Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
STRUGGLES OF LEGITIMACY IN MEDIATIZED SOCIETY
Paper to be presented at “Connecting Rigor and Relevance in Institutional Analysis” conference
at Harvard Business School, June 3-4, 2013
Eero Vaara
Hanken School of Economics
Department of Management and Organization
PB 479, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland
Tel: +358 50 3059359
eero.vaara@hanken.fi
Work in progress, please do not quote
Please note that this is a theoretical paper, but that I will use the Eurozone crisis as an illustrative
case in my presentation
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
STRUGGLES OF LEGITIMACY IN MEDIATIZED SOCIETY
INTRODUCTION
Legitimation is key process in institutional analysis (Bitekhtine, 2011; Deephouse & Suchman,
2008; Scott, 1995; Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2010). This involves both active legitimation strategies
(Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005) and legitimacy judgments (Tost, 2011). Recently, we have seen a
growing interest in rhetorical (Green, 2004; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005) or more broadly
discursive aspects of legitimation (Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy, 2004; Vaara, Tienari, & Laurila,
2006) that elaborate on the power of language and communication in struggles of legitimacy.
However, most of these analyses follow a sender-receiver model that does not focus attention on the
central role of the media in contemporary society (see, however, Rindova, Pollock and Hayward,
2006). In particular, there is a paucity of knowledge of the ways in which the media gives voice to
and stages actors, edits the messages, and creates drama in the case of contested issues that lead to
legitimacy struggles.
Hence, it is the purpose of this paper to complement existing research on legitimation by outlining a
framework that elucidates the discursive processes and practices of legitimation in mediatized
society. I will primarily focus on mass media as it plays a central role in public discussions around
celebrity firms, corporate scandals, organizational crises and in other controversial issues that create
legitimacy struggles. For this purpose, I draw from critical discourse analysis (CDA) that helps to
detail discursive practices that are central in legitimation (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999; van
Leeuwen, 2008). This perspective is helpful as it focuses on the rhetorical (Suddaby & Greenwood,
2005) or discursive (Vaara & Tienari, 2008; Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012) strategies that are central in
studies of legitimation in the context of institutions and organizations. Furthermore, this perspective
allows one to place these strategies in context; in particular, to place these discursive practices in
the broader context of social practices that play a central role the production and consumption of
discourse (Fairclough, 1989, 2003). While CDA has been used in analyses of the media (Fairclough,
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1997), its full potential has not, however, been used to focus on the role of the media in legitimation
specifically. Thus, I will complement this approach by drawing from other critically oriented media
studies (Bourdieu, 1998; Fiske, 1994; Thompson, 1995) and research on mediatization, that is
studies on how the media in terms of its practices affects political and organizational processes in
contemporary society (Lundby, 2009; Mazzoleni & Schultz, 1999).
As a result, this paper outlines a three-part framework that identifies and elaborates on the dynamics
of legitimacy struggles. First, there are central actors who acquire and are given positions in
legitimacy struggles. Their discourses are central in legitimation struggles, and these discourses
involve rhetorical arguments as well as reproduce underlying assumptions regarding knowledge,
identity and ideology. Second, the discourses of the central actors are mediated by the mass and
social media. In particular, the media plays a central role in staging, which involves placing some
actors and discourses in the frontstage and leaving others in the backstage. The media also edits the
actors’ discourses and engages in storying in terms of creating an ongoing – usually dramatized –
meta-narrative of the struggle. In all this, the media exercises significant power in terms of
regulating and steering the legitimacy struggles. Third, the audiences then make sense of the
mediatized discourses in terms of assessing the authority position of the central actors, whether
specific decisions, actions or phenomena are legitimate or not, as well as in reproducing and
naturalizing underlying assumptions. These responses then have a major impact on both the central
actors’ positions and discourses as well as on the media.
This analysis contributes to our theoretical understanding of legitimation in mediatized society. In
particular, it helps to move from a sender-receiver model to a view that helps to distinguish between
and elaborate both on the central actors’ rhetorical strategies and the practices through which the
media steers legitimacy struggles. Furthermore, this paper also contributes to the discursive studies
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
of legitimation more generally by extending and complementing the CDA approach with an explicit
analysis of mediatization.
LEGITIMATION IN AND THROUGH THE MEDIA: OVERVIEW OF PRIOR
RESEARCH
Legitimation Strategies and Legitimacy Judgments
Legitimacy is a key concept in social sciences and plays a central role especially in institutional
analysis (Scott, 1995; Colyvas & Powell, 2006; Deephouse & Suchman, 2008). It can be defined as
a sense of appropriateness stemming from both more or less legitimation efforts and legitimacy
judgments (Bitekhtine, 2011; Tost, 2011). It involves aspects such as pragmatic, moral and
cognitive legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), and close look at legitimacy reveals its multiple dimensions
and in-built tensions (Bitekhtine, 2011). There are many different approaches to studying
legitimacy, but I will in what follows focus on its discursive aspects to be able to focus on the
micro-level of legitimation processes.
Existing research has focused special attention on legitimation strategies, that is more or less
deliberate attempts to impact legitimacy (Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). This has involved
analyses of impression management (Elsbach and Sutton, 1992; Elsbach, 1994; Creed et al., 2002),
rhetorical (Green, 2004; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005) and discursive strategies (Lefsrud & Meyer,
2012; Vaara et al., 2006; Vaara & Tienari, 2008). For example, Green (2004) explained how the
diffusion of a practice depends on discursive justifications. When examining the legitimation of a
new type of organizational form, Suddaby and Greenwood (2005) identified a range of rhetorical
strategies that were used in legitimation. Golant and Sillince (2007) in turn provided a narrative
perspective where the construction of organizational legitimacy is dependent on both the
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
persuasiveness of organizational storytelling (evaluative legitimacy) and on the realization of a
taken-for-granted narrative structure (cognitive legitimacy).
Others have then focused attention on legitimacy judgments, that is the evaluations of people
confronted with controversial issues. Tost (2010) has recently developed a model that helps to
understand key dimensions of legitimacy judgments and key stages in the process of evaluation. In
this view, legitimacy judgments deal with instrumental, relational and moral content. Typically, the
process of legitimacy judgment involves initial judgment formation, reassessment and use stages.
Bitekhtine (2011) in turn distinguishes cognitive legitimacy judgment, status judgment,
sociopolitical legitimacy judgment and reputation judgment as key parts of this process.
Several studies have emphasized that media acts as a central legitimating arena and distinguished
media legitimacy as a key aspect of legitimacy (Bansal & Clelland, 2004; Bednar, 2012; Deephouse,
1996; Lamertz & Baum, 1998; Pollock and Rindova, 2003). Bitekhtine (2011) defines this media
legitimacy as reflected in communications through printed media, TV, or radio broadcasts. I will
follow this approach, but emphasize that in contemporary society various types of social media also
act as important legitimation arenas and complementing channels for more traditional mass media.
Studies of celebrity firms have highlighted the ways in which the media provides special kind of
identity and legitimacy for particular corporations – and not others (Pollock and Rindova, 2003;
Rindova et al., 2006). Others have studied reputation – a concept closely linked with legitimacy –
and demonstrated how positive media legitimacy implies reputation that firms can use as capital
(Deephouse & Suchman, 2008; Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Fombrun & Rindova, 2000). This is
especially the case with celebrity firms (Rindova et al., 2006). Studies on corporate crises, scandals
and corruption have in turn examined the problems and challenges that the media poses on
legitimacy (Boje et al., 2004; Jonsson, Greve & Fujiwara-Greve, 2009; Lamin & Zaheer, 2012;
Riaz et al., 2010). For example, Boje et al. (2004) examined the Enron scandal from a critical
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
dramaturgical perspective and demonstrated how legitimacy turned into illegitimacy in and through
the extensive media coverage. Vaara and Monin (2010) in turn showed how the media first created
a legitimating hype around a new kind of merger and then contributed to delegitimation of the same
merger in terms of an escalation of an organizational crisis.
Despite these advances, the fact remains that existing studies of legitimacy and legitimation have
usually followed and reproduced a sender-receiver model of communication where the emphasis
has been on the rhetorical strategies of corporate representatives and other actors on the one hand
and legitimacy judgments of organizational stakeholders on the other. However, the role of the
media in giving voice to and staging actors, editing of messages or creating stories has been left
with little explicit attention. In particular, the mediatization of legitimacy struggles requires more
attention. While there are alternative approaches to studying mediatization, I will in what follows
focus on its discursive aspects to be able to expand understanding of the micro-level dynamics of
legitimacy struggles.
Mediatization of Legitimacy Struggles
While media and communication studies have focused a great deal of attention on the role of the
journalists and other actors as well as communication technologies, management and organization
research has focused relatively little attention on the media. This is undoubtedly partly due to
tradition and a division of labor between the disciplines. This view, however, limits our
understanding of how corporations and other organizations operate in mediatized society and what
happens in legitimacy struggles.
The central role of the media in contemporary society has been extensively discussed by critical
sociologists and philosophers. Among the most influential contributions, Habermas (2006) argued
that mediated political communication in the public sphere can facilitate deliberative legitimation
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
processes only if a self-regulating media system gains sufficient independence. Baudrillard (1981)
claimed that the media plays a central role in the creation of self-serving ‘hyper-reality.’ Bourdieu
(1998) argued that the media often ‘banalizes’ issues and reproduces what the audiences already
know or want to see or hear, which has a legitimating function in society at large. Castells (1996)
stated that the media is the new central political arena, but that the network society is transforming
the way ‘media spaces’ work. Without going into the details, many scholars thus emphasize the
central of the media in legitimation, although these analyses have rarely focused on the details of
discursive legitimation.
Such development has recently been coined by the term mediatization. Mediatization is a concept
used to argue that the media shapes the processes and discourses of communication and society at
large (Couldry, 2008; Hjarvard, 2008; Mazzoleni & Schulz, 1999). On the one hand, mediatization
means that the media – and not only the mass media – exercises a great deal of power in terms of
influencing what people can see or hear. On the other hand, other organizations and institutions
have to adapt to the media’s pressure, showing in adaptation of practices and processes in politics,
education, religion or business (Mazzoleni & Schultz, 1999; Lundby 2009). While one can overall
examine mediatization as a general phenomenon, media studies have underscored the fact that the
media is such composed of a number of actors, processes and practices (Thompson, 1995). This is
reflected for example in distinctive genres of communication and journalism; for example
investigative journalism is very different from news reporting in business journalism (Kjaer &
Slaatta, 2007). Furthermore, the media is in itself in a state of change in terms of the social media
and new technologies challenging conventional practices and creating new modes and forms of
communication. While an in-depth analysis of the media would as such require a more fine grained
analysis, I will in what follows mostly focus on the general practices in and through which the mass
media affects legitimation processes without elaborating on the differences in specific types of
media or forms of communication.
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
A critical discursive approach is useful in that it allows one to focus on the micro-level of discursive
legitimacy struggles. Critical discourse analysis has already been used to study legitimation in
applied linguistics (van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999; van Leeuwen, 2008) as well as in organization
studies (Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012; Vaara & Monin, 2010; Vaara & Tienari, 2008). While this body of
work has mostly focused on legitimation strategies, CDA provides means to expand the analysis to
also focus on the central mediating role of the media. This is because this perspective allows one to
distinguish between discursive (or linguistic) practices and the broader social practices of
production and consumption of which the discursive practices are a part of. Thus, CDA helps to put
specific discursive legitimation strategies in their broader social, societal and even sociomaterial
context. CDA has also been used to focus on the media. For instance, Fairclough (1997) has
examined the role of the media from a CDA perspective, and van Dijk (1998) has elaborated on its
processes and linkage to power and ideology. Thus, CDA provides a theoretico-methodological
basis for an analysis of discursive legitimation in mediatized society.
In the following, I will outline a model of discursive legitimation that distinguishes between
organization actors’ legitimation strategies, the media's discourse practices and legitimacy
judgments and elaborates on their inter-relationships. Figure 1 below provides a summary of this
model.
--- Insert Figure 1 about here ---
ACTORS AND THEIR RHETORIC IN LEGITIMATION STRUGGLES
Legitimation involves at least three important aspects: positioning, rhetorical legitimation strategies,
and underlying assumptions in legitimating discourse.
Positioning. Corporate representatives, managers, employee representatives, union leaders,
politicians and other actors acquire and are given specific positions to speak from. This is a key part
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
of classical rhetoric in terms of the ‘ethos,’ that is the expression of moral virtue, knowledge and
expertise (Aristotle, 1954), or ‘stance,’ that is a position taken by rhetorical means to persuade the
audience (Booth, 1963; Golden & Coleman, 1978). While the rhetorical view implies an active
positioning on the part of the actor, discourse analysis in turn underscores the subject positions that
are provided in an through discourses, that is a structure of rights and abilities created by the
prevailing discourses (Fairclough, 1992; Hardy & Phillips, 2004). The key point is that in
legitimation struggles, actors position themselves to be able to persuade and convince an audience;
this not only results in apparent positioning in terms of protagonists and antagonists, but is also
closely related to the identity and authority of the actors (Granqvist & Laurila, 2011; Lefsrud &
Meyer, 2012). In mediatized legitimation struggles, this positioning is greatly affected by staging by
the media, but of course the actors themselves can also influence this staging by skillful
communication and media strategies.
Legitimation strategies. Positioning may be seen as a legitimating strategy in its own right, but I
will here focus on the rhetorical legitimation strategies that are typically used in legitimation
struggles. These can be defined as the discursive means through which actors attempt to legitimate,
delegitimate or relegitimate specific events, decisions, actions or the issues at hand. The roots of
these rhetorical strategies can be traced in ethos, logos and pathos in Aristotelian rhetoric (Aristotle,
1954), inspiring contemporary work in rhetoric and discourse analysis. Recent studies have
elaborated on such strategies. Drawing on New Rhetoric, Suddaby and Greenwood (2005)
identified the following strategies: ontological (rhetoric based on premises on what can or cannot
exist or co-exist), historical (appeals to history and tradition), teleological (divine purpose or final
cause), cosmological (emphasis on inevitability), and value-based theorizations (appeals to wider
belief systems). Other researchers have drawn especially from van Leeuwen's theory (or
‘grammar’) of legitimation that distinguishes between authorization (creation of legitimacy on the
basis of authoritative claims), rationalization (legitimation based on rational arguments),
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
moralization (legitimation based on moral claims) and mythopoiesis (legitimation by narrattive) as
core legitimation strategies (van Leeuwen, 2008). For example, Vaara et al. (2006) used and further
elaborated on this framework in an analysis of a contested merger, and Vaara and Tienari (2008)
applied it to study organizational shutdowns. Meyer and Höllerer linked this approach with framing
to study meanings of shareholder value (2010), and Lefsrud and Meyer (2012) have used it to
examine climate change. Usually research has focused on the linguistic aspects of legitimation, but
these strategies can of course also be multi-modal, that is include various type of semiosis (Meyer et
al., 2013).
Underlying assumptions. In addition to the more or less deliberate strategies used to legitimate,
delegitimate or relegitimate, discourses may also have legitimating power that easily passed
unnoticed – a feature that has not been adequately addressed in previous research on legitimation
strategies. For instance, by a repetition of specific concepts, frameworks or discourses, these may
become uncontested bases of the discussion and naturalized ways of making sense of the
phenomenon in question. This may have fundamental implications on the parameters and nature of
the legitimating discussion; for example, specific conceptual frameworks may bring with them
underlying assumptions that reproduce specific worldviews or ideologies. Furthermore, it is
interesting – albeit very difficult – also to focus attention on what is not explicitly stated or
discussed in the legitimacy struggles. From a rhetorical perspective, such unsaid elements may be
seen as enthymemes, that is arguments that are not complete, but still reproduce specific
assumptions (Jackson & Jacobs, 1980). In CDA, such missing elements can be conceptualized as
the ‘unsaid,’ that is what is not explicitly said because it is already known or for example a taboo.
Such elements may, however, be extremely important to develop an in-depth understanding of
legitimacy. This is because an absence of discussion may be seen an indication of taken-for-granted
that is a key part of cognitive legitimacy (Tost, 2011). From a critical perspective, these
legitimation elements may also be linked with ideology (van Dijk, 1998). For example, autopoietic
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repetition or the absence of specific issues may precisely reproduce commonly held ideological
assumptions.
MEDIATIZATION
The media plays a crucial role in the public discussion around contested issues. This mediation,
especially in the case of the mass media, involves at least three important discursive processes:
staging, editing and storying.
Staging. Staging is a key process in which the media warrants voice to actors in terms of media
time and space. In its simplest form, this means that some issues become publicly debated
legitimacy struggles while others do not, and that some actors get their voices heard while others do
not. In the mass media, journalists tend to govern this process, but it should be noted that especially
with the new social media, this staging may also take other kinds of forms. The term staging implies
backstage and frontstage as in Goffmanian analysis of social performance (Goffman, 1959). For
example, Wodak (2011) has recently used these concepts to study how EU politicians’ discourse in
different arenas. My purpose here is to underline that the only some actors may be provided
frontstage in mediatized legitimation struggles and that this staging defines the positions that they
can speak from in the frontstage of legitimacy struggles (see the previous section). For instance, the
media tends to simplify the positions in terms of who is seen as a protagonist or antagonist in a
given legitimacy struggle. This staging also provides an opportunity for some actors to become
experts or specialists. For example, Riaz, Buchanan and Bapuji (2011) showed how academics
emerged as experts promoting change in policy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis while
the US Federal Reserve took the lead on maintaining the status quo on regulation-related issues.
Editing. The media and in particular journalists also engage in editing the rhetoric and discourse of
the actors involved in legitimacy struggles (Kjaer & Slaatta, 2007). This involves both the selection
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and modification of actors’ messages as well as adding new content in terms of metatext and
journalistic commentary. Without going into the details of these processes and practices which
differ enormously across different types of media, the bottom line is that the initial content or
intended rhetorical arguments may or may not get media space and time. In fact, the media edits
discourse in ways that serve its own interests, in the end providing content that provides news and
entertainment value for the audience (Bourdieu, 1998; Fiske, 1994). A key point is that the
rhetorical arguments that characterize mediatized legitimacy struggles are often of hybrid nature:
combinations of initial rhetorical arguments and media-specific editing. This hybridity has, however,
received little attention in prior research on legitimation strategies. Another key point is that the
media often reproduces ‘commonplaces,’ that is what the audience wants to see or hear (Bourdieu,
1998). Thus, the media often tends to reproduce and naturalize underlying taken-for-granted
assumptions.
Storying. Furthermore, the media also creates stories and drama. This happens not only in specific
instances of media coverage, but also tends to continue to over time when covering specific issues.
For instance, the media tends to create and develop stories around celebrity firms (Rindova et al.,
2006) and media mega-spectacles around corporate scandals (Boje et al., 2004). This dramatization
is obviously related to staging and editing at any instance, but the result may over time be
conceptualized as a ‘metanarrative’ of the legitimacy struggle. This ‘living’ metanarrative is thus
something that the media continuously develops and adds to. By so doing, the media not only
‘reports’ or ‘steers’ the discussion, but also creates ‘megaspectacles’ or ‘hyperreality’ in its own
right. This kind of discursive agency – or the power of the mediatized discourse in its own right – is
an important force that often intensifies the legitimacy struggles. This can be seen for example in
legitimacy struggles turning to field configuring events (Hardy & Maguire, 2010) or in the
escalation of legitimacy crises (Boje et al., 2004).
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LEGITIMACY JUDGMENTS
Legitimacy is ultimately dependent on legitimacy judgments or people’s interpretations of
legitimacy or illegitimacy (Bitekhtine, 2011; Tost, 2011). For the sake of simplicity, I will not
distinguish between various audiences or stakeholders, although it is important to emphasize that
they may evaluate legitimacy in very different ways (Lamin & Zaheer, 2012) and that the
consumption practices may overall vary a great deal across audiences (Couldry, 2004). A key point
is that legitimacy are multifaceted in terms of involving multiple levels of analysis as to what is
being legitimated or delegitimated. Hence, I will in the following focus on the legitimation of
authority positions, actions and issues, and underlying assumptions.
Legitimation of authority positions. A fundamental aspect of legitimation is that it not only deals
with the issue at hand, but also the authority and power position of the actor in question (Rojo &
van Dijk 1997, van Leeuwen, 2008). This is crucial in terms of understanding legitimation around
contested issues. At one level, any rhetorical arguments are judged on the basis of the credibility of
the speaker; this is a key aspect of any legitimation judgments. For example, those who are seen as
trustworthy are in a completely different position from those whose authority has been challenged
in legitimacy struggles. More generally, the legitimacy of a specific issue is linked with the
legitimacy of the actors involved and especially those who are held responsible or accountable. For
instance, the legitimation of a merger is linked with the legitimacy of the new top management, and
the delegitimation of the merger tends to result in the delegitimation of the management of the
corporation (Vaara & Monin, 2010). The crucial point is that the positioning and staging of the
actors is thus closely linked with the how they are perceived by the people making legitimacy
judgments; this is a dynamic relationship that may change over time.
Legitimation of actions and issues. Legitimacy judgments focus on specific events, actions or
decisions that may be seen as legitimate, legitimate or something in between (Bitekhtine, 2011;
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Tost, 2011). In many cases, the issues at hand involve a number or related events, actions or
decisions, and thus legitimacy judgments may often be complex, ambiguous and even contradictory.
It is also possible, that specific decisions or actions may be deemed legitimate or illegitimate, while
the bigger issues may be looked at otherwise. Furthermore, legitimacy judgments may change over
time in the course of the legitimacy struggles. Thus, it is particularly interesting and important to
examine the dynamics of legitimation, delegitimation and relegitimation processes.
Legitimation of underlying assumptions. In addition to the focal issues, legitimacy judgments also
deal with underlying assumptions about institutions and ideology. In fact, it is this more general
sense of what is being legitimated that is central in terms of understanding the broader implications
of legitimacy struggles; for example, whether specific institutions are legitimated, delegitimated or
relegitimated. The legitimacy struggles can also be seen as ideological as legitimation usually
involves the mobilization of value-laden standpoints and moral assumptions that are linked with
ideologies (Rojo & van Dijk, 1997; van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999). For instance, in their study of
contested merger, Vaara et al. (2006) demonstrated how the legitimating discussion involved the
reproduction of ‘banal nationalism’ and ‘global capitalism’ as underlying ideological bases of the
legitimacy struggle (Vaara et al., 2006). Furthermore, as discussed above, it is important to examine
those aspects of legitimation discourses that seem to be uncontested as well as what is not said at all
to understand the deeper-level aspects of legitimation struggles.
Finally, the responses of the audiences in general and their legitimacy judgments in particular have
a major impact on both the central actors’ positions and discourses as well as on the media. For
example, the politicians have to follow the reactions of their constituencies and corporate
representatives the responses of their key stakeholders. The media’s attention in turn depends on
whether their audiences are interested or ’entertained’ by the media coverage.
CONCLUSION
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In spite of the central role of media in contemporary society, there is a lack of understanding of how
legitimation unfolds in mediatized society. To partially fill this gap, this paper has outlined a
framework that elucidates the key processes at play from a critical discursive perspective.
By elucidating the role of the media in legitimacy struggles, this analysis contributes to a fuller
understanding of legitimacy struggles and legitimation processes (Deephouse & Suchman, 2008;
Bitekhtine, 2011; Suchman, 1995; Tost, 2011). More specifically, this study helps to understand
how the media steers and regulates legitimacy struggles. This happens by staging actors, which has
a crucial influence on the positions that they can occupy and speak from in legitimacy struggles.
The media also edits the messages of the actors, which implies that the discursive legitimation
strategies observed in the media have a hybrid nature. Furthermore, by engaging in dramatic
storying, the media creates metanarratives that may in and of themselves intensify the legitimation
struggles. In all this, the media also reproduces and naturalizes underlying assumptions about the
institutions or ideology, sometimes in ways that pass unnoticed. Finally, the media is obviously
dependent on the people’s responses, to the extent that the media often arguably reproduces what
the people want to see or hear and already know.
This study has specific implications on research on the discursive aspect of legitimation (Phillips et
al, 2004; Suddaby & Greenwood, 2005). In particular, this analysis highlights the hybrid nature of
mediatized discursive legitimation strategies, which has received little attention in previous research.
This partly due to the fact that discourse scholars have mostly focused on the linguistic aspects of
media texts, without making distinctions between the actors’ original messages and the media’s
editing practices (Rojo & van Dijk 1997; Vaara & Tienari, 2008; van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999).
Unraveling this hybridity and the processes and practices that underlie specific discursive strategies
can thus be seen as major challenge for future research in this area. Another key aspect that this
analysis highlights is the ‘hidden’ aspect of legitimation that stems not from deliberate legitimation
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strategies but the ways in which the discourse more generally repeats or reproduces underlying
assumptions. This discursive aspect of legitimation is difficult to capture, but can be traced for
example by examining the repetition of specific concepts, ideas and discourses or by focusing
attention on the taken-for-granted assumptions that are left unsaid.
While this analysis has focused on the key role of the media in general and mass media in particular,
it is important to go further in analyzing the distinctive features and differences across media outlets
and genres. In particular, the social media and the way in which it is linked with the mass media and
creates new forms of consumption should be given special attention in future research. These may
result interesting forms of front- and backstaging that warrant specific attention. Untangling the
ways in which media edits and transforms texts may require new kinds of methods in terms of
tracing chains of communication and versions of texts; for instance, combining textual analysis with
analysis of the sociomaterial production and consumption practices. Such research should also take
the various audiences and their consumption practices seriously to better understand how
stakeholders engage in legitimating, delegitimating or relegitimation processes; in particular, it
would be interesting to examine the role of ‘entertainment value’ in these processes. Finally, it is
important to emphasize that the development of technology, virtual platforms and the social media
has made these processes increasingly multimodal, and thus future research on legitimation should
focus special attention on the multimodality of legitimation.
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Adjusting of rhetoric to media
RHETORIC:
- Positioning
- Legitimation
strategies
- Underlying
assumptions
Need to sell and entertain
MEDIATIZATION:
- Staging
- Editing
- Storying
Processes of production
LEGITIMACY
JUDGMENTS:
- Authority position
- Actions and issues
- Underlying
assumptions
Processes of consumption
Figure 1 Dynamics of legitimation in mediatized society
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Struggles of Legitimacy in Mediatized Society
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