The mediatization of consumption: towards an analytical framework of image culture

Abstract. Although the concepts of ‘media culture ’ and ‘consumer culture ’ have been commonly used as labels for contemporary society, they have rarely been explicitly compared. Nor have there been any serious attempts to clarify whether, or how, socio-cultural change is fusing them together. In this article it is argued that transitory processes such as culturalization, mediatization and simulation – which may all be compiled within the notion of reflexive accumulation – make it almost pointless to keep the concepts apart. Rather, in contemporary western societies it is possible to discern the rise of image culture. This is a socio-cultural state in which media images and media-influenced commodity-signs are to an increasing extent used as sources for, and expressions of, cultural identity. Hence, it is also argued that image culture must not be confused with the postmodernist hypothesis of cultural implosion. Rather, the maintenance of image culture presupposes the hermeneutic activities of social actors. Key words consumer culture everyday life image culture intertextuality media culture mediatization reflexive accumulation simulation THE TERM ‘REFLEXIVE ACCUMULATION ’ refers to a condition in which economic and cultural processes are more closely interwoven than in earlier phases of modern capitalism. As theorists such as Lash and Urry (1994) have argued, industrial production is increasingly a matter of symbolic circulation – a matter of responding to, or creating, semiotic rather than functiona