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from ‗pre-media‘ (before the intervention of specific media) to ‗mediatisted social states. 76 Yet,
importantly, it is the Lynn Schofield Clark wording that describes mediatisation as referring to
both the ―processes by which social organisations, structures or industries take on the form of the
media, and the processes by which genres of popular culture become central to the narratives of
social phenomena.‖ 77
For the purposes of this study, however, the distinction I propose is somewhat basic, yet
nonetheless applicable: mediation is understood as the action/process/phenomenon of digital
object mobility, i.e. the ‗travel-ability‘ of externalisations of memory between users/produsers. It
implies that mediated content is, once mediatised, able to be circulated in DME. Mediatisation, on
the other hand, is roughly drawing on the meaning ―to annex (a principality) to another state,
while allowing certain rights to its former sovereign.‖ 78 This implies that in order for mediation to
occur, the content to be mediated has first to be ‗assimilated,‘ i.e. migrated/adjusted/conformed or
mediatised into a media-specific form/at.
It is this understanding of the distinction that yields best grasp for the problematic addressed in
this study. To summarise: in the process of mediatisation, the historical event for instance, is
abstracted, conflated, distorted, simplified, ideologised, politicised, falsified, de-contextualised, recontextualised,
etc. An allsorts of ‗human,‘ symbolic and technical interventions are underway
that make an event fit for media representation. Mediation as such cannot be read this way, which
is why I use it in relation to the ‗content on the go,‘ while with mediatisation I refer to the process
of ‗annexation‘ or assimilation of ‗extra-medial‘ events, people, ideas, emotions; making it
essentially into content.
Remediation and Media Convergence
To provide structural underpinning of the concept of mediated memory, and the processes of
mediation and mediatisation, there is a twofold process at work which includes media
convergence (genres, forms representation techniques) and remediation. In his Convergence
Culture Henry Jenkins argues that a specific shift is underway in the field of media and culture. 79
76 Nick Couldry, ―Digital Storytelling, Media Research and Democracy: Conceptual Choices and Alternative
Futures,‖ 41–60, 42.
77 Lynn Schofield Clark, ―Theories: Mediatization and Media Ecology,‖ 87.
78 Search term ‗mediatization‘ at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mediatise?o=100083, accessed 18 January
2011.
79 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University Press,
2006.
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