TY - JOUR
AU - McCurdy,, Patrick
AB - Abstract Mediatization remains a key concept for theorizing how our ever-evolving and intensifying media and communications environment underwrites and (re)constructs our social world, yet the socio-ecological effects of mediatization processes remain relatively unacknowledged within this research field. However, mediatization must be conceptualized as a cogent process whose impact extends beyond the confines of the “media environment” to the natural environment. We make this argument by reviewing how three dominant traditions of mediatization scholarship: (a) institutionalist, (b) cultural/social constructivist, and (c) materialist conceptualize “the environment.” We argue that scholars rarely acknowledge the materialist dimension of mediatization despite it being a fundamental aspect of mediatization processes. Consequently, we bring discourse surrounding the materiality of mediatization to the fore by drawing on theories of materiality from media and communication studies in general and highlighting three material dimensions of mediatization processes in particular: (a) resources, (b) energy, and (c) waste. In doing so, we make explicit the implicit material dimensions of mediatization processes that have been largely overlooked but are directly linked to how we understand, theorize and react to the societal, cultural, economic, environmental transformations brought about by media. Introduction Mediatization has become a pivotal concept to theorize how our ever-evolving and intensifying media and communications environment underwrites and (re)constructs our social world and the relations within it. Mediatization is defined as a meta-process through which media gain in importance in all societal areas and by which the media surroundings of people become more and more complex (Krotz, 2007a; Livingstone and Lunt, 2014). A meta-process is a concept that can describe and explain theoretically specific economic, social and cultural dimensions and levels of the actual change (Krotz, 2007a, p. 27). Mediatization is thus a meta-process in tandem with other meta-processes such as globalization, individualization, and commercialization. Relatedly, Krotz (2017) makes the point that other meta-process may ultimately influence mediatization and thus, there is not a singular mediatization but different mediatization paths. Indeed, research underwritten by a mediatization perspective continues to be a popular approach for communication scholarship (e.g., Couldry & Hepp, 2016; Driessens et al., 2017; Ekström, Fornäs, Jansson and Jerslev, 2016; Eskjær, 2018; Hepp, 2013, 2020; Hepp & Krotz, 2014; Krotz, 2007a, 2007b; Lundby, 2008, 2014; Skey et al., 2018). While the concept of mediatization is a welcomed and needed theoretical innovation for conceptualizing the complexities of our extensively mediated present, it suffers from a central conceptual blind spot that fails to acknowledge or theorize the socio-ecological consequences of the very processes of mediatization it studies. Responding to this lacuna and inspired by Maxwell and Miller (2012a) along with a growing body of ecocritical literature, we argue that mediatization scholars must explicitly recognize the materialist dimensions of mediatization as a fundamental aspect of mediatization processes. By establishing the material as an explicit object of study—as opposed to implicit—within mediatization approaches, scholars can connect with and open a line of enquiry into the socio-ecological consequences of the multifaceted process of mediatization. As a consequence, we urge mediatization scholars to acknowledge this implicit material dimension in their scholarship in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what mediatization is and how societal, cultural, and media transformations are linked. As a branch of social theory or orientation to studying social phenomena, mediatization focuses on society and our everyday spaces of living and the ways media mold our communication, lives, and society. While there are frequent references to the “media environment” (e.g., Hepp et al., 2014, p. 112) within mediatization studies, what remains woefully overlooked are the dimensions of the planet upon which we live. Within mediatization literature, the “environment” discussed in major mediatization works is rarely the material environment but, instead only the “media environment,” which is understood as “the entire body of available media at any given time” (Hasebrink & Hölig, 2014, p. 16). The field of media ecology not only reinterpreted the term environment as just defined but also the term ecology itself—using it not within the traditional understanding of studying the relationship between animals and the environment but for the media surroundings (Postman, 1970). Miller and Maxwell argue the “subdiscipline of media ecology, for its part, has done more harm than good with its defining metaphor of media environments, because media ecology’s central metaphor is based on the false premise that social processes mirror ecological ones” (2015, p. 93). Taking inspiration from Maxwell and Miller (2012a) who have been critical of media studies’ failure to recognize the material environment, we argue mediatization scholarship must acknowledge that the processes of mediatization unfold in a material reality and have social and ecological consequences. Yet, the socio-ecological effects of mediatization processes remain relatively absent in mediatization research. Addressing this oversight requires scholars first acknowledge and disentangle the environment’s “double articulation” (Silverstone, 1994) within mediatization theory. Media theorist Roger Silverstone used double articulation to simultaneously capture the media’s symbolic and material attributes and, in doing so, challenge scholars to incorporate both components when theorizing the media’s impact on everyday life (Silverstone 2005, 2007). Reflecting on Silverstone’s legacy, Livingstone (2007) emphasizes the academic value of a doubly-articulated approach to media as a means to connect “(…) theories of consumption, economics and domestication with theories of representation, interpretation and influence” (p. 18). It is in this spirit that mediatization scholarship should account for not only the “symbolic environment” created by media (i.e., representation, interpretation, influence), the media’s material configuration and systemic process which impact our “lived environment” (i.e., consumption, economics, domestication) but also media’s relationship to and impact upon on our material “planetary environment” (i.e., infrastructure studies, environment, climate change). Consequently, mediatization must be conceptualized as a cogent process whose impact and connectedness extends beyond the confines of the “symbolic environment” and the lived environment to recognize the broader social processes, transformations, and socio-ecological impacts on the planetary environment. Restated, the media environment—where processes of mediatization are frequently located—is created from and exists in, reacts to, feeds off and is reflexively embedded within a natural material environment which itself is subject to social, economic, political and environmental systems, forces, pressures and strains. We have purposefully set our sights on mediatization’s theorization due to the concept’s summative power as a “systemic concept” (Krotz, 2017), its hold over the academic imagination and the fact that mediatization research deals with both media and societal change. Given this focus on societal transformations, and against the backdrop of a deepening ecological crisis, it is reasonable to call for the socio-ecological dimensions of mediatization to be folded into scholarship and no longer relegated as conceptual and empirical externalities to mediatization processes. To account for the material impact of mediatization processes on the natural environment, we must begin by asking a basic, though often only implicit question within mediatization approaches: what is mediatization’s object of study? We explore this question from the perspective of the three dominant traditions of mediatization scholarship: (a) institutionalist, (b) cultural/social constructivist, (c) materialist. Through a review of prominent mediatization literature, we show that while mediatization scholarship acknowledges the social practices of media and also considers how media informs, alters and underwrites the institutions and everyday spaces of our lifeworld, the material dimensions of mediatization are seldom considered. On rare occasions when mediatization research has dealt with materiality, it has primarily focused on the affordances of media technologies while ignoring mediatization’s socio-ecological material effects. Although environmental issues are also relevant within the cultural and institutional perspective of mediatization (e.g., as media appropriation or media content, such as advertisements, lead to or support the socio-ecological effects of mediatization which we discuss in this article), we focus on the material aspects of mediatization here where we identify one of the biggest research gaps regarding the environment in mediatization studies as well as very important and urgent issues that need to be discussed. Nevertheless, there are material consequences of mediatization and scholars employing a mediatization framework must at least acknowledge, if not develop further, our understanding of this reality and its repercussions. Consequently, the article’s second half highlights the impact of mediatization processes on the natural environment by drawing on select theories of materiality from within media and communications scholarship to examine three material dimensions of mediatization processes: (a) resources, (b) energy, and (c) waste. Through a focused literature review, we demonstrate how each of the three media dimensions—resources, energy, waste—has a discernible effect on humans and/or the natural environment yet remain unacknowledged within mediatization studies. In doing so, our objective is to demonstrate that while a socio-ecological critique does not necessarily require a mediatization perspective, a mediatization perspective must recognize its socio-ecological footprint. Our article concludes by linking the material dimensions of mediatization to our thesis that the socio-ecological effects of mediatization processes can no longer be theoretically or empirically ignored in mediatization research. In making this argument, we disagree that “mediatization research is in a state of theoretical grounding rather than empirical application” (Lundby, 2014, p. 17). In contrast, we stress that we still need further developments within theoretical mediatization research including focusing on the material dimension of mediatization and acknowledging the relevance of the environment. Three traditions of mediatization theory and the absence of the material environment Lundby (2014, p. 5) suggests there are three broad theoretical approaches to mediatization theory: institutional, cultural, and materialist (see also Hepp et al., 2015, p. 4). As each orientation differs regarding its focus, they all ask questions about the transformation of society through changes in media communication (for an overview of the historical development of the mediatization discourse in media and communication studies see Couldry & Hepp, 2013). In what follows, we outline the main focus of each approach and explore how, if at all, each perspective conceptualizes the material environment. The summary lays bare the failure to recognize the material planetary relationship and consequences of mediatization processes across all three perspectives. Institutionalist perspective on mediatization The institutionalist perspective on mediatization focuses on how “the logics of the media come to influence the logics of other institutions like religion or politics” (Hepp et al., 2015, p. 316). Scholarship in this tradition, as Couldry and Hepp (2013) note, was born from the fields of journalism and political communication and charts the rise of media as influential social institutions. According to Hjarvard (2013, p. 4), an institutionalist perspective takes a meso-level approach allowing scholars to “make generalizations across individual micro-social encounters within a particular domain of culture and society” but not “totalizing accounts of universal media influence at the macro level.” An institutional perspective examines how media has changed and influenced social domains and institutions such as science, religion, politics as well as the arts. For example, Hjarvard’s (2013) study of the “virtualisation of social institutions” argues that media have decoupled societal institutions from physical space allowing institutions such as museums to extend beyond place’s material bond to share their digital collection with distant publics. Meanwhile, politics has also evolved whereby publics may engage in political discourse in analogue and, now, digital form well beyond the confines of parliament or public halls. Moreover, media have become vital to “the public legitimacy of political institutions, actors, and actions” making political actors effectively dependent upon media (Hjarvard, 2013, p. 41). Of interest are the “changing structural relationship between politics and the media, and study the implications of this for both the role of political actors and the function, form and content of politics” (p. 43). Hjarvard’s broader point, one he makes consistently across his body of work, is that not only have media—print, radio, television, social media—developed into institutions in their own right but the logic of media—how media act/how they necessitate we act—has become woven and embedded, by necessity, into the practices of society’s most prominent and important institutions who seek to capitalize on media’s affordances for their own ends (Hjarvard, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014). Livingstone and Lunt (2014, p. 705), also proponents of contextually grounded institutional approaches to mediatization note “during the period of high modernity, the institutional and practical logics of the mass media distinctively reshaped many fields of human activity.” Extending from Livingstone and Lunt, institutional research should examine how this embedding of media in society—its mediatization—has shaped social bodies, cultures, technologies and practices with a specific area or domain of life (Orchard, 2017). Scholars continue to develop the institutional perspective as captured in the work of Bolin (2014, 2016). Indeed, as Hjarvard notes, “an institutional perspective by no means precludes the consideration of culture, technology, or psychology, but on the contrary provides a framework within which the interplay between these aspects can be studied” (2013, p. 13). Discussing how “influence” is conceptualized from an institutional perspective, Livingstone and Lunt note that “influence is not conceived in terms of the direct causal effects long studied by media effects research but, rather, in terms of environmental or ecological influences working in interaction with many other sources of influence” (2014, p. 718). Livingstone and Lunt employ an environmental metaphor to capture how mediatization processes—wrought by media institutions and their social, political and economic configurations—have shaped late modernity. While no mention of the material environment is made, Livingstone and Lunt are direct in their support of a cross-disciplinary conceptualization of mediatization; a conceptualization which, by taking a refined view of materiality can better explain and study the socio-ecological impacts of mediatization on a multitude of intertwined processes in society. Cultural/social constructivist perspective on mediatization The social-constructivist perspective (which is called “cultural” by Lundby, 2014, p. 10) aims “to investigate the interrelation between the change of media communication and sociocultural change as part of everyday communication practices” (Hepp et al., 2015, p. 4). This approach analyzes the communicative construction of reality in media and communication processes and views a multiplicity of media processes, practices and uses at play (Lundby, 2014, p. 10). Knobloch (2013, p. 297) proposes “communicative constructivism” as a theoretical framework for conceptualizing mediatization stressing the relevance of communication in the social construction of reality. To disentangle and specify the relevance of media and mediated communication in today’s society, cultural/social constructivist perspective scholars have differentiated between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of mediatization. For Hepp (2013, pp. 52–53) the quantitative aspects of mediatization reference that the increasing complexity and importance of media in society (what also defines mediatization, see above) correlates with an increase in the number of media technologies in the lives of individuals and the broader social fabric. The quantifiable increase in media technologies is what Jansson calls the “epicentre of mediatization, that is, mediatization seen as a materially expansive process” (2014, p. 286). Hepp views the increase in media as having temporal, spatial and social impacts. These relate to the permanent availability of media (impacting time); the rapid and seemingly ubiquitous spread of media technology—and thereby mediatization processes—over physical geographies (impacting space) and the reshaping of social whereby “more and more social relationships and institutions are characterized by technologically mediated communication” (Hepp, 2013, p. 53). The qualitative aspects of mediatization, on the other hand, capture transformations in how we communicate and how our relationships are shaped. Hepp (2013, p. 54) calls the qualitative aspects “moulding forces of the media,” which put pressure on the way we communicate. Empirical studies taking this qualitative perspective analyze how communication processes change in mediatization processes but also on a broader scale how these changes lead to social and cultural change. Empirical studies focus on different actors or groups of people and analyze their media appropriation and its transformation, e.g., the relevance of media for everyday life of adolescents, especially the role of media for their social relations and community-building (Hepp et al., 2014), or the transformation of media appropriation at home and its relevance for love relationships (Müller & Röser, 2016). Facing current datafication processes, Hepp and Couldry stress the relevance of digitalization by introducing the notion of “deep mediatization” (Couldry and Hepp, 2018; Hepp, 2020). Due to deep mediatization, the socio-ecological effects we will look at in the next section (resources, energy and waste) intensify with the proliferation of digital technologies. Although we can perceive the increasingly negative effects of deep mediatization on the environment, Couldry and Hepp do not acknowledge these socio-ecological effects nor do they mention the environment at all. The material in their theory is a materialist phenomenology (2018, pp. 4–5). Their discussion of materialism is linked to the “material” and “symbolic” aspects of social practices. What is needed then in the current discourse on mediatization is to theorize and analyze the material dimension of mediatization which recognizes and accounts for the socio-ecological effects mediatization has on the environment. These “deep ecological effects” intensify together with an increasing number of digital technologies; deep mediatization is correlated with a grave ecological crisis. Materialist perspective on mediatization Within mediatization research, the materialist perspective is the smallest research area. This perspective has its roots in Medium Theory (Innis, 1964; McLuhan, 1964) whereby scholars shifted their gaze from a focus on media content to media form and how media form, composition and configuration shapes society (Lundby, 2014, p. 28). That said, there are few studies within mediatization scholarship which analyze the material dimension of media technologies. Of those that do, some deal with the process of digitalization such as the research field of digital storytelling where the relevance of “the digital” for storytelling is discussed in relation to the narration of the stories but also their production and reception (e.g., Bratteteig, 2008; Couldry, 2008). There are also some studies that deal with the mediatization of objects such as Miller’s (2017) analysis of the mediatization of the automobile. Research focusing on the materiality of mediatization processes has often zoomed in on the “affordances” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 444) of media technologies. For example, appropriation approaches examine their “domestication” (Hartmann, 2013) and the demands of media technologies in people’s everyday lives or, what Jansson calls, the “naturalization of artifacts in the lifeworld” (2014, p. 281). Theories in this strand deal with the visibility or invisibility of media technologies in the process of appropriation and use. Jansson uses the concept of “material indispensability” to argue that “certain individual activities are ritually adapted to the material existence and affordances of the media” (p. 284). As a consequence, media objects become “transparent as technology” (p. 281) and thus taken for granted, woven seamlessly—naturally—into the fabric of everyday life and experience. Jansson uses mediatization theory to connect the physical (material) properties and functions of media technologies with cultural properties. In his words: “‘[m]edia things are much more than technics. To a significant extent, they are also cultural properties that may be appropriated or rejected on the basis of cultural values as much as functional assets” (p. 284). While Jansson is correct to connect the materiality of media technologies with culture, the conceptualization of materiality within mediatization must be expanded to recognize that just as media technologies become invisible (or at least less apparent) through their constant presence and habitual use, the socio-ecological effects of the production, use and disposal of media technologies may also be hidden in plain sight. Yet these effects are inscribed in the materiality of media technologies. In how they are manufactured, powered, marketed, used and disposed of within an exploitative neoliberal system reliant upon nature; within what Hogan (2018) refers to as “big data ecologies.” Nonetheless, the invisibility of these socio-ecological effects remains all but unstudied and invisible in mediatization research. Materiality and mediatization: resources, energy, and waste Our overview of the three broad theoretical approaches to mediatization makes clear that scholars have largely failed to consider the material dimensions of mediatization and the social-ecological implications thereof. Those that consider materiality limit themselves to the use and domestication and of media as physical objects in a material world steeped in digital communication. Yet, while mediatization perspectives are conscious of how institutional practices, capital flows and media logics weave themselves into everyday life, shaping social and political bodies and domains, cultural practices, technologies all three mediatization approaches fail to connect these processes with their impact on our planetary environment thus remaining blind to media’s significant social-ecological consequences. One remedy to this mediatization blind spot is to incorporate research from media and communication’s “new materialism” and what Starosielski (2019) calls a focus on the “elements” of media studies into the conceptualization of mediatization. To develop this argument, we provide an overview of the discourse on materiality within media and communication research in general and then focus on three specific research areas: (a) resources, (b) energy, and (c) waste to make our case. Materiality in media and communication studies Medium theorists such as Innis (1964), McLuhan (1964) and Meyrowitz (1986) provide the foundation for studying materiality within media and communication studies. And while materiality has not been at the center of interest of media and communication research (Gillespie et al., 2014, p. 1; Quandt & von Pape, 2010, p. 330), there has been a “material turn” (Bennett & Joyce, 2010) through which scholars are paying increased attention to the composition of media devices and the consequences thereof (see also Kannengießer, 2019 for an overview of research on materiality within media and communication studies see: Gillespie et al., 2014). A key innovation within these approaches comes from Gabrys’ (2015, p. 6) call to view “materiality as process” which she defends as “important not just for understanding the environmental and socio-cultural effects of digital media, but also for rethinking the material politics and ecologies of these technologies, and for developing possible sites and strategies for creative intervention.” By viewing materiality as a process—and not just as an inherent property or consequence of media—Gabrys’ perspective bridges the mediated and material thereby connecting media technologies to their environmental impact within specific social, economic and political configurations and practices. This view of materiality as a process compliments mediatization’s conceptualization as a process (Krotz, 2007a) and thus provides a means to view media as material objects which are made from, exist in and impact our planetary environment and are also the product of and subject to reflexive social, political, economic and environmental systems, forces and practices. While Lievrouw (2014) has argued that the materiality of media in communication and media studies is still an “unfinished project”, within mediatization approaches, materiality is a project only just beginning. Consequently, and as argued above, connecting mediatization research to existing theories on materiality in media and communication studies allows us to develop a perspective that takes into account mediatization’s socio-ecological impact by critically examining media technologies as material assemblages from and within our natural environment from three research perspectives: (a) the resources integrated in and dedicated to media technologies, (b) energy which is needed not only for the production of media devices but also appropriation processes, as well as (c) e-waste in which disposed media technologies materialize. Consequently, in what follows, we sketch out each of these research areas, reconstruct the correlation between the material dimension of media technologies and the material environment. Moreover, the examples offered are purposefully broad—in terms of location and ecological concern—as a means to make clear why and how the dimensions of resources, energy and waste need to be acknowledged in mediatization research. Resources Mediatization research, among other things, grapples with the increasing number of media technologies and their increasing societal applications and uptake. Mediatization processes are driven by media innovations through the invention of new media technologies such as smartphones and tablet computers but also through “innovations” to existing media devices such as producing smaller, bigger or lighter hardware, enhancing functionality, upgrading hardware with more memory or processing capacity and then rolling out software to better suit the accompanying “innovations.” These innovations create a user side market demand which encourages the ongoing replacement of existing media technologies which are assumed to be not sufficient anymore for the needs of the users. As the use and demand of media technologies increase over time, so too do the resources—environmental and human—needed to produce them. Mediatization research must acknowledge the environmental footprint and human fingerprint of media technologies. Acknowledging mediatization’s materiality recognizes the environmental impact of resource extraction and production but, entagled within, it also considers under which circumstances and by whom the resources that are integrated into media apparatuses are extracted, and under which conditions and by whom the technologies are manufactured. There is a growing body of interdisciplinary research putting the focus on resources, which are integrated into digital media technologies, and the way these devices are built. Regarding the question of natural resources, especially one mineral, which needs to be integrated into every digital media device, is in focus: coltan. While the socio-ecological effects of the extraction of coltan and the political issues around it are repeated topics in mediated discourses, academic studies dealing with coltan are rare. The ones existing are analyzing the socio-ecological effects and the conflictual aspects of the extraction processes. The regional focus is mainly laid on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where most of the coltan traded on the world market comes from. The coltan mines in the DRC are mainly owned by war-lords, financing their militarized rebellion against the national government (see Montague [2002] for a historical reconstruction of the political and economic processes regarding mining and trade of coltan in the DRC). Those people working in the mines do so under inhumane working conditions. People, often children, are exploited and left with severe health problems; and also the environment is destroyed, e.g., through deforestation and animals being killed or harmed (Maxwell & Miller, 2013, 2020; Plumptre et al., 2015). Next to these polluting and harmful extraction processes of the minerals needed for digital media, the manufacturing processes of media apparatuses are also a threat to the environment and humans. Within the production of media technologies, human rights are violated continuously (Chan & Ho, 2008, China Labour Watch, 2015, 2016; Hegemann, 2017): “[S]earing workplace conditions that led to 17 suicides in the first eight months of 2010 at a Foxconn factory making iPhones” (Maxwell & Miller, 2013, p. 703, see also Pun, Tse, & Ng, 2019). A study comparing Foxconn production sites in China and the Czech Republic shows that the severe working conditions are not only a problem in Asia but an aspect of global capitalism (Pun, Andrijasevic, & Sacchetto, 2019). The working conditions, the threat to humans and the environment is almost invisible in mediatization research. However, the socio-ecological effects of the production of media technologies have to be taken into account when analyzing the societal meta-process of mediatization. Energy Energy makes mediatization possible. Energy is needed to produce the devices and networks which create and enable our mediated worlds as well as energy to power them. While the production, distribution and delivery of energy requires real-world systems and practices and has material outputs and consequences, the vital role of energy remains largely unacknowledged within mediatization scholarship. Instead, energy’s presence is assumed, taken for granted and folded in with the supposed immaterial nature of mediatization processes. For example, Hjarvard’s (2004) essay on the mediatization of the global toy industry opens with the premise that “today, toys are increasing of an immaterial nature” (p. 43). Hjarvard argues that toys were once solid tactile objects that children engaged with directly but now require media as an intermediary. Video games, for example, are “immaterial” as they take place on screens and thus are not manipulated directly but, instead, by joysticks. For Hjarvard the shift from “bricks to bytes”—the shift to the immaterial—reflects the embedded nature of mediated information in contemporary culture. While Hjarvard astutely captures larger social trends, his use of “immaterial” overlooks and, indeed, masks the fact that systems and process of mediatization are reliant upon and intimately interwoven with systems of energy and energy production. Ecomaterialist scholar Gabrys (2015, p. 6) has rightly and eloquently challenged claims concerning the immateriality of digital media and has called upon academics to recognize the “processes of materialization that digital media are entangled with” which includes energy as well as the other material aspects discussed in this section. The material turn called for by Gabrys (2014, 2015, 2016) seeks to make visible the taken for granted aspects of energy during the production, use and disposal of media technologies. This call is particularly important given the sheer breadth and scale of devices used to access and maintain our mediatized world. A world that is not only media hungry and data hungry, but simultaneously power hungry. Evidence of this rests in the fact that ICTs—consumer devices, communication networks and data centers—account for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions; a figure which is on par with the aviation industry’s carbon emissions from fuel (Jones, 2018). Moreover, electricity used by ICTs is expected to grow by 2030 to between 8% and 21% of electricity demand (Andrae, 2017). Crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic which took hold as this article was being finalized, can also significantly alter energy demand, CO2 emissions and media consumption patterns. For example, it is estimated that “At their peak in early April 2020, daily global CO2 emissions decreased by –17% (–11 to –25% for ±1σ) compared with the mean 2019 levels” (Le Quéré, Jackson, Jones et al., 2020) due to government lockdown measures on a global scale yet this dip in emissions and energy consumption is likely only temporary (ibid). Meanwhile, the imposed self-isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic is directly linked to a global rise of 20% in video streaming as well as increased social media use particularly for local news (Convivia 2020). The necessity to shelter-in-place has also required altering many social practices which previously took place in material settings often outside the home. From remote work to remote education, from telehealth to virtual gatherings, concerts and conferences, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the mediatization of everyday life but also made the mediatization of life more visible. The multitude of digital devices and services which have connected us, alone together, during the pandemic all require and consume energy. Indeed, for over a decade the increasing energy consumption and carbon emissions of ICTs have been the subject of significant amount of academic research, policy initiatives and professional, industry, government and intergovernmental responses including from the European Commission, OECD, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) among others. During this time data-heavy companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple have sought to “green” their energy mix by shift towards renewable energy sources and refining data center practices (e.g., see Hogan, 2015a) meanwhile consortiums such as GreenTouch have formed seeking to drastically improve ICT energy efficiency (see, Ahmed et al., 2017; Cubitt et al., 2011; Hogan, 2018). Current attention has often focused on the massive amounts of energy used by blockchain-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin are frequently cited as an example where digital objects have material environmental and planetary impacts. Krause and Tolaymat (2018) conducted a comparative analysis of energy consumption between an assemblage of five cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero) conventional mining (aluminum, copper, gold, platinum and rare earth oxides). The authors concluded that, except for aluminum, “cryptomining consumed more energy than mineral mining to produce an equivalent market value” and anticipate energy use to rise further (p. 711). Stoll et al. (2018) estimate that Bitcoin has total annual electricity consumption of approximately 48.2 TWh which is slightly more than the annual electricity consumption of Singapore (Stoll et al., 2018). Meanwhile, a recent paper in Nature Climate Change warned: “Bitcoin usage, should it follow the rate of adoption of other broadly adopted technologies, could alone produce enough CO2 emissions to push warming above 2°C within less than three decades” (Mora et al., 2018, p. 931). While the underlying models, assumptions and projections that underwrite claims about the energy demands and environmental impact of cryptocurrencies should no doubt be subject to ongoing peer-reviewed critique (see: Dittmar and Praktiknjo, 2019), that there are human and environmental impacts and externalities due to cryptomining is undeniable (Goodkind et al., 2020). Beyond cryptocurrencies, data centers comprise a significant portion of ICT energy use and are expected to account for 25% of ICT energy use by 2025 (ibid). Thus while accessing documents from the cloud, streaming 4k media content to a mobile device, or merely conducting an Internet search may all have an air of lightness or even “immateriality” about them, these acts are connected to energy-hungry data centers in the material world. As Maxwell and Miller (2012b) note, the impact or even existence of data centers are rarely thought about: “a data centre’s physical existence and impact might as well result from invisible magic for all we notice of them in the cluster of services known today as cloud computing.” While the authors lament the lack of attention towards invisible yet material energy of data, they have simultaneously blazed a trail for a critical scholarship into the relationship between media, energy and the environment (Hogan, 2015a, 2015b, 2018; Pötzsch, 2017; Rauch, 2018; Velkova, 2016). Hogan (2015a) offers a particularly jarring exploration of the material “underbelly” of Facebook’s digital archive by connecting the social media platform to the social-ecological impact of its physical data storage centers and vast network of machines. Of course, the focus on energy extends beyond the energy of data to include the energy used to power or charge devices. As our number of networked devices increases, as the number of things connected to the “Internet of things” expands, as mining for cryptocurrencies swells and becomes more intensive, as more and more artificial intelligence applications come online, all of these process demand energy. While mediatization scholars may have critically reflected on many of the above phenomena, they have generally failed to consider, or at least connect, the socio-ecological implications and effects of such mediatization processes. Mediatization takes energy, and the sources of energy and its use have material, social, political-economic, and environmental consequences. However, mediatization scholarship has yet to render these visible or make direct connections between mediatization and energy. Waste The ever-expanding number of media technologies within mediatization processes—which become defective over time or must be replaced due to innovation or redundancy—contributes to electronic waste (e-waste); discarded and outdated technologies many of which contain hazardous chemicals which present health and environmental risks if not properly remediated. In 2017 the world generated 44.7 million metric tons (Mts) of e-waste with only 20% of that waste recycled through proper channels (Baldé et al., 2017, p. 4). Moreover, e-waste continues to grow driven by public demand for newest media devices, reduced costs for devices together with the short lifetime of said devices due to planned obsolescence and the practice of throwing away old devices. As Maxwell et al. note: “The rapid acceleration of turnover of old and outdated devices, fueled by planned obsolescence in consumer electronics design and escalating demand, has caused an unprecedented surge in electronic and electric waste (e-waste): e-waste is now the fastest-growing part of urban waste-streams” (Maxwell et al., 2015, p. xiii). Several studies in media and communication deal with e-waste and its socio-ecological effects (e.g., Christensen & Nilsson, 2018; Gabrys, 2011; Kaitatzi-Whitlock, 2015). E-waste, which is “a generic term embracing various forms of electric and electronic equipment that have ceased to be of any value to their owners” (Widmer et al., 2005, p. 438), is a global challenge with Asia producing 18.2 (Mt) of e-waste in 2016, with the Americas producing 11.3 (Mt) and Europe 12.3 Mt (Baldé et al., 2017, p. 41). While Asia produced a larger amount of e-waste, this amounts to 4.2 kg per inhabitant compared to the 16.6 kg of e-waste produced per European and 11.6 kg per inhabitant of the Americas. Of note, e-waste is often not disposed of in the countries where it is consumed. Instead, e-waste is exported from industrialized countries—from North America and Western Europe—to developing countries where the e-waste is shipped to huge waste dumps in Africa and Asia. Although the shipping of e-waste is illegal under the Basel Convention, a massive amount of e-waste is transported. E-waste harms people’s health when working on waste dumps trying to get out at least some of the vulnerable resources such as copper—by burning the technologies and breathing the toxic vapour of burning plastic. And not only the burning processes but the whole disposal process itself poisons the ground and groundwater which then is drunken by people and animals that are again eaten by people. So a toxic vicious circle comes into being. E-waste workers suffer negative health effects through skin contact and inhalation, while the wider community are exposed to the contaminants through smoke, dust, drinking water and food. There is evidence that E-waste associated contaminants may be present in some agricultural or manufactured products for export. (Robinson, 2009, p. 183) Deep mediatization (Hepp, 2020) processes increase the problems of e-waste because of an increase in the demands of media innovations and therefore, an increase in e-waste production, as Baldé et al. (2017) clearly document in the above cited “Global e-waste monitor.” The socio-ecological effects of e-waste need to be considered when talking about and analyzing (deep) mediatization, the increase of media technologies in our society, the development of media innovations and the demand for always the newest media devices. Bringing materiality into mediatization theory Through reviewing the three dominant traditions of mediatization, we showed that while scholars from institutional, cultural/socio-constructivist and material perspectives vary in their focus, they are unified in their failure to acknowledge, let alone examine the socio-ecological consequences of mediatization. Institutionalist perspectives have concerned themselves with the transformation of social institutions and resources due to the uptake of “media logics.” Meanwhile, cultural/socio-constructivist perspectives have examined how the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of media technologies enable and construct our social, political and economic world thereby fundamentally changing how people communicate and how society is structured. Materialist perspectives have focused on the mediatization of objects, or the naturalization of media objects and media-centered practices which become integrated, domesticated, taken for granted and even invisible in our lived environment. In sum, mediatization perspectives are unified by an interest in the relation of media and society, on the everyday spaces of living simultaneously and reflexively concerned with symbolic and material planes. Yet across mediatization approaches the conceptualization of materiality has rarely, if at all, extended beyond the “lived environment” taking our “planetary environment”—the natural world—as a given. Instead, the material dimension of media has only been implicit and thus failed to consider how mediatization processes may be directly connected to and indeed impact the material dimensions of our planet. To argue that media have material socio-ecological effects is not novel. Indeed the second part of our article was dedicated to a selective review of theory from the material turn within media and communication studies which draws explicit attention to the socio-ecological effects of the production, appropriation, and disposal of media technologies. Key to this work is a view of “materiality as process” (Gabrys, 2015, p. 6) which considers the socio-ecological impact of the conditions, processes and systems around the production, use and disposal of media. Research in this vein has shown that the resources needed to produce media technologies are often extracted under exploitive conditions harming the environment and people involved in the production processes. The fabrication of media technologies has a negative impact on people and the environment. Furthermore, research has shed light on the energy consumption and its effects when using media technologies; and finally, the field dealing with e-waste makes the harmful effects of the disposal of media technologies on people and the environment visible. As the harmful socio-ecological effects of mediatization grow with the increasing number of media technologies produced and disposed of (which are inherent to mediatization processes) these effects remain unseen in mediatization approaches where technologies are theorized as becoming naturalized and invisible. Yet, that mediatization processes have socio-ecological consequences is without question. Consequently, we share Christensen and Nillson’s (2018) call for a paradigm shift in communication and media studies where greater attention to materiality allows for a more nuanced understanding of communication against a backdrop of the environmental crisis. Although mediatization has become a pivotal and popular orienting perspective to theorize how the intensification of media shapes, maintains and (re)constructs our social world, the materiality of mediatization processes must be taken into account to draw a (more) complete picture of what mediatization is and how societal, cultural, political media and environmental transformations are linked. That is, by viewing materiality as a process interwoven with mediatization, mediatization is still conceptualized as a meta-process through which media gain in importance across all of areas of society (Krotz, 2007a) but provides the theoretical means to connect mediatization with its socio-ecological impacts; to address mediatization’s absence of the environment. Moreover, using the approach of mediatization research, the socio-ecological effects meta-processes like digitalization, datafication and mediatization itself have can be acknowledged, as this approach allows for taking mediated and societal transformation processes and their interplay into account. In addition, it is important to stress that the socio-ecological effects of mediatization are caused because mediatization nowadays mainly takes place within capitalist societies, in which exploitation of the environment and people happens systematically. Therefore, also the relation between capitalism, mediatization and the environment needs to be analyzed in more detail. We do not only want to point to the shortcomings of mediatization research but also underline its possibilities taking effects of the increase of media technologies into account. In addition, there are many political and economic initiatives which face the socio-ecological effects mediatization processes have on the environment and try to develop alternatives: For example, people repair their media technologies to prolong the life-span of existing apparatuses to sustain resources and avoid the production of waste; others produce media technologies which should be produced under fair working conditions with sustainable resources (see e.g., Kannengießer, 2017, 2020). And it is also the chance for mediatization research to analyze these initiatives pointing to their relevance on mediated and societal transformations. With our argument, we are neither calling for a “theory of everything” nor do we mean that every mediatization scholar must work on the socio-ecological effects of mediatization. Still, we argue that the material dimension of mediatization can be and must be connected to theories on materiality in media and communication studies in general and research on the consistency, on resources, energy, and e-waste in particular. Maxwell and Miller argue in both Greening the Media (2012) and Greening Media Studies (2015, p. 87) that we “must find ways to become a greener discipline”. This claim on the one hand touches the way (media and communication) scholars work: e.g., flying around the world for three-day-long conferences several times a year and purchasing new computers, laptops or tablets every other year. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a direct challenge to academic work and, as such, provides an unprecidented opportunity to alter our practices and green our discipline. On the other hand, Maxwell and Miller's argument is equally important for challenging how we think about and theorise media. In a time of crisis and especially during an unprecident period of rapid climate change, the natural environment must not be absent in mediatization research. Instead, theories and analysis within this research area must confront and make visible the socio-ecological effects media and mediated communication on current and future societies. By acknowledging the socio-ecological effects of mediatization we can develop a more holistic understanding of the societal, cultural, economic, environmental transformations brought about by media. Acknowledgments The authors began work on this article when Patrick McCurdy was a Visiting Research Fellow at the ZeMKI, Center for Media, Communication and Information Research of the University of Bremen, Germany. 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TI - Mediatization and the Absence of the Environment
JF - Communication Theory
DO - 10.1093/ct/qtaa009
DA - 0008-04-11
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/mediatization-and-the-absence-of-the-environment-ur5PD2cNyI
SP - 1
EP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -