Mediatization (media)
Mediatization (or medialization[1]) is a method whereby the mass media influence other sectors of society, including politics, business, culture, entertainment, sport, religion, or education. Mediatization is a process of change or a trend, similar to globalization and modernization, where the mass media integrates into other sectors of the society. Political actors, opinion makers, business organizations, civil society organizations, and others have to adapt their communication methods to a form that suits the needs and preferences of the mass media. Any person or organization wanting to spread messages to a larger audience have to adapt their messages and communication style to make it attractive for the mass media.[2][3]
Introduction[edit]
The concept of mediatization is still requires development, and there is no commonly agreed definition of the term.[4] For example, a sociologist, Ernst Manheim, used mediatization as a way to describe social shifts that are controlled by the mass media, while a media researcher, Kent Asp, viewed mediatization as the relationship between politics, mass media, and the ever-growing divide between the media and government control. [5][6] Some theorists reject precise definitions and operationalizations of mediatization, fearing that they would reduce the complexity of the concept and the phenomena it refers to, while others prefer a clear theory that can be tested, refined, or potentially refuted.[2][1]
The concept of mediatization is seen not as an isolated theory, but as a framework that holds the potential to integrate different theoretical strands, linking micro-level with meso- and macro-level processes and phenomena, and thus contributing to a broader understanding of the role of the media in the transformation of modern societies.[7]
Technological developments from newspapers to radio, television, Internet, and interactive social media helped shape mediatization. Other important influences include changes in organization and economic conditions of the media, such as the growing importance of independent market-driven media and a decreasing influence of state-sponsored, public service, and partisan media.[8]
Mass media influence public opinion and the structure and processes of political communication, political decision-making and the democratic process. This political influence is not a one-way influence. While the mass media may influence government and political actors, the politicians also influence the media through regulation, negotiation, or selective access to information.[7][9]
The increasing influence of economic market forces is typically seen in trends such as tabloidization and trivialization, while news reporting and political coverage diminish to slogans, sound bites, spin, horse race reporting, celebrity scandals, populism, and infotainment.[10][11]
Influence of media technology[edit]
Newspapers[edit]
Newspapers have been available since the 18th century and became more widespread in the early 20th century due to improvements in printing technology (see history of journalism).
Four typical types of newspapers can be distinguished: popular, quality, regional, and financial newspapers.[35] The popular or tabloid newspapers typically contain a high proportion of soft news, personal focus, and negative news.[35][36] They often use sensationalism and attention-catching headlines to increase single-copy sales from newsstands and supermarkets, while quality newspapers are generally considered to have a higher quality of journalism. Relying more on subscriptions than on single copy sales, they have less need for sensationalism.[37] Regional newspapers have more local news, while financial newspapers have more international news of interest to their readers.[35]
Early newspapers were often partisan, associated with a particular political party, while today they are mostly controlled by free market forces.[38][39]
Telegraph[edit]
The introduction of the electric telegraph in the US in the mid-19th century significantly influenced the contents of newspapers, giving them easy access to national news. This increased voter turnout for presidential elections.[40]
Radio[edit]
When radio became commonly available, it became an efficient medium for news, education of the public, and propaganda. Exposure to radio programs with educational content significantly increased children's school performance.[41] Campaigns about the health effects of tobacco smoking and other health issues have been effective.[41]
The effects of radio programs may be unintended. For example, soap opera programs in Africa that portrayed attractive lifestyles affected people's norms and behaviors and their political preferences for redistribution of wealth.[41]
The radio can also facilitate political activism. Radio stations targeting a black audience had a strong effect on political activism and participation in the civil rights movement in the southern US states in the 1960s.[40]
The radio could also be a strong medium for propaganda in the years before television became available. The Roman Catholic priest Charles Coughlin in Michigan embraced radio broadcasting when radio was a new and rapidly expanding technology during the 1920s. Coughlin initially used the new possibility for reaching a mass audience for religious sermons, but after the onset of the Great Depression, he switched to mainly voicing his controversial political opinions, which were often antisemitic and fascistic.[40] The radio was also a powerful tool for propaganda in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and during the war. The Nazi government facilitated the distribution of cheap radio receivers (Volksempfänger), which enabled Adolf Hitler to reach a large audience through his frequent propaganda speeches, while it was illegal for the Germans to listen to foreign radio stations.[42] In Italy, Benito Mussolini used the radio for similar propaganda speeches.[41]
Television[edit]
The social impact of radio was reduced after the war when television outcompeted the radio.[40] Kent Asp, who studied the interaction of television with politics in Sweden, has identified a history of increasing mediatization. The politicians recognized in the 1960s that television had become a predominant channel for political communication took place through the following decades. The gradual acclimatization, adjustment, and adoption of media logic in political communication took place through the following decades. By the 2000s, the political institutions had almost completely integrated the logic of television and other mass media into their procedures.[43]
Television outcompeted newspapers and radio and crowded out other activities such as play, sports, study, and social activities. This outcome has led to lower school performance for children who have access to entertainment TV programs.[41]
TV viewers tend to imitate the lifestyle of role models that they see on entertainment shows. This imitation has resulted in lower fertility and higher divorce rates in various countries.[41]
Television is delivering strong messages of patriotism and national unity in China where the media are state-controlled.[44]
Toys/Play[edit]
The mediatization of toys in the United States can be traced back to the post-World War II era of the 1950s. Advertisers saw the rise of children's television programming as an opportunity to utilize a new medium to market toys. Toys became heavily promoted in the media through television. Commercialization of children's television programs increased in the 1980s after the deregulation of American television. Over time, this led to the creation of popular toy brands and characters, such as G.I. Joe and Barbie, who were given their own television shows and movies to sell more toys. With the rise of the Internet, tablets, smartphones, and other Internet-connected devices, the toy and media industries have become even more closely linked, giving companies even greater opportunities to market their toys to children with the help of mediatization.[45]
Internet[edit]
The advent of the Internet has created new opportunities and conditions for traditional newspapers and online-only news providers. Many newspapers are now publishing their news on paper and also online. This shift has enabled a more diverse assembly of breaking news, longer reports, and traditional magazine journalism. The increased competition in a diversified media market has led to more human interest and lifestyle stories and less political news, especially in the online versions of the newspapers.[46][47][39]
Social media[edit]
Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, have enabled a more interactive form of mass communication. The new form of Internet media that allow user-generated content has been called Web 2.0. The possibilities for user involvement have increased opportunities for networking, collaboration, and civic engagement. Protest movements, in particular, have benefited from an independent communication infrastructure.[48][49]
The circulation of messages on social media relies, to a great extent, on users who like, share, and re-distribute messages. This kind of circulation of messages is controlled less by the logic of market economics and more by the principles of memetics. Messages are selected and recirculated based on a new set of criteria different from the selection criteria of newspapers, radio, and television. People tend to share the psychologically appealing and attention-catching messages.[50] Social media users are remarkably bad at evaluating the truth of the messages they share. Studies show that false messages are shared more often than true messages because false messages are more surprising and attention-catching. This spreading of false information has led to the proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories on social media.[51][49][52] Attempts to counter misinformation by fact-checking have had limited effect.[53][49]
People prefer to follow the Internet forums, pages, and groups they agree with. At the same time, the media prefer topics that are already popular.[47] This has led to the large-scale occurrence of echo chambers and filter bubbles.[54] A consequence of this is that the political arena has become more polarized because different groups of citizens are attending to different news sources,[55][56] though the evidence of this effect is mixed.[49]
The economic mechanisms that influence the mass media are quite complex because commercial mass media are competing on many different markets at the same time:[60][61]
The economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian wrote that information commodity markets don't work. There are several reasons for
this.[62]
An important characteristic that makes information markets different from most other markets is that the fixed costs are high while the variable costs are low or zero. The fixed costs are the costs of producing content. This includes journalistic work, research, production of educational content, entertainment, etc. The variable costs are the marginal costs of adding one more consumer. The costs of broadcasting a TV show are the same whether there is one viewer or a million viewers, hence the variable costs are zero. In general, the variable costs for digital media is virtually zero because information can be copied at very low costs. The variable costs for newspapers are the costs of printing and selling one more copy, which are low but not
zero.[63]
Commercial mass media are competing for a limited supply of advertising money. The more media companies that compete for advertising money, the lower the price of advertising, and the less money each company has for covering the fixed costs of producing content. Free competition in a media market with many competitors can lead to ruinous competition where the revenue for each company is hardly enough to produce content of the lowest possible
quality.[64][65]
The news media are not only competing for advertisers with other news media, they are also competing for advertisers with other companies that mainly facilitate communication rather than produce information, such as search engines and social media. IT companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. are dominating the advertising market, leaving less than half of the revenue for news media.[63]
The strong dependence on advertising money is forcing commercial mass media to mainly target audiences that are profitable to the advertisers. They tend to avoid controversial content and avoid issues that the advertisers dislike.[66]
The competition for access to politicians, police, and other important news sources can enable these sources to manipulate the media by providing selective information and by favoring those media that give them positive coverage.[67]
Competition between TV stations for transmission rights to the most popular sports events, the most popular entertainment formats, and the most popular talk show hosts can drive up prices to extreme levels. This is often a winner-takes-it-all market where perhaps a pay TV channel is able to outbid the public broadcast channels. The result is that for example a popular sports event will be available to fewer viewers at higher prices than would result if competition was
limited.[68][61]
Thus, competition on media markets is very different from competition on other markets with higher variable costs. Many studies have shown that fierce competition between news media results in trivialization and poor quality. We are seeing a large amount of cheap entertainment, gossip, and sensationalism, and very little civic affairs and thorough journalistic
research.[63][69]
Newspapers are particularly affected by the increasing competition, resulting in lower circulation and lower journalistic quality.[36]
Classical economic theory would predict that competition leads to diversity, but this is not always the case with media markets. Moderate competition may lead to niche diversification, but there are many examples where fierce competition instead leads to wasteful sameness. Many TV channels are producing the same kind of cheap entertainment that appeals to the largest possible audience.[64]
The high fixed costs favor large companies and large markets.[61]
Unregulated media markets often lead to concentration of ownership, which can be horizontal (same company owning multiple channels) or vertical (content suppliers and network distributors under same owner). Economic efficiency is improved by the concentration of ownership, but it may reduce diversity by excluding unaffiliated content
suppliers.[70][71]
Unregulated markets tend to be dominated by a few large companies, while smaller firms may occupy niche positions. Large markets are characterized by monopolistic competition where each company offers a slightly different product. The cable TV companies are differentiated along political lines in the USA where the fairness doctrine no longer applies.[63]
We may expect that a company that runs multiple broadcast channels would produce different content on the different channels to avoid competing with itself, but the evidence shows a mixed picture. Some studies show that market concentration increases diversity and innovation, while other studies show the
opposite.[72][73][74]
A market where multiple companies own one TV channel each does not guarantee diversity either.
On the contrary, we often see wasteful duplication where everybody is trying to reach the same mainstream audience with the same kind of
programs.[75]
The situation is different for publicly funded TV channels. The non-commercial Danish national TV, for example, has multiple broadcast channels sending different kinds of content in order to meet its public service
obligation.[76]
European countries have a tradition for public service radio and television that is funded fully or partially by government subsidies or mandatory license payment for everybody who has a radio or TV. Historically, these public service broadcasters have delivered high quality programmes including news based on thorough journalistic investigation, as well as educational programmes, public information, debate, special programs for minorities, and
entertainment.[61][77]
However, broadcasters who depend on government funding or mandatory license payments are vulnerable to political pressure from the incumbent government. Some media are protected from political pressure through strong charters and arms-length oversight organizations, while those with weaker protection are more influenced by pressure from
politicians.[78][79]
The public service broadcasters in several European countries initially had monopoly on broadcasting, but the strict regulation was relaxed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Competition from commercial radio and TV stations had a strong impact on the public service broadcasters.
In Greece, the new competition from commercial TV led to lower quality and less diversity, contrary to the expectation of the economists. The contents of the public channels became similar to the commercial channels with less news and more
entertainment.[80]
In the Netherlands, diversity of TV programs increased in periods with moderate competition, but decreased in periods with ruinous competition.[64]
In Denmark, the degree of dependence on advertising and private investors influenced the amount of trivialization, but even a publicly financed advertisement-free TV channel became more trivialized as a result of competition with commercial channels.[76]
In Finland, the government has avoided ruinous competition by strict regulation of the TV market. The result is more diversity.[81]