Mediatisation, Digitisation and Datafication: The Role of the Social in Contemporary Data Capitalism

Abstract

This article discusses the relations between mediatisation and datafication, and how the process of datafication has integrated several diverse value forms in complex interrelations. The first section outlines the rise of datafication in the wake of the technological development of digitisation in combination with new business models of the media and communications industries, leading to a tighter integration between these and other sectors of society. The second accounts for how this development paves way for certain specific value forms that result from this integrative process, and how the interrelation between value forms introduces a shift in the valuation processes of late modern data capitalism, where the social takes a prominent position. The final section discusses the relationship between datafication and mediatisation. The argument is that although datafication introduces a new phase in the mediatisation process, the former also extends beyond the latter.