Mediatization or mediation? Alternative understandings of the emergent space of digital storytelling

Abstract

This article reviews the social potential of digital storytelling, and in particular digital storytelling's potential to contribute to the strengthening of democracy. Through answering this question, it seeks to test out the relative strengths and weaknesses of two competing concepts for grasping the wider consequences of media for the social world: the concept of mediatization and the concept of mediation. The concept of mediatization (developed for example by Stig Hjarvard and Winfried Schulz), it is argued, is stronger at addressing aspects of media textuality, suggesting that a unitary media-based logic is at work. In spite of its apparent vagueness, the concept of mediation (developed in particular by Roger Silverstone) provides more flexibility for thinking about the openended and dialectical social transformations which, as with the printed book, may come in time to be articulated with the new form of digital storytelling.

Variants of Interplay as Drivers of Media Change

“…However, in a more conventional understanding, these actions on media (objects) are always moderated by presentational processes that accompany these actions, enabled by distribution media. Put simply, activities and their results are-deliberately or accidentally-shared via multi-modal settings of today's media (Couldry, 2008).…”

Introduction

“…Among the most common criticisms of the concept of media logic are that it is too elusive and vague, that it suggests a linearity and singularity that is not there, that it lends itself to technological determinism, or that it may hide important patterns of social interactions (see e.g. Couldry 2008;Lundby 2009;Landerer 2013). Some of this criticism may be justified-but it also depends on how media logic and political logic are understood.…”

Mediatization and Digital Media in the Field of Fashion

“…Thus some authors have argued that digitization and the proliferation of digital media mark a significant stage, or 'wave', following Hepp (2013a), in processes of mediatization (see also Adolf 2011). Yet apart from a few studies (see Couldry 2008;Schulz 2004;Finnemann 2011;Skjulstad 2009;Sumiali and Hakala 2010) mediatization as taking place in relation to digital media remains relatively neglected.…”