Mediatization: From discipline to control, a horizon of reflexion

Abstract

The phenomenon known as mediatization has obtained more and more attention in the field of media and communication studies. In this field two aspects of mediatization are identified and a link between them has already been outlined: the institutionalist, which recognizes the media as an institution practically independent, whose norms adapt other social fields; and social constructivist, which understands the mediatization as the communicative construction of socio-cultural reality. Whether due to the media centrality in some aspects of social life, whether due to the power assigned to it, the recognition of its range is not limited exclusively to media studies. Communication systems articulate culture, education and even the sovereignty, globally subjecting the societies to their regime, which points to a control conception. The society of control is discussed in the work of Gilles Deleuze as a result of the disciplinary model decline, approached by Michel Foucault. In this perspective, visibility is a central aspect of the power exercised in both the disciplinary model, based on confinement, as in the control model, based on noncoercive visibility. This study proposes a reflection about the phenomenon of mediatization as a process, situated in the transition from the disciplinary model of society and the society of control. In this reasoning, communication and visibility are at the heart of power relations.

Keywords: mediatization, power, visibility, discipline, control.