#Mediatization: Heeding the call for mediatization studies in Asia

Abstract

In a milieu where technologies heavily mediate the environment and processes of everyday life, a cultural phenomenon that Sonia Livingstone described as the “mediation of everything,” scholars are encouraged to heed the call for more mediatization studies. The mediatization approach integrates the institutionalist and social-constructivist perspectives in critically analyzing the changes in both media and communications, on one hand, and culture and society, on the other hand. Reflecting on my past research works applying mediatization theories, I highlighted the value of the mediatization approach through its dialectics: Technological and social; Literal and symbolic, material and semiotic; Descriptive and critical; Objective and subjective, quantitative and qualitative; and Meso and micro levels. In the end, I also surfaced some criticisms of the mediatization approach, which, I argued, prove to be its strength in enabling researchers to keep pace in studying a highly mediatizing Asia and in indigenizing or Asianizing communication research and theorizing.