Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Generational analysis & mediatized social change 71 neutral during the Second World War, which meant an intact in- dustry and a population less traumatised compared to its neigh- bours who were all occupied, and where war was played out in a very manifest manner. The reason for choosing these two countries, then, was grounded in the belief that the generational experiences would differ – especially among the older cohorts where the societal conditions were most different. Each generational cohort, in figure 2, has travelled through the media landscape, but the distance of their trajectory has not been equally long. With Henri Lefebvre (1974/1991), we can think of time as movement in space. The trajectory of a social formation, or generation, through the spatial unit that is the media landscape thus produces time, both in its linear con- ception as calendar time , and in its sense of punctual time , that is, time that is defined by its specific quality ( GEERTZ , 1973). While individuals move around in the technological and symbol- ic landscape of the media, their movements give both this space and this time a unique quality that would not have been there, had it not been for the social actions of these individuals. Time, however, is not produced solely through move- ment in space. It is also formed in our discursive constructions of the past, when we recount our media memories. Take the ra- dio, for example. Among the generation brought up during the Second World War, radio was the most important medium. But the meaning of the radio differed considerably between genera- tional cohorts in Sweden and Estonia. In Sweden, interviewees remembered the content – actual radio programmes. In Estonia, it was the technology itself, since radio receivers were forbidden during the war and shortly thereafter. The experiences that the Estonian and Swedish listeners had, was marked by the histori- cal circumstance of their occurrence. IV – Generation as experience Every life story contains a relation to contempo- rary media – be it radio, mass reproduced lithographs, mobile phones, or computer games. This is so, because a generation is not something you are – but a becoming (SIIBAK; VITTADINI,