On the concept of figurations, deep mediatization, and the adulthood of media and communication studies – the interview with Andreas Hepp

Abstract

Andreas Hepp is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research at theUniversityofBremen. Mediatization research is among his various research interests that generally include media and communication theory, media sociology, and transcultural communication. Theoretical and empirical studies on mediatization processes are also among the leading subjects in the academic work of ZeMKI.

Andreas Hepp is the author of several publications on the subject of mediatization, including his latest book The Mediated Construction of Reality written with Nick Couldry of the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science. In The Mediated Construction of Reality, Couldry and Hepp revisit the question of how the social world is constructed, originally asked by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), and provide the reader with their own original answer, acknowledging the complex and irreducible contribution of digital media to the process. The editorial staff of Mediatization Studies reckons Andreas Hepp as one of the leading academics in the field of mediatization research and his and Couldry’s book as one of the most interesting and up-to-date accounts on the issue. This is why we decided to present it via this interview.

The interview was conducted during the Communicative Figurations international conference in Bremen (December 7-9, 2016), which focused on transforming communications in times of deep mediatization. Couldry and Hepp’s book had its official presentation during the conference.