Agency, social relations, and order: Media sociology’s shift into the digital

Abstract: Until the end of the last century, media sociology was synonymous with the investigation of mass media as a social domain. Today, media sociology needs to address a much higher level of complexity, that is, a deeply mediatized world in which all human practices, social relations, and social order are entangled with digital media and their infrastructures. This article discusses this shift from a sociology of mass communication to the sociology of a deeply mediatized world. The principal aim of the article is to outline a new media-sociological imagination: media sociology as a cross-sectional sociology, a sociology of entanglement, and a new critical sociology of technological deep structures.

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Agency, social relations, and order: Media sociology’s shift into the digital ; volume:47 ; number:3 ; year:2022 ; pages:470-493 ; extent:24 ; Communications ; 47, Heft 3 (2022), 470-493 (gesamt 24)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Hepp, Andreas

Further information

• DOI: 10.1515/commun-2020-0079
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022090914293362111388
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:26 AM CEST