Global Mediatization Research and Technology

Digital embeddedness is increasingly shaping how we experience our social lives. At the same time, as all levels of culture and society are shaped by new technological advancements online that lead to new forms of mediatization, the ways and contexts in which digital media are integrated into communicative structures are becoming more diversified and – at the same time – globalized. Likewise, mediatization is directly linked to modernity as new technologies permeate everyday life at the personal, social and global level. Global flows of information are regarded as a fundamental driving force and an integral part of everyday life. Rapid developments in media technologies engender global mediatization processes within overlapping micro, meso and macro levels.

In this context, mediatization research has evolved into a highly beneficial meta-perspective of communication and media science. The challenge that mediatization research nowadays faces is grasping the rapidly developing digital communication and integrate this into mediatization research, at the same time taking the shift of cultural boundaries in comparative studies into account.