Measuring Mediatization

The term “mediatization” refers to long-term social changes (cor)responding to alterations in the media landscape. These types of changes have been studied in relation to a range of social realms and institutional sectors, especially since the mid-2000s, but there are yet no distinct tools developed for measuring the mediatization of everyday life. Such a quantitative tool should address people’s experiences of extended entanglements with and dependence on media (technologies, texts and institutions), thus validating whether and under what conditions mediatization is taking place.

To what extent do people think that their social lives have become more adapted to media today than five or ten years ago? To what extent is media abundance seen as a liberating resource and when is it rather experienced as an intrusion? To what extent is a life without media at all imaginable?

This is the type of questions that this pioneer project aims to solve. It applies various survey techniques for generating a longitudinal view of mediatization.

• Project leader: André Jansson
• Project participants: Karin Fast, Johan Lindell (Uppsala University), Stina Bengtsson (Södertörn University)
• Funding: The Ander Foundation 2016-2019, 2020-2025