We welcome Hepp et al.’s (2015) response to our recent critique of the concept of ‘Mediatization’(Deacon and Stanyer, 2014), which they also use to showcase new literature on this topic. Their article demonstrates why further robust debate on this matter is needed. For when internationally renowned academics start to declare ‘paradigmatic shifts’, then a much wider community of scholars need to consider whether or not the earth is moving for them (see Hepp et al., 2015: 314–315, 321). Before further clarifying our position, we want to emphasize we are not denying that media institutions and technologies are of historical and ongoing significance. Nor that their role and power may be changing in profound and unpredictable ways. What we are challenging is the rise of a concept that claims to provide a ‘holistic’theoretical framework for explaining and analysing such processes, but, in its application and trajectory, risks compounding conceptual confusion and thereby misdirecting the field. Our response here is limited to what we identify as the main issues to emerge from our recent dialogue with Hepp and his colleagues.

Of central concern are the related matters of ‘media causality’and ‘media centrism’, which we identified as inherent tendencies within the mediatization literature. In response, Hepp et al. accuse us of failing to appreciate that the concept is concerned about the interrelationship between mediatization and wider social cultural transformations, rather than the influence of the former over the latter. Furthermore, they claim we mistake ‘media centredness’ for ‘media centrism’. We accept that this is no vanity of small difference, for to be