Blogpost #1: Mediatization (Alexandria Tang)
In this week’s reading of the Social World as Communicative Construction, Couldry and Hepp mentioned that the social world is constructed through communication. These communicative practices have been moulded by long-term processes of institutionalization and materialization, otherwise known as media. As such, since communicative practices are inherently social, our everyday reality is deeply interwoven with media, and thus being ‘mediatized’. In this reading, it was also pointed out that the world is experiencing an increasing mediation of our communicative streams. There has been a shift from direct communication to mediated communication as the common and normal means of sustaining social relations. As such, with media, face to face communication is no longer the only channel for social interactions to take place. Overall, with mediatization and the increasing reliance on media, the social world that we live in is now constantly being shaped and constructed by media.
The way Couldry and Hepp explained how media and communication construct the social world that we live in made me reflect about my everyday life and how much media has shaped the reality that we currently live in. It is indeed true that our lives now revolve around media and that we heavily rely on media. This is especially evident in the past year when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and many countries had to go into lockdown, rendering social activities not physically possible. As such, our social activities and interactions have all been shifted online and we have all adapted quickly to this shift.
For instance, due to travel restrictions, we no longer can visit friends and family who are overseas, or even visit friends and family who are in Singapore as well due to the circuit breaker measures. As such, we rely a lot on Facetime, Skype and Zoom, to maintain relationships and keep in contact with our loved ones. Besides restricting interaction amongst people, this pandemic has also put a stop to many large-scale events such as concerts and sporting events. However, utilising media, we have been able to still bring these experiences to people online. For instance, during the lockdown in the world as well as circuit breaker in Singapore, many music artists held livestreams of concerts to still bring people the experience of attending music concerts, albeit online. Additionally, these livestream concerts held on online platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are usually accompanied with a live chat box, allowing participants who are online to interact and chat with each other. A more relevant example to me of how media has constructed the social world would be the live-streaming of Inter-Hall Games (IHG) matches in NUS. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, spectators are not allowed to physically go down to watch and support their halls in the various matches. However, with media, we do not miss out on catching the matches as each hall will livestream the match via Instagram as well as provide real-time updates on Telegram channels. Additionally, supporter who tune into the livestream can interact with each other through the live chat.
Hence, I resonate with Couldry and Hepp’s idea of how the social world is constructed and deeply interwoven with media, leading to mediatization.
















