Mediatization(s): Theoretical Conversations between Europe and Latin America

220 Pages·2021·12.229 MB·English

by  Carlos A Scolari (editor), José L. Fernández (editor), Joan R. Rodríguez-Amat (editor)

Mediatization(s)
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Mediatization(s)
Theoretical Conversations
between Europe and
Latin America
Edited by Carlos A. Scolari
José L. Fernández and
Joan R. Rodríguez-Amat
Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
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First published in the UK in 2021 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2021 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
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Contents
Introduction: Resuming the Conversation 1
Joan R. Rodríguez-Amat, Carlos A. Scolari and José L. Fernández
1. Conceptualizing Mediatization: Contexts, Traditions, Arguments 14
Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp
2. Looking beyond the Field: Development of the Mediatization 25
Research Agenda
Interview with Stig Hjarvard by Nicolás Llano Linares (2016)
3. Mediation and Reception: Some Theoretical and Methodological 38
Connections in Latin American Communication Studies  
Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes
4. Mediated Perception and the Mediatization of Seeing: 53
Perspectives for Researching Visual Communication with
a Mediatization Lens
Katharina Lobinger and Friedrich Krotz
5. Eliseo Verón’s Semio-anthropological Concept of Mediatization: 72
Its Relevance for a Historic and Systematic Approach in the
Field of Communication Theory
Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz
6. Beyond the Theoretical Conversations on the Origins of 87
Mediatizations: A Post-disciplinary Exchange
Carlos A. Scolari
7. ‘Television, This “Massive” Phenomenon that We Know, 104
Is Condemned to Disappear’
Interview with Eliseo Verón by Carlos A. Scolari (2006)
v
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8. ‘Technologies of Communication Are Becoming Media’ 113
Interview with Friedrich Krotz by Joan R. Rodríguez-Amat (2018)
9. The Web’s People: Mediatization and Transformation of the 124
Political Sphere
Lucrecia Escudero Chauvel
10. ‘Travel like a Local’: The Mediatization of Alternative 139
City Tourism, and Its Social Consequences
André Jansson
11. Recommender Systems: The Interplay between Asymmetry 154
Spaces and the Mediatization of Access and Circulation
Gastón Cingolani
12. Musical Mediatizations: Platforms and Social Spaces 170
José Luis Fernández
13. The Dispute over ‘Gender’ in Current Mediatization: Between 183
Passion, Empowerment and Disciplined Sexualities
Sandra Valdettaro
Conclusion: On the Possibility of Intellectual Trading Zones 200
Joan R. Rodríguez-Amat, José L. Fernández and Carlos A. Scolari
vi
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Introduction
Resuming the Conversation
Joan R. Rodríguez-Amat
Carlos A. Scolari
José L. Fernández
A fragmented disciplinary field: An early colourful map
This book simultaneously in English and Spanish contributes and updates the
discussion around the concept of mediatization. The notion epitomizes both the
disciplinary fragmentation explored by Waisbord in the territories of the commu-
nication research; and an uncomfortable conceptual dispersion provoked by the
opportunity of a rather fashionable catch-all concept. As the book shows, while
the fragmentation adopts the shape of a complex constellation of meaning that
extends across processes involving: media, mediation, mass media, new media,
social media, broadcasting, networks, media platforms and interfaces, among
others, and also their societal contexts, the dispersion shows that the umbrella
concept of mediatization is actually the product of a combination and maturity
of different theoretical strands and approaches that have reached and grown
the concept as a heuristic opportunity to explain a rather complex multifaceted
phenomenon.
Under these circumstances, the concept of mediatization requires to be taken
with care. This book has been planned as the start of a conversation between the
works of consolidated authors writing about mediatization. Fifteen authors from
ten countries have contributed to this exploration of the extension of the meanings
of the concept with the double purpose to map the state of the art as an update to
previous works, and as an effort to build theoretical bridges between the works
from diverse cultural and scientific traditions.
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MEDIATIZATION(S)
The article by Scolari and Rodríguez-Amat published in a special issue of
Communication Theory marked the starting point of this project. That first gaze
became an initiative to ask the referred authors about their views on mediatiza-
tion research in a broad sense. The question about the state of the art is relevant,
particularly considering that it has been half a decade since the publication of
Mediatization of Communication, a collective volume edited by Lundby that
marked an inflexion point in the European- and English-spoken debates on medi-
atization; some of the authors present in that volume are now contributing too to
this book, and presenting an update for the start of the question. However, this
book does not continue that line of work. Instead, this book has invited the partic-
ipation of several consolidated authors installed in what can be called the Latin
American tradition around mediatization research, that is, authors that followed
the path traced by Eliseo Verón (see Scolari and Rodríguez-Amat).
Research into mediatization processes started in Europe when the concept was
introduced in the early twentieth century; only in the past two decades the notion
has become one of the buzzwords in contemporary reflections and analytical tools
about change in media and society. It is increasingly evident that media (old and
new) play a key role in the construction of reality (Couldry and Hepp, The Medi-
ated Construction of Reality). In Latin America the concept was developed by
Eliseo Verón in the late 1970s and popularized in the 1980s (Verón, Construire
l’événement); many scholars in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina adopted his models
and expanded the analysis of local phenomena using his perspective.
However, Latin American research is still largely absent from the international
academia. Significantly, in the edited collection of more than thirty authors Medi-
atization of Communication (Lundby), Verón (‘Mediatization Theory’) was the
sole Latin American. In Couldry and Hepp’s special issue of Communication
Theory on ‘Conceptualizing Mediatization’ there was no participation of Latin
American researchers. Furthermore, whereas some significant Latin American
publications like deSignis (journal of the Latin American Federation of Semi-
otic Studies), L.I.S. Letra. Imagen. Sonido. Ciudad Mediatizada (Universidad de
Buenos Aires, Argentina), Rizoma (Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil) and
La Trama de la Comunicación (Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Argentina) are
effectively contributing to the diffusion of research into mediatization processes
in Latin America, the near absence of European authors and production does
not help the building of academic bridges, either. Symptomatically, the exten-
sive work by Verón is little known among media researchers beyond the Spanish
and French circuits even though his last published paper was in English (Verón,
‘Mediatization Theory’). However, it is true that some dialogue seems to have
started up between the two research constellations. In a journal published by the
Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), MATRIZes, a 2014 special issue contained
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INTRODUCTION
some initial exchanges between Latin American and European scholars: Hepp
(‘The Communicative Figurations of Mediatized Worlds’) (MATRIZes), Hjarvard
(‘Mediatization’), Vassallo de Lopes, and Verón (‘Mediatization Theory’) were
included, among others. It was the first single publication to include European
and Latin American mediatization researchers. Later in June 2015, yet another
publication from the Centre of Advanced Studies of the National University of
Cordoba (Argentina) included a section with articles on Verón, with contributions
by Sophie Fisher from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France),
and by Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz (‘Eliseo Verón leído desde la perspectiva de los
estudios en comunicación alemanes’) from the University of Bremen (Germany).
In 2016, the Uruguayan journal InMediaciones de la Comunicación published a
special issue coordinated by Sandra Valdettaro with contributions by European
(Francescutti, ‘Los usos del documento en el periodismo digital’) and Canadian
scholars (Granata, ‘La cultura como mediatización’).
The article by Scolari and Rodríguez-Amat indeed demonstrated that two
alternative and parallel clusters of developments of the concept of mediatization
had grown. One in the English-speaking academia led by European researchers;
and another in the Latin American academia following 30 years of Verón’s work.
And these alternative views seem to follow somewhat geographic continuities but
are rather entangled with traditions of knowledge: in the European front, medi-
atization is more a development of Altheide’s media logic and a social-recentred
variation of McLuhan’s deterministic principle of ‘media is the message’; whereas
for what has been pointed as the Latin American front, mediatizations are semi-
otic modulations of a social practice following Verón’s idea of social semiosis.
This geographic distribution is not a condition, but responds to the affiliations
of Eliseo Verón, and today, the main body of production derived from his work
can be traced in the Argentinian universities; but, as the article showed, there is
also work on this line of mediatizations thriving in other Latin American regions.
After describing the main contributions of some of the most important Latin
American and European scholars – many of whom participate in the present
volume – the article stated in the conclusions:
Even if the distance between Latin American and the Global North theoretical
productions is real, the globalization of the academic circuit and decided efforts
like the above-mentioned international events, special issues, and collective
volumes are reducing the gap and enhancing the exchanges. The increasing
number of Latin American doctorate students and researchers around the world
and a growing number of translations will generate more theoretical conversa-
tions and define new areas of reciprocal epistemological exchange and innova-
tive scientific convergences. (Scolari and Rodríguez-Amat 19)
3
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