism. The authors posit that since capitalist companies run and sustain the media industry, the culture industry has also consequently been morphed into an  economic tool, and hence leading to uniformity of media that is solely profit-focused. This means, in order to maximise profits and returns, the media industry has been streamlining the production of media content to the mainstream preferences of audiences, further entrenching the homogeneity of media produced globally. Through breaking down and analysing the sections of the media industry and the different forms of art, from music to film, Horkheimer and Adorno highlight how the capitalist economy has been sustained by the consumerism culture that plagues the media industry. Due to the extent to which culture is enmeshed with the economy, the authors argue that the media industry is simply a capitalist system that sells mindlessly reproduced, repetitive culture to apathetic crowds seeking amusement.

I agree that with the commodification of culture in the media industry, it is inevitable that the products of the media industry have been inundated by uniformity. In striving to cater to and sustain a large customer base, media and cultural content producers end up repeating and repackaging previously used content, especially content that is popular among potential consumers. This is seen in American pop culture, which has been reduced to a common formulae for money-making success, respecting the thirty-two bars or the compass of the ninth (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2012), which illuminates how while songs tend to sound similar, even classified now as ‘mainstream music’ because of how widespread and identical sounding the music that falls under the same category is. This phenomena is observed, especially with the arrival of the Hallyu wave that is taking the world by storm. K-pop, representative of Korean culture, received global recognition and success, and has also created a population desperate to consume content and music that conforms to K-pop culture. The concept of synchronised choreography, coupled with catchy electro-pop music, has been the well-known formulae of success for K-pop groups, and hence a hallmark of K-pop culture. This is reproduced over and over in the K-pop industry in Korea, catering to a global audience that immerses themselves in this culture and specific music genre. The ever-enlarging international appeal of K-pop groups, coupled by the success of K-pop group BTS, has lead to entertainment companies in Japan and China emulating Korea’s formula for economic success by creating identical boy bands to BTS with similar music and dance concepts. The most controversial part of this particular case was about how their clothing style, member roles (e.g. 4 singers and 3 rappers) were even identical, highlighting just how individualistic style was negated in this ‘imitation’. While this initially lead to a lot of backlash regarding lack of creativity and originality, the backlash eventually quelled due to the lack of outright copyright issues and the boy groups received public adoration and economic success like the companies had originally planned. 

The article by Hjorth and Pink has an interesting title: New visualities and the digital wayfarer. It is intriguing that the authors have coined the theoretical construct ‘digital wayfarer’ to describe a user of locative media and their role of reconstructing and representing the digital and non-digital world. The term digital wayfaring stood out the most to me as it highlights how the digital world is entwined with our material physical everyday life, yet also keeping a focus on how we, the media users, have a critical role in utilising our portable media to make sense of our reality through redefining and constructing new places. Hjorth and Pink explore how places are constructed and interpreted by the mobile media user who captures pictures of their physical contexts and environments, contributing to the rich digital world of visualities and socialities of place and place making. As mobile users are perpetually on the move, the authors posit that these digital wayfarers interact with their physical environments, capture photographic representations of them and connects the materiality and sensoriality of the experienced physical world with the digital experience. The authors bring in the theory of place in order to conceptualize phone photography as co-constitutive and interpretation of place. As people traverse through physical spaces, they utilise digital photography, to render, represent and share the digital visuality of spaces to the physically absent audiences, configuring a new sense of place. Hence, through demonstrating how mobile users constantly oscillate between their digital and physical worlds in their lives and daily experiences of place-making, the authors illuminate the theory of how movement is central to the way we experience, construct and interpret our media. This article has prompted me to examine how I have been transformed into a digital wayfarer whenever I am equipped with my mobile phone. After some observation of my daily media usage, I realised that I mainly use social media applications on my phone, and notably 40% of my phone screentime is on Telegram. With a plethora of text messaging platforms available for users to chose from such as Whatsapp, Line, Messenger, Kakaotalk, I personally prefer to use Telegram as my main channel of socialisation with my friends. Upon further analysis, I realise that it is the video message recording feature of Telegram that I particularly enjoy and hence I prefer Telegram over the other messaging platforms. For those unfamiliar with the Telegram messaging application, here is a simple introduction.

In the image on the left, at the top right part of the keyboard, there is a button that allows users to record videos instantly. By holding down the button, a video in the form of a circular video message will be recorded and forwarded to the receiver within seconds. This feature remains one of the most well received by users due to the convenience of recording your environment and instantaneously sharing it.

The new way of life (Yoke Peng)

“#back2sku #stressed #drowning #whattowrite #helpme”

When I was tasked to write this blog, unconsciously, this instigated my “hashtag” thought process which came naturally to me. As I started reading chapter 2 of the mediated construction of reality, Couldry and Hepp (2017), it made me reflect deeply on how media has been deeply interwoven in my social world and inspired me to conduct a mini social experiment with my parents to test certain theories.

Before I elucidate further on the social experiment, I would like to share certain insights I have gained from this reading. Couldry and Hepp postulates that media is deeply interwoven in the social world, and thus, “mediatising” our social world which means that our social realities are constantly and continuously shaped by media, They comprehend communication to be alluded to any form of symbolic interaction like structured social norms or everyday practices. Hence, this made me ponder about how although we are experiences the same culture and environment, there is the possibility of different social realities as a consequence of mediatised communication.

Relating back to the mini social experiment I did with my parents, they are not well versed with technology, hence they have minimal interaction with digital media and prefer to resort to traditional media. On the other hand, my life revolves around social media especially since I am interning in the digital marketing sector. Thus, since my parents and I modes of interactions are opposite each other, I decided to test whether our social realities are different even though we live together. The first task we did was to type a message to my sister informing her that we will be having dinner today at home. My parents immediately called her the normal way, while I left her a Whatsapp message spamming emoticons, stickers and abbreviations like “ASAP”, “LOL”. It was quite apparently that our verbal and non verbal communication was distinctive.

The next task was to keep yourself preoccupied for two hours with any form of entertainment. The first thing my parents did was to switch on the television and lie on the sofa watching it. In the meantime, I watched Netflix and used Instagram concurrently. As I looked up from my phone, computer, I wondered why my parents were just focusing watching television, when in fact, during commercial breaks, they could actually use their phones and use Facebook or Youtube. Curious, I asked my dad for the rationale behind this thought. He replied me, “ well, why do I need to multitask ? It’s good to concentrate on just ONE thing”.

Nuryn Qistina (W1)

In Debbie Rodan’s article on “Large, sleek, slim stylish flat screens: Privatizes space and the televisual experience” explicitly highlights the role of televisions and its technological advancements in contributing to the social atomization of spaces within the private sphere, creating a private and isolated experience that demonstrates clearly how the viewer’s space and experience is being privatized. Rodan emphasizes the key importance of how advertisers advertise television eventually configure the private space by creating the television as an aesthetic object or dissolving spaces and etc.

One claim that I will be focusing on is Rodan’s explanation on the television as an aesthetic object. To a large extent, the television is advertised in a way that appeals to the consumers and this is done by creating televisions to become more “artistic and aesthetic objects”. Additionally, televisions are advertised in aesthetic dimensions that invite the consumers to view them as a work of art or a gallery piece, extending the meaning of television beyond its functionality and more on the significance of its beauty and modernity. Television as an aesthetic object can also be transformed by the integration of nature and technology. The fusion demonstrates how the how television is framed in a way that transforms from the ordinary through qualities of the organic and inorganic.