No. 5 - Andreas Hepp, Peter Lunt & Maren Hartmann: Communicative figurations of the good life: Ambivalences surrounding the mediatization of homelessness and the transnational family

The concept of “mediatization” has been the focus of considerable debate and reflection for scholars in media and communication seeking to understand an increasingly mediarelated world (Couldry & Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2013; Lundby, 2014). In theoretical work, mediatization is defined as transformations in media and communications that relate to social and cultural change as a societal meta-process akin to individualization, urbanization, and rationalization (Hepp, 2013a; Krotz, 2009). These reflections are increasingly complemented by empirical studies investigating transformations in institutions as well as social and cultural practices on different scales over varying historical periods. This includes the longue durée of human history, the consequences of media for modernity, and the more recent emergence of a mediated network society (Jensen, 2013; Livingstone, 2009; Livingstone & Lunt, 2014).

Much of this empirical research has examined the potential for media-influenced transformations in specific domains of life often focusing on particular media. In this chapter, in contrast, we emphasize the importance of understanding mediatization in the context of complex media environments, and argue that a “communicative figurations” approach
(Hepp, 2013a, pp. 92-97), based on Elias’ process sociology, is a potentially useful framework to capture this understanding of mediatization. We use two examples to illustrate this point: the ontological insecurity of homelessness, and the use of media by migrant mothers in transnational families. Both cases, although critical of hyperbole about digital media, examine the ethical potential of new media in connecting those disconnected through homelessness and enabling parenting at a distance. An analysis of these situations inevitably involves a variety of media rather than the operation of a particular technology. These two cases focus on the role of social media for everyday life in the context of contemporary late modern societies presenting a challenge to mediatization theory that focuses on processes of historical transformation. Livingstone and Lunt (2014) argue that “mediatization” refers to either long-term historical cultural change, or to the role of media in modernity over recent centuries. In addition, the concept appears ideally suited to explain the contemporary media-related transformations in late modern societies against the backdrop of former forms of societies.

About the authors

Andreas Hepp
Andreas Hepp is Professor of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on Media Culture and Communication Theory at ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Sciences, of which he is the spokesman. From 2004 to 2005 Andreas Hepp was an Assistant Professor of Cultural Significance of Digital Media, and from 2005 to 2010 Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Bremen. Prior to his work at the University of Bremen, in 2003/4 he represented a professorship of Communication Studies with a focus on Media Sociology and Media Psychology at the Institute of Communication Studies at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Muenster. From 1995 to 1997 he was a research assistant in the DFG project “Talking about television” at the University of Trier, in 1999 he was a research associate at the University of Karlsruhe (TH) in the Interdisciplinary Institute for Applied Cultural Studies (IAK), from 1999 to 2003 a leading research assistant at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies (IfMK) of the TU Ilmenau. In addition, Andreas Hepp has taught and researched as a guest of those universities, as well as at the Goldsmiths College of the University of London, the Nottingham Trent University and the University of Sunderland.

Peter Lunt
Peter Lunt is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. He previously held academic posts at the University of Kent, University College London, and Brunel University and has been a visiting lecturer at the LSE, SPS in Cambridge, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampagne, Notre Dame (London Programme) and the University of Oslo. His research interests include media audiences, public participation in popular culture (talk shows and reality TV), media regulation, consumption research and the links between media and social theory. He has been interested in consumer studies or consumption research for over twenty years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was interested in what appeared to be a growing link between consumption and identity and particularly the way that regulatory changes were opening up personal finances allowing an increase in personal debt and accompanying shifts in social attitudes and ethical responses to consumer society. In audience studies and the study of popular culture he has worked mainly on the talk show genre, which anticipated the increasing mediation of public participation that has developed in reality TV and new media. He originally (also with Sonia Livingstone) was interested in the links between the mediation of public engagement and political culture and the changing conception of public service media.

Maren Hartmann
Maren Hartmann is an Assistant Professor for Media and Communication Sociology at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin. Her main fields of research include media in everyday life, appropriation concepts (esp. domestication), non-use, cyberculture, youth and media. Amongst her publications are ‚Technologies and Utopias: The cyberflaneur and the experience of being online’ (Reinhard Fischer, 2004) as well as the co-edited ‚Domestication of Media and Technologies’ (Open University Press, 2005) and ‚After the Mobile Phone?’ (Frank & Timme, 2008). She is a member of the Executive Board of ECREA as well as the vice-chair of the DGPuK Media Sociology section.