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PP 099
Search Engines, Algorithms and Databases: New Players in Mediatization Processes
J. Andersen
1
1
University of Copenhagen, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen S, Denmark
Mediatization theory is concerned with describing changes occurring in culture and society due to the omnipresence of media and communication and how
media mould communicative interactions (Hepp, 2013). New communication phenomena like search engines, algorithms or databases have in recent years
attracted attention in media, information and communication studies (e.g. Mager, 2012, 2014; Gillespie, 2014; Manovich, 2001). With the widespread use
of digital media and the inscription of these in everyday life as means of public, social and private forms of communication, search engines, algorithms or
databases are things we live by and with. As such they can be conceived of as shaping in social and cultural change in particular ways. For instance, search
engines have introduced a different cultural verb: to search; a verb supplementing the verbs of mass media: to watch, to listen or to read. Before search
engines, search was not social and cultural habit because to search for information was something you would go to a library and the like to do. To search
nowadays is to connect with the world. Moreover, the modern gatekeepers of our time are algorithms as they shape what we have access to digitally, shape
what can be known, challenge our notion of ‘culture’or modulates our digital identities (Cheney-Lippold, 2011; Gillespie, 2014; Hallinan & Striphas, 2016).
Databases have become an everyday phenomenon in public life. They make up a large part of digital media not only as a form of storage, but as a cultural
form in its own right (Manovich, 2001). Every time we do a search, whether in search engines or at Amazon, we are in touch with a structured collection
of items, i.e. a database. Furthermore, we know it is there because it is very common for us in our digital culture to search and to intuitively understand
search as a mode of communication in and with digital media. We live in ‘a culture of search’(Hillis et al., 2013). While we have scattered accounts of algo‑
rithms, search engines or databases, they have not been addressed in one single theoretical framework. In this paper, I will point to mediatization theory
as a cogent context for addressing them as forms of media and communicative interaction shaping social and cultural change in particular ways. The paper
will be structured in the following way: first, by looking into selected parts of the literature on algorithms, search engines or databases, I will examine
the arguments and observations made here. Next, I will connect these arguments and observations with arguments put forward in mediatization theory.
Through this, I will discuss how algorithms, search engines and databases can be understood as part of mediatization processes.
PP 100
Mediatization, Globalization and Mobile Lives: A Critical Bottom-Up Perspective
A. Jansson
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1
Karlstad University, Geography- media and communication, Karlstad, Sweden
Mediatization is commonly referred to as a long-termmeta-process on par with globalization, individualization and commercialization. It is also often stat‑
ed that these meta-processes overlap and interact in complex ways. Nevertheless, there is a lack of systematic assessments of how these relations are to be
conceptualized and turned into empirically accessible areas of study. In response to this theoretical shortage, this paper advances a critical bottom-up per‑
spective of howmediatization conditions (and is conditioned by) globalization.The latter is here understood as the expanding social prevalence of globality.
It is suggested that the globalizing force of mediatization is played out, and can be analyzed, in relation to three practice-oriented dimensions of globality:
(1) connexity (the capability to govern connectivities); (2) motility (the capability to govern mobility); (3) osmosity (the capability to govern the boundaries
of the lifeworld).The triadic model introduces a novel approach to how social power-geometries are (re)configured under the dual pressure of mediatization
and globalization. The perspective is bottom-up in the sense that the paper introduces an analytical model that captures the mediatization-globalization
nexus at the level of everyday media practices and experience. The model is derived through the synthesization of media sociological fieldwork carried out
between 2003 and 2016. The data consist of 65 qualitative interviews gathered among a variety of socially privileged groups whose common trait is that
they lead mobile lives: expatriate professionals, business travellers, post-tourists and gentrifying urban/rural in-migrants. Their lifestyles and life-biogra‑
phies are thus closely intertwined with globalization processes through communicational and spatial agency. The perspective is critical in the sense that
mediatization is conceived of as a dialectical force marked by the inexorable tension between autonomy and dependence: the media-enhanced autono‑
mization of social life-trajectories vs. the reinforcement of complex media dependences. The paper explicates and illustrates this fundamental dialectic
of mediatization through anayses of privileged forms of mobile life conditions. Above all, it shows how the appropriation of various media constitutes a pre‑
condition for extended mobility (in these social realms mainly associated with self-realization), while at the same time normalizing various forms of so‑
cio-material pressure and adaptation. The paper begins with a theoretical delineation of the dialectic of mediatization, based on the cultural materialism
of Raymond Williams. Thereafter follow empirically grounded accounts of how the dialectic of mediatization unfolds in relation to connexity, motility and
osmosity. It is shown that the appropriation of newmedia among privileged mobile groups mostly reinforces globalization processes, meaning that connec‑
tivities, mobilities and processes of cultural inclusion are enhanced. However, deeper analyses of the material also show that these processes are not always
and not in all respects experienced as liberating. On the contrary, there is ample evidence in all groups of how growing media reliance oftenmakes it difficult
for individuals and groups to achieve a positive sense of connexity, motility and osmosity. These findings illuminate how the dialectic of mediatization turns
such abilities as disconnecting, staying in place and maintaining the coherence of the lifeworld, that is, negotiating globality, into valuable social assets.