Mediatisation of Public Life: Controversies in the Sphere of Politics and Everyday Life

The proposed project responds to a pressing need for theoretical reflection to better understand whether, and in which respects, various components and aspects of society and everyday life are becoming more mediatised, and in what sense; how this has changed over time; which forms may be discerned in different spheres of life and society; and with what results. The main aim of this project is to build a comprehensive look on how the technological and social convergence of the media based on digitisation (trans)form processes of mediatisation and what are its consequences in online and offline social environments. A comparative analysis of actions of three main types of actors (politics, civil society, private citizens) shall enable us to develop a typology of factors that shape the forms and modes of mediatisation of online and offline actions in different environments. In that perspective, the project addresses the question of whether the convergence of media serves social actors as merely a tool for a more efficacious coordination of their instrumental and communicative actions or it substantially redefines their understating of social actions and communications that can be observed in new mediatised forms of communicative and instrumental actions. The research takes place in three parallel work packages, which will operate in close collaboration: (1) mediatisation in the sphere of (professional) politics; (2) social movements, internetisation and alternative politics; and (3) the “ubiquitous photography” and its uses in private and public life.