Abstract
It might seem overly ambitious for communication studies to develop, rather than just draw upon, social theories that may have an enduring cross-disciplinary impact. Yet, as media sociologists Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Andreas Hepp (University of Bremen) show in The Mediated Construction of Reality, it is time to do just that. The social world has been fundamentally altered by the deep embedding of digital media and accompanied data infrastructures in everyday life. In an age of “deep mediatization,” decades-old social theories, such as Berger and Luckman’s social constructionism and Elias’s figurational sociology, demonstrate unforeseen obsolescence or relevance. A reconceptualization of the social is a must.
Well-versed in an extensive range of social theories and a vast swath of empirical research, Couldry and Hepp reconceive the social by outlining a materialistic phenomenology of social life in the age of digital media and “datafication”—a concept the authors put forward as a significant new form or stage of mediatization. By highlighting how media infrastructure and symbolic construction are interrelated and situated, Couldry and Hepp create a bridge between the two. As a social theory, the book’s success is heartening. To start, it shatters major critiques of classic social phenomenology. Couldry and Hepp position communicative action as only one of the constitutive forces of the social, one that is “moulded by the long-term processes of institutionalization and materialization that we refer to as ‘media’” and, increasingly, by the “media manifold”—a topological term that captures the complex interdependence of media that only appears to be irreducible. Accordingly, the privileging of face-to-face communication over mediated communication, which has long dominated social constructionism, is rendered invalid. Communication researchers are also challenged to reconsider their limited focus on language as the primary vehicle of social construction. Equally valuable, the authors underscore the uncertainties and tensions within sociality that are emerging due to digital media’s ever-increasing presence by rejecting social constructionism’s premise of “meaningful reciprocity,” which construes everyday reality as a coherent and transparent “symbolic universe” open for interpretation. A prominent example of the “radical uncertainty of social construction” is the asymmetrical process of data mining (Chapter 7). Motivated by corporate or government interests, automated data processes generate social knowledge that influences people’s social interactions in ways that are opaque to them and which they cannot control.
Another important contribution of The Mediated Construction of Reality is that it refines and extends Elias’s theory of figuration. Unsatisfied with the persistent structure/agency dichotomy in sociological theories, Nobert Elias (whose most famous work, The Civilizing Process, was first published in 1939) introduced the concept of figuration to describe networks of interdependencies characterized by reciprocal orientations and fluid power relations. Like social constructionism, a figurational approach regards the social world as comprised of ongoing productions of interactive patterns rather than static structures above and beyond individuals. But figuration highlights processes of “social interweaving,” a defining characteristic of social life shaped by the media manifold. In particular, Couldry and Hepp compare figuration with two alternative concepts of social interdependencies: network and assemblage. They argue that figuration not only combines the strengths of its two rivals—their focuses on the structural relations of actors and on socio-materiality, respectively—but also it obviates their inadequacies in explaining how intricate interdependencies are “built up in and through processes of meaning-construction and resource-distribution” (italics in original). By clarifying the relations between meaning-making and components of figuration, including relevance-frames, actor-constellations, and communicative practices, the book goes beyond Elias’s original thought. It further explicates media’s recursive relation to figuration: Figuration is supported by a corresponding “media ensemble” that shapes communicative practices, which then engender demands for new technological developments and applications. Most impressively, the authors refrain from employing Elias’s horizontal conceptualization of figuration and address how figurations scale through building “figurations of figurations” and other meaningful arrangements.
As a critical theory, the book shares Elias’s concern about the disjuncture between the unintended consequences of figuration formation and purposeful individual actions. Equipped with many newly developed concepts, such as waves of mediatization, deep mediatization, media manifold, and figurations of figurations—each of which may spawn its own line of research—the bulk of the materialistic phenomenology surveys digitalization and datafication’s implications for the spatial (Chapter 5), temporal (Chapter 7), and knowledge (Chapter 8) dimensions of social life and for the transformation of individual (Chapter 9), collective (Chapter 10), and organizational agencies (Chapter 11). Running throughout is a normative evaluation of deepened social entanglement and infrastructural dependency for social order, termed “figurational order.” Couldry and Hepp caution readers against the hidden risks of largely profit-driven figurational changes in everyday life. Individuals, lacking the necessary time to interpret information, are forced into new “norms” of self-maintenance and self-monitoring via digital media. New collectivities are being created not to build solidarity but to make profits. Politics’ overdependence on private corporations, facilitated by the ever-expanding data flow, subjects citizens to perpetual surveillance and differentiation. Understanding these challenges is the first step toward developing effective social interventions to control the unsettling effects of digital media on lived experience.
The development of a new theory is inevitably constrained by the current state of research; this book is no exception. As the authors are aware, their stated transcultural perspective does not overcome their emphasis on media practices of elite societies and classes. Discussions of figurational changes also privilege established research subjects, such as family, organization, and social media collectivities. Nevertheless, the synthesis of eclectic empirical studies broadens the theory’s heuristic value beyond media studies. Scholars of interpersonal, organizational, and political communication—or anyone who is concerned about the implications of the digital age—will find insights in this book.