Mediatization as Business Model III: Counterdrafts and Turning Points in the Process of Mediatization

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Michaela Pfadenhauer
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Communication Sciences ; Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2012 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 223652172

The subproject continues the research on mediatization as a process driven by companies and at the same time driving decisions and measurements of commercial actors towards (digital) media. Thereby, the theoretical approach on reflexive mediatization will be further developed. Recent insights are the starting point, showing, that commercialization (development, design and spread of digital media) goes in hand with non-anticipated media appropriation up to the ermergence of wider dislimination (mediatization). Previously fixed scopes of media based inter/actions and business models thereby oftentimes are undermined. Different approaches of companies to solve these problems can be shown within our actual research. But some counter-measurements are systematically directed against problematized consequences of mediatization (de-mediatization). Within the foreseen project in the third stage of the priority programme we will follow these preliminary insights empirically and focus three overall goals: (1.) The description of the reflexively conducted counter-drafts in the commodification of digitial media and a deepened understanding of its consequences; (2.) The examination of societal actors reflections on consequences of mediatization and potential turning points in order to differentiate the concept of mediatization that mostly is implicitly seen as a technology-related progress; (3.) The theoretical integration of the achieved insights over the three research stages in order to characterize the process of reflexive mediatization and to provide an instrument for the process-oriented research on mediatization.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1505: Mediatised Worlds: Communication in the Medial and Social Change
• International Connection: Austria