2. Overview
• The need for a new theory
• Some starting points
• Definitions
• Scope and Method
• Technology, Modernity and Globalization
• Sweden and the US
• India and China
• New Media
• A model
• Implications, for comparative media change
• Potential Openings for Social Change
• Implications, for social theory, and norms
3. The need for a (new) theory
• Shortcomings of current macro theories (Castells’
networked society etc)
• Shortcoming of current media and communications
theories (broadcast versus interpersonal)
• No theory of everyday information uses (no distinction
informating versus communicating)
• Political communication not integrated into political
sociology
• Media and cultural change is not comparative (so: no
answer to globalization?)
• No, or only partial, theories of new media (search,
social networking sites, microblogging, mobile, …)
4. Some starting points
• Social divides (examples: gender in India, economic urban
rural in China) – versus - routines of consumption and
coordination
• Political divides – versus - lack of access to reliable and
plural sources of ‘critical’ information (?)
• The partial differentiation and partial extension of an
intensified online political coupling – a divide of new versus
old technology - or of access?
• Overall question: Convergence – or social divides - of new
media technology-in-use?
– For new technologies in mediated systems, in interpersonal
relations/households, and in relation to individualism
5. Definitions
• Information = difference to cognitive state in relation
to the environment for practical social use (if for
politics, enables partaking, as an individualist citizen)
[contrast: knowledge = cumulative]
• Communication = two-way transmissions between
entities for social purpose (if for politics, this enters
input – or agenda control)
• Mediation (or mediatization) = information plus
communication, as changed by technology-in-use
• Dominant agenda = visible attention demanded,
divided by gatekept control
6. Scope and Method
• Cultural change - everyday life, minus work
• Political change – responsiveness (control and
management) versus input and capacity
enhancement
• Comparative, two developed and two
developing – at ends of scale or ‘models’
• Use evidence about old and new media uses
from surveys, ethnographies, social history,…
7. Technology and Modernity
• The bases for comparison: Tech phases before/after, social
development, three social orders, three modalities, nation-case
comparison
• Three phases of media: modern, then post-Internet (but within
internet, web?)
• Modern social development still presents a clear single (threefold)
yardstick (innovation, mediated consumerism, people onto stage),
but need a more short-term before/after yardstick for new
technologies-in-use
• Everyday life splits into a more mediated (online) culture – as
against a more mediated (online) politics
• Does online entail a shift in modality?
• Are modern patterns, and extensions beyond them, also global?
8. Sweden and the US
• Politics
– The legacies of 20th centuries political media
systems = difference
– greater density and diversity (more selection), but
also a common more managed (more targeted)
online agenda (public sphere)
– gatekeeping constraint on agenda setting
• Culture
– Greater homogeneity in more diverse mediations
of everyday life (consumption and private)
9. India and China
• Divides in mobile versus internet use
– How do these influence newer media?
• Divides in gender, and urban versus rural uses
• Newspaper centrism (India) versus newspapers plus
shift towards digital media (China)
• Legacies of media systems dominated by political elites
controlling system (China) and political/economic elites
in a fragmented system (India) = insufficient
differentiation
• Circumventing gatekeepers against authoritarians
(China) versus pushing against ‘skewed’ democracy
(India)
10. New Media
• Search behaviour – shaped by monopolies and auto-demo-
cracy
– Is there a divide for a small (1-2%) fraction of online information
– Locating the gatekeeping (concentration) function of dominant
search engines (and other social media)
• Mobiles – more tethered to personal networks and to
information
• Microblogging – personal publics versus political publics
(and: gatekeeper circumvention is more important in some
systems)
• Information – for political purposes = goes into informed
input (and: towards expressing individualism) - versus for
leisure (ditto, for cultural plural expression)
11. Marketization Consumerism
Mediated
Agenda set by
people, interest
groups, social
movements
Civil Society
Agenda set by elites
Mediated
Limited by
visible
attention
Mediated
Limited by
gatekeeping
Interpersonal/
Household
Competition
for (limited)
time
Competition
for (limited)
attention
Individualism
Economy Culture Politics
12. Digital Divides and Outlooks
• Mediated (digital and traditional) divides between
people and elites
• Political
– US: market centric and pluralist logjam
– Sweden: state shaped and corporatist
– India: elite skewed, pluralist and low infrastructure
– China: state-controlled, minor dissent amidst major
commercialization
– All: subject to increasing marketization (includes re-
regulation)
• Cultural
– All: deepening and widening consumerism
13. Implications for comparative media
change
• China and India: political diversification is needed
and needs to counteract top-down ‘management’
in China and ‘skew’ in India
• Sweden and US: media systems theory overlooks
common constraint of marketization, which can
be counteracted by strengthening access to and
diversifying information alternatives to elicit
responsiveness in the face of top-down
management
• Marketization is a constraint across all four
14. Potential Openings for Social Change
– Digital social movements and circumvention reshape
agendas
– Counterweight of media institutions to elites, with
input from civil society
– Scientific communication counters distortion
– Market ‘liberalization’ pluralizes marketplace of ideas
and information sources (pluralizing can be a
constraint!)
• All four: constrained by (changing) technologies
possibilities and constraints for mediation and by
social forces that articulate with them
15. Implications for Social Theory – and
Norms
• A conduit which inputs into steering rule-making/coercion
– But this does not register unless there is an account of how
media environment affects divides
• A means of charting cultural change
– But here, the main changes are convergent forms of uses within
the context of consumer cultures
• Pinpointing the constraints and opportunities within the
(several) paths of an inexorable advance of (new) ICTs – and
the possibilities and limits of extensions to mediation
• Implications for norms: an informed and knowledgeable
citizen who can realize him/herself fully (capacities) in and
through (the political, economic, and cultural life of) society
