Mediatization and Mobile Lives: A Critical Approach

201 Pages·2017·5.633 MB·English

by  Andre Jansson

Mediatization and Mobile lives
Mediatization and Mobile Lives: A Critical Approach contributes to a complex, situated
and critical understanding of what mediatization means and how it works in
contemporary life.
The book explores the tension between the extended capabilities offered by
media technology and growing media reliance, focusing particularly on mobile
middle-class lives. It problematizes how mediatization is culturally legitimized in
our times, when connectivity and mobility are increasingly seen as mandatory
elements of self-realization.
Supported by extensive fieldwork carried out in contexts of gentrification, elite
cosmopolitanism and post-tourism, André Jansson advances a critical, cultural
materialist perspective of mediatization as he examines how people are torn
between the new opportunities afforded by their mobile lives and the feeling of
being trapped by our connected media culture.
Mediatization and Mobile Lives offers an engaging and critical exploration of the
interplay between mediatization, individualization and globalization, making it an
ideal resource for students and scholars of Media and Communication.
André Jansson is Professor of Media and Communication Studies and Director
of the Geomedia Research Group at Karlstad University, Sweden. His most recent
publications include Cosmopolitanism and the Media (2015, with M. Christensen) and
Communications/Media/Geographies (2017, with P. C Adams, J. Cupples, K. Glynn
and S. Moores).
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Mediatization and
Mobile lives
A Critical Approach
André Jansson
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 André Jansson
The right of André Jansson to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-72362-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-72363-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-19287-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introducing Critical Mediatization Research 1
PaRt i
a Cultural Materialist Perspective of Mediatization 25
2 Mediatization Is Ordinary 27
3 Why Are Media Indispensable? 44
4 Social Recognition and Status in a Mediatized World 62
PaRt ii
inside Mobile lives 83
5 Mediatization and Elite Cosmopolitanism 85
6 Mediatization and Post-Tourism 104
vi Contents
7 Mediatization and Gentrification 125
8 Rethinking Mediatization, Mobility and Social Power 152
References 163
Index 179
illustRations
FiGuRes
1.1 The dialectic of mediatization 7
2.1 Cultural materialist interpretations of mediatization 42
6.1 Post-touristic orders of recognition 112
table
8.1 A critical bottom-up perspective of mediatization 154
aCknowledGeMents
Mediatization and Mobile Lives is an attempt to bring together research projects and
theoretical ideas I have worked on for more than a decade. As such, I hope that this
book will succeed in presenting a relatively broad picture of what it means to live
in a mediatized society. I also hope that the analyses will provide an inside view of
how mediatization works and is experienced in mobile middle-class settings. The
empirical material spans several contexts and includes sixty interviews in total; these
are now brought together for the first time within a joint theoretical framework.
I am very grateful for the project grants that have made it possible for me to
carry out this multi-sited research and explore various aspects of mediatization over
the years. The projects that I have participated in, and in some cases led, are: The
Post-Industrial City: Culture, Identity and Life Forms (funded by the Swedish Research
Council, 2003–5); Rural Networking/Networking the Rural: Participatory Culture and
Civic Communities in the Swedish Countryside (funded by the Research Council
Formas, 2008–12); Secure Spaces: Media, Consumption and Social Surveillance (funded
by the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2009–
12); Kinetic Élites: The Mediatization of Social Belonging and Close Relationships among
Mobile Class Fractions (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2012–15), and
Cosmopolitanism from the Margins: Mediations of Expressivity, Social Space and Cultural
Citizenship (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2012–16). I want to thank all
the interviewees who kindly participated in these projects, and a special thanks to
Sandra Engelbrecht who helped me with contacts during my fieldwork in Geneva
in 2014. I also want to thank the good colleagues I have had the privilege to work
with on these projects: Magnus Andersson, Miyase Christensen, Karin Fast, Jenny
Jansdotter, Thomas Johansson, Johan Lindell, Linda Ryan Bengtsson, Ove Sernhede
and Tindra Thor.
There are also other academic platforms that have been important for discuss-
ing and thinking through the arguments of this book. From 2012 to 2016 I was a
member of the Sector Committee on the Mediatization of Culture and Everyday
Acknowledgements ix
Life (supported by the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social
Sciences), which organized several successful workshops and colloquia on media-
tization. I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to be part of such an intel-
lectual milieu, and want to thank the other members of the committee for many
rewarding discussions: Göran Blomqvist, Mats Ekström, Johan Fornäs, Anne Jerslev,
Ulrika Knutson, Pelle Snickars, Eva Swartz Grimaldi and Maria Wikse. Since 2013
I also been the director of the Geomedia Research Group (partly funded by the
Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences) at Karlstad
University, which constitutes my everyday work environment and a vital source of
inspiration. I want to thank all Geomedians for producing such a hospitable space
for the exchange of ideas.
The synthesizing nature of this book encompasses many ideas, as well as the
underlying empirical material, that have been presented and discussed at confer-
ences, workshops and meetings over the years. I have received valuable input from a
great number of people. I am particularly grateful to those who have given explicit
feedback on various parts of this book or invited me to give talks or participate
in other academic exchanges related to this area of study: Paul C. Adams, Stina
Bengtsson, Felix Bühlmann, Julie Cupples, Dana Diminescu, Kevin Glynn, Annette
Hill, Stig Hjarvard, Bengt Johansson, Maja Klausen, Knut Lundby, Peter Lunt,
Ulf Mellström, Shaun Moores, Maria Månsson, Kristian Møller Jørgensen, Zizi
Papacharissi, Marcus Prest, Toke Riis Ebbesen, Scott Rodgers, John Tomlinson and
Mekonnen Tesfahuney. To some extent this book also comprises discussions that
have appeared in previous publications. These are:
Jansson, A. (2014). Indispensible things: On mediatization, space and materiality. In Lundby,
K. (Ed.) Mediatization of Communication (Handbook of Communication Sciences, Vol. 21).
Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (Parts of this chapter have been reworked and incorporated
in Chapter 3.)
Jansson, A. (2015a). Using Bourdieu in critical mediatization research: Communicational
doxa and osmotic pressures in the field of UN organizations, MedieKultur 58: 13–29.
(Parts of this article have been reworked and incorporated in Chapters 2 and 5.)
Jansson, A. (2015b). Interveillance: A new culture of recognition and mediatization, Media
and Communication 3(3): 81–90. (Parts of this article have been reworked and incorporated
in Chapter 4.)
Jansson, A. (2016). How to become an “elite cosmopolitan”: The mediatized trajectories of
UN expatriates, European Journal of Cultural Studies 19(5): 465–80. (Parts of this article
have been reworked and incorporated in Chapter 5.)
Jansson, A. (2017). Critical communication geography: Space, recognition and the dialectic
of mediatization. In Adams, P. C.; Cupples, J.; Glynn, K.; Jansson, A., and Moores, S. (Eds.)
Communications/Media/Geographies. London: Routledge. (Parts of this chapter have been
reworked and incorporated in Chapter 4.)
Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, who have always supported me in my
mobile endeavours, near and far.
André Jansson
Kristinehamn
31 January 2017