Mario Carlón 278 3.2 Hypermediatization: a meta-process? If mediatization is, according to Krotz, a meta-process; or, according to Verón, an inseparable “long-term” process of the development of the Homo sapiens species that began two and a half million years ago with the production of stone tools (Verón, 2014), hypermediatization can only be a phase of that meta-pro- cess, its contemporary stage, beyond modernity and postmoder- nity. And its outcome is a specific type of society: contemporary society. In other words, we agree with Krotz’s distinction that mediatization is not a “process” but a meta-process. And with Verón that, as a process, mainly when it affects how collectives are built, it can produce, as an outcome, a specific type of society in a certain period of historical time. Now, what kind of meta-process is it? Based on the technological wave of digitalization, as proposed by the perspec- tive of deep mediatization (Couldry and Hepp, 2016)?5 Social? What are its characteristics? Let us dwell on the features that define mediatization, which, as a meta-process implies, according to Friedrich Krotz (2017), an increasingly frequent use of the media in addition to the strengthening of its role in the development of culture and society. Its characteristics, according to Krotz, are three: a) the first is an increase in use, b) the second is that the media increasingly assume more functions, and c) the third is that the media increasingly have a growing impact on the relationships that so- cial agents maintain with each other. Do we agree? Yes. In fact, the relevance of mediatization understood in this way has not ceased to increase since then. Nonetheless, apart from the fact that we can consider it complementary of our approach, Krotz’s analysis does not solve the specific problems that we must face from our per- spective, which must also focus on the dimension of meaning. To move in this direction and try to give some answers to the question about how the process of hypermediatization oper- ates in contemporary societies, we are going to continue with 5 In the Bonus track section, included at the end of this text, we refer to the place of digitization in the development of the contemporary circulation of meaning. Also available in: Carlón, 2022b.
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