mediatización

Mediatización, often translated as mediatization, is a theoretical concept used in sociology and communication studies to describe the process by which media shapes and reorganizes social life. It refers to the increasing prevalence of media logic—the norms, practices, and formats of media production and consumption—in the functioning of social institutions and everyday life.

Developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries by scholars such as Knut Lundby, Stig Hjarvard, and others, mediatization treats media not merely as a channel but as a pervasive logic that conditions political decision-making, religious leadership, education, culture, and economic activity. The process is bidirectional: institutions adapt to media demands while media organizations reflect and intensify social needs and expectations.

The concept is applied across domains. In politics, campaigns, policy debates, and governance become mediated through news cycles, sound bites, and social media. In religion, religious authority and ritual are reframed for public visibility, online platforms, and televangelism. In culture and everyday life, celebrity culture, immediacy, user-generated content, and algorithmic curation shape taste, norms, and discourse. Digital media, data analytics, and platform architectures amplify mediatization by accelerating feedback loops and global reach.

Scholars emphasize variation across contexts and caution against technological determinism. Mediatización is not the sole driver of social change but provides a framework for analyzing how media logics permeate institutions and affect political legitimacy, religious authority, and civic participation. Methodologically, it is studied through case studies, discourse analysis, ethnography, and comparative research.