Mediatization

Abstract

Mediatization became a central concept in media and communication studies in the early 2000s. Mediatization calls for a critical engagement with the changes invested in media and their role in high modern societies, and the effects of those changes. Such a process is understood to have profound gendered consequences. Particularly crucial are the reflections around the empowering/disempowering effects of the pervasive presence of media in our lives and, in particular, on their role in both reproducing and disrupting hegemonic understanding of gender and sexuality. This entry focuses especially on the mediatization of politics and its role in perpetuating discourses that tend to marginalize and minoritize those who do not conform to a deeply gendered and racialized ideal of power. It then examines how the emancipatory and transformative power of social media is deeply intertwined with practices that reproduce conservative gender politics.