Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

From mediatization to deep mediatization 27 HEPP, 2017, p. 32). Institutionalization can be explained as fol- lows: everyday practices, talking, working, playing are, to some degree, stabilized in their social form by media’s (ever-increas- ing) presence in our lives, and it is through this altering of ev- eryday life that media influence our construction of society. It goes hand in hand with materialization, which means that social practices are, themselves, inscribed in the media technologies we use and the infrastructures that accommodate them. Mes- senger software, for example, materializes a certain way of talk- ing through its software-based user interface. These influences do not, however, travel in one direction but instead move cycli- cally. Within each social domain there exists an orientation in ev- eryday practice which may or may not be altered by media. Take the family, for example, or school; within these social realms are constructed certain practices that allow these institutions to more or less function appropriately. However, these practices are enduring and to some degree obstinate; media pervasive- ness is, indeed, able to affect or change these practices but, ulti- mately, it is unlikely that it will ever transform them completely. This inertia, this to-and-fro of constructing practice, means that orientations in everyday practice have the potential to resist and even alter media themselves. Despite coming from divergent disciplinary origins and applying different approaches to the conceptualization of me- diatization, researchers from both traditions have come closer together in their understanding and application of the term (HEPP; HJARVARD; LUNDBY, 2015). First, they both see media- tization as a long-term process of transformation that is accom- panied by other long-term processes of change such as individu- alization, globalization, and commercialization. It contrasts, as already emphasized, with the term mediation , which grasps a very general communicative moment, namely, how communica- tion mediates, or intervenes, between multiple actors (cf. SIL- VERSTONE, 2005). Second, both traditions share the position that mediatization does not operate in the same way across so- cial domains (communities, organizations etc.). In contrast, the specific way mediatization occurs differs significantly from one social domain to another (LUNT; LIVINGSTONE, 2016, p. 465). It is for this reason that empirical research on mediatization is