On hypermediatization as a process and hypermediatized societies as an outcome 275 can last centuries and are not necessarily limited to a certain area or culture. Moreover, according to Krotz, it is also unclear at what point they start or end, whether they have a definite direc- tion, and what belongs to them and what does not. Therefore, he concludes, phenomena such as industrialization, globalization, or individualization are not processes as defined above but me- ta-processes: “They are constructs which describe and explain theoretically specific economic, social and cultural dimensions and levels of the actual change” (Krotz, 2017). For Krotz, a meta- process of this type is mediatization, the most relevant process in media and communication research. The distinction between process and meta-process is very interesting for two reasons. The first is because it identifies a precise difference that allows us to distinguish studies on mediatization from those dealing with technology under inno- vation discourse. According to Krotz (2017), a good example of this is “the process of diffusion of innovations, as described by Everett Rogers (1995) in the frame of communication research.” The second is because the specific difference between process and meta-process will also help us develop the task that we have proposed in this work, which aims to analyze more than the outcome, the contemporary hypermediatized society, its procedural dimension, hypermediatization. Finally, we also find it interesting because it shows the existence of similar research between the Nordic and Latin perspectives. For example, it can be applied to what Eliseo Verón theorized and investigated, an author widely recognized for his “long-term” approach, given that the mediatization of the three orders of Peirce’s symbolic functioning can be considered part of an extensive meta-process. By the latter, we mean that there is still the idea that studies on mediatizations address the media (cinema, televi- sion, etc.), media systems (that of mass media, social networks), or phenomena (the mediatization of justice, sport, religion, etc.). They address these phenomena, of course. However, what we have wanted to highlight in this text is that studies on me- diatization are more than that: they study meta-processes and outcomes at different levels, medium- and long-term processes capable of configuring the semiotic network in which we are im-
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