Naslov
Meta-Theoretical Cross-Currents: Mediatization, Social Ontology and Intentionality

Autori
Bilić, Paško

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Critical Mediatization Research: Power, inequality and social change in a mediatized age

Mjesto i datum
Bremen, Njemačka, 30.08.2016. - 01.09.2016

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Mediatization; social ontology; intentionality

Sažetak
Mediatization theory aims to provide a comprehensive approach to meta-change in historical and contemporary society (Krotz, 2007 ; 2009 ; 2014). The theory explains how the media change communication and how the diversity of the media and new ways of communication change societies. However, closer elaborations of social change remain rather unexplored. Various authors explain institutional change (Hjarvard, 2008) or the ontology of everyday life in the concept of “mediatized worlds” (Hepp, Krotz, 2014). Others question the theory’s “lack of social ontology” (Couldry, 2014) ; or that it does not take into account external actors outside the media who drive and shape media and communication (Deacon, Stranyer, 2014). This paper builds on some of these criticisms and claims that mediatization theory could expand its scope for explaining social change by referencing other meta-theories. Simultaneously, a lack of such discussion would lead to a risk of reducing society to a peripheral phenomenon to media and communication. The paper puts forward the possibility of exploring connections between mediatization, reflexive modernization (e.g. Beck, Giddens, Lash, 1994 ; Beck et al. 2003 ; Giddens, 1996) and political economy of communication (e.g. McChesney, 2000 ; Mosco, 2009, Wasko, Murdock, Sousa, 2011). Reflexive modernization explains how social relations are organized, how identities are formed and reconstructed, how social values change and how knowledge, risk and trust shape our understanding of technologies. It was mostly silent on media and communication, but it offers a social ontology of shifting social boundaries in which institutions and social spheres permeate each other and change the social world. Political economy of communication provides an understanding of materiality of communication, value generation and working relations. It operates under a social ontology of conflict, struggle and power relations. There is an embedded dialectical reasoning of the relationship between structure and agency in the production, distribution and consumption of communication. The concept of intentionality, which is implicitly present in these theories, provides additional analytical directions. It puts the driving force of social change into the hands of social actors such as individuals, identity groups, institutions, media owners, political actors, advertising agencies, members of a social class, nation-states, etc. A meta-theoretical debate between mediatization theory, reflexive modernization and political economy of communication allows a fine-grained theoretical analysis of what society is ; what it is made of ; how it is conceptualized ; how intentions of social actors shape communication and social change ; and how communication and social change, in turn, shape their intentions.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

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