Democracy

Nordicom Review 35 (2014) Special Issue, pp. 111-123Strong and Weak Forms ofMediatization TheoryA Critical ReviewMarko Ampuja, Juha Koivisto & Esa VäliverronenAbstractDuring recent years, the concept of mediatization has made a strong impact on media andcommunication studies, and its advocates have attempted to turn it into a refined and centraltheoretical framework for media research. The present article distinguishes two forms ofmediatization theory: a strong form based on the assumption that a ‘media logic’ increasinglydetermines the actions of different social institutions and groups, and a weak formthat questions such a logic, though the latter form emphasizes the key role of the media insocial change and singles out mediatization as a central ‘meta-process’ today. Exponents ofthe weak form have convincingly criticized the notion of media logic. However, the weakerversion of mediatization is itself problematic, as its advocates have failed to produce a clearexplanatory framework around the concept. We argue that, although the analytical statusof mediatization is unclear, fascination with the concept will, in all probability, continuein the years to come, due to the promises of heightened disciplinary coherence and statusthat this notion has conveyed for media and communication studies.Keywords: media logic, media studies, theory, critique, disciplinary identity, research fundingIntroduction‘Mediatization’ has become a distinctive problematic in media research during recentyears, with numerous conferences, seminar groups, books, articles and case studiesdevoted to the subject. Although mediatization was used sporadically in different formsand contexts in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Asp 1986; Thompson 1995; Somerville 1997;Mazzoleni and Schultz 1999), today it has been named a “key concept” (Lundby 2009)through which media researchers try to understand the importance of media to societyand culture. According to Adolf (2011: 155), “the notion of mediatization has recentlybecome part of a high-profile, international exchange”. The term has been particularlypopular in the Nordic countries, Germany and Central Europe. In the English-speakingworld, this somewhat “clumsy neologism” (Livingstone 2009: 6) has also arousedconsiderable interest, although there have been discussions on whether ‘mediation’should be used instead of mediatization (e.g., Silverstone 2005). However, mediatizationhas come to be increasingly accepted. Couldry, who was originally skeptical ofthe concept and preferred “mediation” (Couldry 2008), now argues that “in an internationalizingfield linguistic convenience must be considered at the global level” and111