Texto P2.

Mediatization Effects on Political News, Political Actors, Political Decisions,

and Political Audiences

We define mediatization as the growing intrusion of media logic as an institutional rule into
fields where other rules of defining appropriate behavior prevailed (see Chapter 7).
Mediatization can lead to an enhancement, adaptation, obstruction, or even substitution of
political functions by the logic of the media system. At its extreme it can lead to a state of
‘mediatized politics’ where politics ‘has lost its autonomy, has become dependent in its
central functions on mass media, and is continuously shaped by interactions with mass
media’ (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999: 250). The professional, commercial, and technological
production rules of the media –its operating logic – are important requirements which
political actors must take into account if they are to receive publicity, public support, and
legitimacy. Media logic provides an incentive structure that contextualizes, and often shapes,
political processes – particularly those that are dependent on publicity and public support.
From this it follows that – contrary to a priori assumptions of a fully transformed ‘media
democracy’ – the concept of mediatization does not assume a complete ‘colonialization’ of
politics by the media. Rather we expect that some institutions, stages, and activities in the
political process will be mediatized more than others, depending on how media-compatible
they are (Marcinkowski 2005). Those characterized by the power- and publicity-gaining
self-presentational aspects of political logic are more likely to be affected by media logic than
those characterized by the policy- and decision-based production aspects. Put simply:
political institutions in need of publicity are easier to mediatize than others (Marcinkowski
and Steiner 2010).

We acknowledge that mediatization may endanger the functioning of representative

democracy in some parts and to some degree but assume that the process of mediatization
is not one-sided and self-contained. Mediatization is not one-sided because not everything
that looks like media dominance can actually be attributed to the independent behavior of
journalists. Often it is political actors themselves who use the mass media for their own
ends: they may anticipate media logic by staging events whose sole purpose it is to generate
news coverage for their own interests; they may have an interest in playing up certain media
issues and playing down others in an effort to hurt the opposition; or they may substitute
political activities by mediated activities if the latter allow them to mobilize their base more
effectively than via party channels. Despite growing attempts by political actors to
professionalize their selfmediatization strategies, there is plenty of evidence that political
actors quickly lose control over the news agenda – not the least because the media dislikes
to be instrumentalized.

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Mediatization of politics as a multi-dimensional concept

To gauge the degree of mediatization, Strömbäck (2008, see also Strömbäck and Esser
2009) has suggested a useful typology that distinguishes four dimensions of mediatization.
Developing this a little further, we distinguish four dimensions of mediatization focusing on
(1) contents, (2) actors, (3) organizations and processes, and (4) audiences of political
communication.

- The first dimension examines whether media coverage of political affairs is

predominantly shaped by media logic or political logic.
- The second dimension examines how political actors (individuals) are guided by
elements of media logic.
- The third dimension investigates how political organizations and decision-making
institutions (parties, governments, interest groups, negotiation committees, and
bargaining processes) are affected by media logic.
- The fourth dimension investigates the effects of mediatization on people’s
knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors.

An important pre-condition for mediatization processes is the growing independence of the

media from political institutions. This historical process has progressed at different rates and
to different levels in contemporary societies. In most cases, though, the mass media have
established themselves as a highly influential new player in the intermediary system of
society, now competing for attention and credibility with parties, churches, unions, interest
groups, and other ‘old’ intermediaries. International surveys show that the media have
become the most important source of political information for the wider public, so that the
question of how ‘political reality’ is constructed by the news media is of general importance
(dimension 1). We assume that news production today is more closely linked to media logic
– that is, driven by professional and commercial motives. We also assume that the growing
importance of the media and their media logics has placed great demands on political actors
(dimension 2), on organizations and the intermediary system (dimension 3), on
policy-making institutions (dimension 3), and on citizens (dimension 4). The model of
representative democracy described in Chapter 3 is thus expected to be undergoing
transformational change.

Since we understand mediatization as a developmental process, empirical research should

ideally employ longitudinal designs. Because the main drivers of media logic – professional,
commercial, and technological development – are not universally consistent across
countries, empirical research into mediatization should be context-sensitive and thus adopt
cross-national comparative designs.

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As should also be apparent from the above, the four dimensions of mediatization are highly
intercorrelated. The breakdown into separate dimensions might help clarify the concept and
aid in assessing the degree to which politics in a particular setting is mediatized. This does
not, however, imply that the process of mediatization must be linear or unidirectional. As
argued earlier, it is certainly conceivable that the impact of media logic on political actors,
located within political institutions, varies both within and across countries and across time
and circumstances. Against this background, several main lines of challenges to democracy
can be fleshed out (Chapter 7; see also Chapter 4 on the varieties of democracy).

Precondition: Independence of the news media from political institutions

For the media to have an independent impact upon other social or political actors or
institutions, as implied by the mediatization thesis, they have to form an institution in their
own right. Lucht and Udris (2011; Udris and Lucht 2009) examined the degree of functional
differentiation – or lack of differentiation – between media and political institutions in five
countries over time. This team traced the retreat of organizational links between news
organizations and political organizations in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, and
Great Britain over an almost 50-year period from 1960 to 2008. In each of these countries
(treated as representatives of the democratic-corporatist model, pluralist-polarized, and
liberal model of media–politics relations; see Hallin and Mancini 2004a), the authors studied
the 30 largest printnews titles (popular, mid-market, and quality outlets published daily or
weekly) as well as the most-watched television information programs (pursuing hard news,
soft news, or mixed approaches) for their links to parties, churches, associations, and other
intermediary or government institutions. Their analysis shows that the disentanglement of
the press from their former social and political ties has progressed first and foremost in the
liberal system (Britain), followed by the largest democratic-corporatist system (Germany),
and then by the smallest democratic-corporatist system (Switzerland). In Austria, another
smallish corporatist system, the process is still underway and political parallelism of the
press still fairly noticeable. The only polarized-pluralist system in the sample (France)
provides an ambivalent picture. Developments in the French press are in many ways similar
to those in the other two models but also influenced – and at times offset – by the historically
close ties between media and politics (reflecting the deep cultural embedding of the media
more than its crude instrumentalization). The French television sector has, as in the other
two models, seen the advent of programs mixing hard and soft news but hard news still
accounts for most programs.

From a cross-national and cross-temporal standpoint we can deduce from this study that
mediatization effects are more widespread today than in the past, and that they are most

3
pervasive in the liberal systems and least common in the polarized-pluralist systems. An
important similarity across all systems could be observed with regard to how the
differentiation process takes place: first the circulation of news outlets with close social or
political ties decreases; then news outlets with close social or political ties go either out of
business or cut their former ties to social or political institutions and transform themselves
into purely economic organizations.

Challenge 1: Mediatization of political reality in ‘news’

Given the centrality of media to politics, political actors are continuously involved in efforts to
shape news coverage of political and current affairs. At the same time, the media personnel
do not want to be reduced to passive carriers of political actors’ messages. Journalists view
it as their professional responsibility to act as a watchdog and to make their own decisions
regarding what to cover and how to cover it. Whether journalists or their sources have the
most power in this ‘negotiation of newsworthiness’ (Cook 2005) is a contested issue. What is
consequential in this context is whether news-media content is shaped mainly by the
characteristics and needs of the media or by the wants and needs of political actors and
institutions. In the former case, news-media logic is decisive for how the media cover social
and political affairs, whereas in the latter case political logic is decisive (Strömbäck 2011).
This suggests that the first important aspect of the mediatization of politics is the degree to
which news-media content is determined mainly by news-media logic as opposed to political
logic.

Oftentimes nowadays, the production of news is not primarily driven by the needs of
politicians but by the tastes and preferences of media consumers, potentially giving birth to a
populist political culture (see chapters 7 and 9 of this volume). Such a dominance of media
logic is often theorized to result in a simplification, dramatization, or negative representation
of politics favoring conflict, scandals, and episodic over thematic frames. In fact, political
communication scholars in Europe and North America have observed structural trends in the
news coverage of politics such as a shift from hard news to soft news (Patterson 2000), an
increase of political trivialization (Bennett 2003), a rising negativity in political news coverage
(Farnsworth and Lichter 2007), and a shrinking degree of sound bites by political actors
(Patterson 2000; for European data see Esser 2008a). As should be apparent, all these
developments are expected to have a negative impact on the functioning of representative
democracy. After all they do not help put pressure on politicians to address legitimate
concerns of the public, nor do they put the news media in a more credible position to
demand responsible behavior of politicians – they rather discredit the media’s role within the
chains of responsiveness and accountability (see chapters 3 and 7).

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Along this line of argument, Patterson (2002) has found that – with the rise of interpretive
journalism – media coverage of political campaigns in the US has become overwhelmingly
negative (see also Farnsworth and Lichter 2006). Likewise, findings by Kepplinger’s (1998,
2002) extensive analysis of German newspapers from 1951 to 1995 suggest an increase of
negative statements about politicians (with a constant share of positive statements) and an
increasing amount of items referring to problems (with a decreasing amount describing
solutions).

Beyond the increasing negative characterization of politics (as a consequence of

mediatization), Patterson’s (1993) content analysis of US news magazines also found a
rising share of horse-race journalism, focusing on strategies, personalities, and campaign
tactics rather than on substantial issue frames. Research indicates that this development is
less present in Europe compared to the US (see for instance, Wilke and Reinemann 2000).
Still, with a diminishing level of substance in political coverage, the watchdog function of
journalism is undermined and the media platform is more often used by journalists or ‘the
man in the street’ than by substantive experts or politicians. The consequences of these
forms of coverage are predominantly negative. For instance, horse-race coverage has been
shown to foster public distrust, particularly among politically less sophisticated people
(Cappella and Jamieson 1997).

Another line of research has investigated the personalization of politics as an indicator of

mediatization. Though research on personalization has been characterized by various
theoretical frameworks, disagreement about definitions, and diverse methodologies (see
Adam and Maier 2010), the prevailing key argument is that news coverage emphasizing
candidates, politicians, and personalities has increased over time when compared to
organizations, parties, and issues. Several reasons for this observation have been
suggested. One the one hand, it is expected that the media increasingly ‘have a limited
capability to transmit a full and complete picture of the political world, so they give priority to
those aspects that can be transformed into good media products’ (Campus 2010: 221). On
the other hand, it is believed that the relevance of political parties in the political
communication process is waning, and this, in turn, opens the floor to personalities as
transmitters of political messages (Dalton 2000). The negative implications of a rising
personalization of politics for the functioning of democracy are straightforward: when serious,
argument-based issue politics is increasingly displaced by political performers that ‘have
gained the status of celebrities, like rock stars or movie stars’ (Campus 2010: 223), the
public is seduced into making superficial judgments based on largely irrelevant criteria.

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Despite its intuitive appeal, however, there is only limited support for the personalization
thesis in recent scholarly literature (Adam and Maier 2010; Kriesi 2011; Vliegenthart et al.
2010). In fact, neither has personalization of media content increased over the past decades,
nor is there a rising influence of personality or candidate-based decisionmaking processes in
public opinion formation (Adam and Maier 2010; for cross-country evidence, see Kriesi
2011).

Furthermore, with news content determined by media logic, the lines between news and
entertainment become increasingly blurred. As Blumler and Kavanagh (1999: 225) have put
it,

Key boundaries that previously shaped the political communication field seem to be
dissolving – for example, between ‘political’ and ‘nonpolitical’ genres, between
matters of ‘public’ and ‘private’ concern, between ‘quality’ and ‘tabloid’ approaches to
politics, between journalists serving audiences as ‘informers’ and as ‘entertainers’,
and between ‘mass’ and ‘specialist’, ‘general’ and ‘attentive’ audiences.

This has stimulated a debate about the quality and future of news journalism, culminating in
the question of whether political news will endure to serve its basic function of informing the
public about issues of collective interest.

After all, these trends toward negativity, personalization, and populism can undermine the
chain of responsiveness insofar as they compromise the formation of people’s preferences:
lack of access to substantive information, lack of access to undistorted and diverse
information, and lack of opportunity to deliberate pose serious challenges to a vivid public
sphere and thus democratic life. These content features may also undermine the chain of
accountability by handicapping citizens’ capability to evaluate the inclusiveness and fairness
of the policy-making process as well as properly evaluate political outcomes for their service
to the public good (see Figure 3.2 in Chapter 3).

Yet, the extent to which political news is shaped by media logic is vastly different across
systems, as an ongoing study by Esser (2008a; see also Esser and Buechel 2012; Esser
and Umbricht 2012) indicates. It compares television and newspaper reporting of public
affairs across space and time. The study is interested in the media-centered political
reporting style in which, increasingly, journalists become the stories’ main news-makers, not
politicians or other social actors. This style can be interpreted as professionally motivated
behavior by journalists to increase their influence, authority, and prestige – and, ultimately,
their control over the news content. Its theoretical underpinnings are the concepts of ‘media
intrusion’ (Baran 1990) or ‘journalistic intervention’ (Blumler and Gurevitch 2001). Media

6
interventionism in election campaigns is high when journalists report on politics in their own
words, scenarios, and assessments – and when they, for example, grant politicians only
limited opportunities to present themselves with their own voice in the news.

In accordance with the theoretical accounts outlined so far, the contextual setting of the US
is expected to favor a news culture that displays the largest degree of journalistic
intervention. At the other extreme of the spectrum is France, a prototype of the
polarized-pluralist model of media–politics relations, where the least inclination to journalistic
intervention is expected. These assumptions were tested with a content analysis of
television election news in the US, Great Britain, Germany, and France over two election
cycles. The study found, indeed, evidence of a more interventionist US approach and a
non-interventionist French approach (Esser 2008a). French election stories displayed a
more passive, yielding reporting style and were more structured by political logic whereas
US (and to a lesser degree German) stories were more structured by interventionist media
logic.

In addition to this television study, Esser and Umbricht (2012) conducted a newspaper
content analysis comparing political affairs coverage from six countries (Great Britain, US,
Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France) over five decades (1960–2010). This attempt to map
reporting styles outside election periods also found strong evidence in support of Hallin and
Mancini’s (2004a) three models. Political news coverage in liberal systems is most forcefully
characterized by media logic, in particular by the commercial imperatives of media logic. In
Great Britain and the US (i.e. countries of the liberal system) political news coverage is
characterized by personalization, strategy frames, negativism, conflict-focus, and a generally
audience-grabbing ‘pragmatic’ approach to political reporting. Coverage in Switzerland and
in Germany (i.e. in the countries of the democratic-corporatist model) shows less conflict,
less negativism, less personalization, little to no criticism of the government or governing,
less strategic framing, a greater reliance on established sources, and a generally sacerdotal
approach to political reporting. Beyond the direct implications these results have for the
effectiveness of the chains of responsiveness and accountability, this study also found that
the news media in the different countries under examination contribute to different
understandings of democracy. In their daily political affairs coverage, the Swiss news
organizations exhibit quality standards much more in line with the idealistic conception of a
participatory or consensus democracy, whereas the quality standards being realized in US
news coverage are more in accordance with a pragmatic, more elitist conception.

The finding that Switzerland is an exceptional case – largely protected from destabilizing
influences of an over-commercialized media logic – is confirmed by findings by Matthes et al.

7
(2010) on Swiss news coverage in Swiss direct-democratic campaigns. They found no signs
at all to diagnose a negative or impertinent rendering of politics (as a consequence of
mediatization). For instance, a content analysis of television and newspaper coverage for the
asylum-law campaign revealed that only 6.7 per cent of all statements voiced by political
actors (in news coverage) included a direct attack on the political opponent. By contrast,
news coverage was rather substantial, factual, and based on arguments that were relevant
to the campaign. In contrast to US findings (e.g. Patterson 1993) there was a very low share
of episodic news frames present in the news (only 2.8 per cent). At least in the peculiar case
of Switzerland, there are hardly any traces for a media logic dominating the news. In fact,
Swiss news coverage seems to play a de-escalating role, focusing on substantial arguments
rather than sharp conflict. The exceptional role of the Swiss democracy, which features
already prominently in our comparative discussion of political systems (see Figures 4.5 and
4.9 in Chapter 4 on the varieties of democracy), is also reflected in these findings on the
Swiss media system and news culture.

This general picture was further confirmed by another content analysis of Swiss (and
German) news exploring the question of whether media coverage of political affairs still
reflects features of political logic or is solely driven by a standardized media logic. This study
by Floss and Marcinkowski (2008) finds – in line with expectations – that news coverage of
negotiating processes in Switzerland is characterized by a greater amount of collective
orientation and consensus frames (and framed less in personalized and conflictual scenarios
than in Germany). News framing thus seems to reflect core polity aspects of a country’s
political logic, although it may also contain considerable elements of media logic.

Challenge 2: Consequences of mediatization on political actors and organizations

The more dependent political actors and organizations are on public opinion, and the greater
their need to influence public opinion, the greater their dependence on, and hence their need
to influence, the news media and their coverage. There are three strategies to achieve this
(Strömbäck 2011: 375): one is to leverage the advantage political actors retain with respect
to the access to information that might be transformed into news. Another strategy is through
increased efforts at agenda-building and news management. A third strategy is to make the
media and their potential reactions an important consideration in all political processes, from
the selection of issues to promote, policies to pursue, and people to appoint or nominate, to
the way campaigns are run.

Thus, to influence the news, political actors must devote ever more resources to the task of
news management. And yet, success may come at a price – the adaptation to or adoption of
media logic. Political actors may reach their immediate goal of getting ‘into the news as they

8
wish’, but ‘they may end up losing the war, as standards of newsworthiness begin to become
prime criteria to evaluate issues, policies, and politics’, as Cook (2005: 163) has argued so
forcefully.

The pressure to ‘perform’ in an audience democracy, to be ‘authentic and empathic, populist,

and entertaining’ (Brants et al. 2010: 31) is likely to privilege those actors and organizations
who fully adapt to the media logic. This is particularly true of populist leaders and
movements, potentially resulting in a rise of populism (Mazzoleni 2008a; Mazzoleni et al.
2003; Mény and Surel 2002). In a heavily mediatized democracy populism benefits from a
media complicity (Mazzoleni 2008a), as a result of which the news media rather prefer
popular, that is dramatized and emotionalized, messages (as conveyed by populist political
leaders) over a more neutral but less arousing style of political reporting.

As a consequence, and challenge to democracy, political success might then be determined

by media competence, not substantive competence (Reinemann 2010), and party leaders
‘are more likely to be chosen because of their ability to deal with the media rather than their
skills of building alliances across social groups and fractions’ (Brants and Voltmer 2011: 6).
As Papadopoulus observed, there is also a risk of a broadening gap between mediatized
‘front-stage’ politics and the more complex policy-making activities which take place at the
‘back-stage’ involving non-elected actors. This could result in a decreasing overlap between
the true policy agenda (driven by the political logic) and the media agenda (driven by the
media logic). This insight also reflects the argument of Chapter 7 that policy is less prone to
mediatization compared to politics.

As another potential threat to democracy, a spiral of mistrust might evolve between

journalists and politicians. The reason is that politicians become more sophisticated in
instrumentalizing journalists for their own purposes and, as a consequence, ‘journalists
complain about politicians who, to control the uncertainty of the outcome of free publicity,
have in a process of “mediatization” professionalized the art of news management and
introduced the framing and packaging of spin’ (Brants et al. 2010: 29). It follows that
journalists might put less trust in politicians, which in turn could have an impact on
politicians’ trust in journalism as well.

There is some evidence for mediatized campaigning strategies by political actors. For
instance, Maurer (2010) found that political actors in Germany (and the news media) largely
fail to precisely communicate their substantial goals and policies. However, our research on
three direct-democratic campaigns conducted in Switzerland came to a more positive
conclusion. Hänggli and Kriesi (2010) and Hänggli (2010) report findings indicating that the
news media rather faithfully reproduce the framing by camps present in direct-democratic

9
campaigns. Using a content analysis of all campaign material and all campaign news
coverage (television and newspaper), they could show that the frames in the news media
generally correspond to the frames found in the media input communicated by political
actors. They also found that the ratio between pro and contra arguments in news was
around one, signaling that the media generally tended to balance the news. Personal
interviews conducted with all main campaigners supported the conclusion that media
coverage was balanced rather than biased. Only very few campaigners felt they were
treated badly in their respective news coverage. The study also found that there was a clear
dialogue between the camps visible in news coverage. That is, the audience was given the
possibility of learning about the positions of all camps involved. Nevertheless, such
campaign dialogue was, as could be expected, significantly less present in free news media.
The free press mediated less and provided a less coherent picture. These newspapers
mainly reprinted the information provided by the news agency.

Compared to the media input, however, there were a few differences in the media’s news
reporting. First, media input involving attacks and conflicts was generally more likely to be
covered. Still (and quite remarkably), substantive frames largely dominated all campaigns.
Thus, there was strong indication that Swiss direct-democratic campaigns were primarily
conducted in substantive terms. Second, the news media rarely increased the share of the
main frames compared to the media input because the respective political actors were very
active with advertisements and focused on the respective frames in their ads. Third,
compared to media input, the media increased the share of counterframes three times.
These findings again reflect a media logic that favors dialogue and vital exchange of
arguments. Taken together, the findings of this project are not at all alarming for the quality of
direct-democratic campaigns. Overall, one could say that the news media are doing quite a
good job in this specific context. They mediate the frames provided by political actors.
Rephrased, instead of political actors (and their campaign material) being governed by a
media logic, one could conclude that media content is governed by a political logic.

From a different vantage point, the study of Swiss direct-democratic campaigns revealed
additional findings that are compatible with this claim. Thus, in his extensive analysis of eight
direct-democratic campaigns, Bernhard (2010) analyzed the role of the news media in
explaining the campaign-related power of political actors. Starting with the general
observation that the media have become an autonomous force in politics, Bernard
conducted interviews with all relevant campaign managers who acted on behalf of their
respective organizations. Campaign-related power was measured with reputational
indicators based on a series of questions. Combining these data with a content analysis of
campaign coverage, he found that media coverage increased rather than decreased

10
campaign-related power. Furthermore, results suggested that the amount of resources in
general and of money in particular have a positive impact on power, though this influence is
much smaller than is commonly expected. Based on these findings, Bernhard (2010: 18)
concludes that,

direct democracy thus not only enables weak actors (such as parliamentary
minorities or even outsiders) to provoke a public debate on issues of their concern,
but also to gain a fair amount of media access. In this sense, Swiss media can be
credited with a ‘democratizing force’ in these campaigns.

This underscores the importance of political communication as a key precondition of

democracy (Chapter 2), and its positive contribution to democracy if the news media’s role is
confined to mediation rather than mediatization. It also illustrates the importance of polity
again, that is, of specific contextual conditions, which in the case of Switzerland seem rather
favorable for positive media effects (see chapters 4 and 7).

Challenge 3: Consequences of mediatization on political organizations and

decision-making institutions

Media-driven democratic systems are assumed to cause the decline of political parties as
parties lose their function to mediate between the people and the government to the mass
media. The US is the prototype of a decaying system in which the candidates no longer
need the parties to reach the voters but instead rely completely on the media (Patterson
1993). The situation in Europe is different. Although political leaders may run campaigns
independently of the traditional party system, as the Italian example of Berlusconi
demonstrated, the usual pattern is still that candidates are nominated by party organizations
and that the campaigns depend to a high degree on the party organizations (Mazzoleni and
Schulz 1999). Nevertheless, even in Europe parties are pressurized to adapt to a changing
mass communication environment. This raises the question of whether mediatization could
damage the party structure of European democracy, or undermine its reputation as being an
effective political order.

A comprehensive study by Jarren, Donges, and Vogel (Donges 2008; Donges and Vogel
2008; Jarren 2008b; Steiner and Jarren 2009; Vogel 2010) analyzed party organizations in
Austria, Germany, Great Britain, and Switzerland. They aimed to assess the extent to which
the rules and repercussions of media logic challenge long-established mass parties in their
execution of core democratic functions.

11
In the four countries, the study finds that mediatization clearly influences organizational
structures and behaviors of political parties – and particularly those structures and behaviors
that are responsible for the ‘self-presentation of politics’. Since structural changes in this
sector are rather similar across parties, this can be read as evidence for reciprocal
observation and imitation of parties across national borders. Different shapes and speeds of
the process can be explained by the importance of polity-related framework conditions that
do not offer the same kind of opportunity structures for media-induced changes. Altogether, it
appears that European parties are very conservative organizations, although – and
especially after election defeats – they are able to adjust to altered environments. An
important environmental factor (among others) are the mass media which, through
consonant and cumulative reporting, are perceived as a powerful institution that controls the
communication infrastructure of society.

Within the mediatization process that triggered structural changes within European party
organizations a three-step process of changed perceptions, structural change, and changes
in output can be distinguished (Donges 2008; Donges and Vogel 2008): the change process
starts with the perception within party organizations that the media and mass media
communication have become an increasingly relevant factor in their operational
environmental. Communication is no longer viewed a mere ‘add-on’ to policy making. Party
organizations monitor and imitate one another, so that structural changes within one
organization are copied quickly by others. With regard to structural changes, the responses
to mediatization within parties manifested themselves most clearly in the expansion of
organizational structures responsible for communication, and the assignment of additional
staff. Two models of internal change became apparent: the integration of all communication
tasks within one unit, and the differentiation of internal and external communication in
different units. A trend toward bundling competences, tasks and resources in terms of
‘centralization’ could not be confirmed. In particular, parties with a distinctively federal form of
organization found themselves less able to change their internal structures because they
needed to balance the requirements of media communication (for instance, rapid responses)
and internal factions (for instance, collective decision making and consultation). Party
organizations are investing more and more resources in communication, especially
personnel, but these developments must be considered against the background of the
declining membership rates and thus smaller party income. In the amount of financial
resources allocated to communication, a general upward trend is not observable.

The third step concerns output. Although party organizations are found to communicate
more extensively than in the past, a fundamental increase in certain channels of
communication, for instance, press releases or press conferences, is not observable in the

12
majority of parties analyzed. The internet has become the most important tool for internal
communication (intranet), and the most relevant channel of communication to inform party
officials and members before the media can do so. In general, however, new communication
technology seems to supplement rather than replace traditional channels of internal
communication.

A similar three-step process, described here for political parties, was also found to be at
work for governments (Vogel 2010). The current changes in the media environment have
also enabled more possibilities for interest groups and civil society actors. They find new
opportunities to raise issues and influence politics through a mix of private (lobbying) and
public (mediated) campaign strategies (Steiner and Jarren 2010). Or to put this in the
language of our model of representative democracy in Chapter 3: the administrative channel
experiences an extension of access under the influence of mediatization and allows for a
potentially broader representation of interests.

A study by Marcinkowski and collaborators (Floss 2010; Marcinkowski 2007; Schrott and
Spranger 2007; Spörer-Wagner and Marcinkowski 2010a and 2010b) examined the
mediatization of political bargaining processes in Switzerland and Germany. It analyzed how
print and broadcast media covered different negotiating institutions in both countries, such
as the committees mediating between the two chambers of the German and Swiss
parliaments (the German Vermittlungsausschuss and the Swiss Einigungskonferenz) as well
as various government initiated committees like the German committee for sustainability in
financing the social security systems (Rürup Committee) or the joint committee of the
German federal parliament concerned with the reform of the labor market (Hartz
Committee).

In line with differentiation between policy and politics (see Chapter 7), political negotiations
can be made public (front-stage bargaining) or kept private (back-stage bargaining). In the
examples above, all meetings were kept private because experience shows that exclusion of
the public facilitates compromise: concessions can be made and compromise reached
without participants losing their credibility as loyal representative of their respective interests.
Yet, by definition, the rationales of media publicity and political negotiation are hard to
combine: the media call for transparency in political processes and show specific interest in
individuals, conflicts, and negative outcomes. Negotiations, on the other hand, require an
atmosphere of privacy which allows for compromises, communicated to the public as
collective decisions without indicating any winner or loser.

Given this incompatibility between news-media logic and political bargaining logic, a
considerable decline in the quantity and quality of negotiation outcomes seems likely in a

13
mediatized environment. On the other hand, bargaining officials can also exploit the media
public for selfish reasons. For instance, political actors can try to increase their bargaining
power through the mobilization of external support. One effective strategy of going public
may be to leak insider information confidentially to the media. It follows that media
disclosures about delicate negotiations can occur in many ways – by journalists pursuing
transparency (according to professionally motivated media logic) or pursuing
spectacularization of politics (according to commercially motivated media logic), or by
politicians engaging in self-mediatization (according to self-representational political logic) –
and eventually complicate collective decision making.

The study finds, indeed, that media attention creates difficulties for finding a compromise.
But, ultimately, it is not so much media-induced intrusion but negotiators’ self-mediatization
which poses the biggest challenge to successful political bargaining. The study concludes
that, although media logic is omnipresent in the minds of participants, it does not have a
direct destructive effect. A more reciprocal effect is at work where media awareness
(triggered by high-density reporting) leads to communication failures of participants – for
example, by spreading indiscretions and non-authorized information, by inefficient news
management of the negotiation leadership, or by uncoordinated statements of appointed
speakers.

For the concept of mediatization, the studies by Jarren et al. and Marcinkowski et al. both
underscore that the media have an impact on organizational and institutional actors not only
through their coverage but equally so through their very existence. Political actors and
organizations are under pressure to engage in self-mediatization because they causally
attribute power to the media and their operating logic. The subjective perception of media
power is sufficient to prompt changes in political behavior. From the perspective of
democratic theory one may thus conclude that processes of responsiveness and
accountability increasingly follow considerations of media logic.

The second study illustrates also that transparency comes at a cost. This is another lesson
for the chain of accountability described in Chapter 3. Striking a balance between political
values of confidentiality, compromise, and collective decisions on the one hand and news
values of transparency, conflict, and interest-pursuing personalities has become harder to
accomplish. The balance is shifting in favor of the media if considerations of media logic
begin to influence how politicians conduct negotiations (the production of politics) and how
they try to win and ultimately sell negotiations (the politics-oriented self-presentation of
politics). Under conditions of mediatization scholars will also be welladvised to check
whether journalists’ demand for transparency is driven by democracy-related motives

14
(raising answerability) or democracydistant motives (fueling spectacularization), in other
words by professional or commercial imperatives of media logic (see Chapter 7, on
answerability see also Chapter 3).

Challenge 4: Consequences of mediatized information for citizens

Normative theories of modern representative democracies rest on an information

environment that enables citizens to learn about political and social affairs, evaluate the
actions of elected political figures, get information needed for sound decision making, and
communicate their opinions to these representatives. As put by Delli Carpini (2004: 395),
theories of direct democracy assume an even

richer communications environment that helps provide citizens with the motivation,
ability, and opportunity to participate in more ongoing, demanding, and varied ways.
In turn, limitations in the communications environment are pinpointed as a primary
reason why democratic practice falls short of normative expectations, whereas
enhancements to this environment are held out as a way to improve this state of
affairs.

The impact of mediated communication on citizens’ civic attitudes is of special interest for
the fourth dimension of mediatization. This addresses – in the language of the model of
democracy in Chapter 3 – the conditions of a mediated public sphere, in particular the
degree to which people use various kinds of media for information about politics, develop
political perceptions and preferences, make their preferences heard, participate in the
policy-making process, and evaluate the production and self-presentation of politics.

The ways in which the news media portray politics – though these ways vary across
countries (see Esser 2008a; Vliegenthart et al. 2011) – pose a challenge for these
democratic functions, especially with regard to participation. Research has demonstrated, for
instance, that negative media coverage of politics fosters citizens’ dissatisfaction with politics
(Fackler and Lin 1995) as it decreases trust in politicians in particular (Kepplinger et al.
1986) and democracy in general (Della Porta 2000). Dissatisfaction with politics, in turn,
reduces citizens’ willingness to become engaged. It goes without saying that a decrease in
participation (i.e. low voter turnout) affects the very heart of political decision making and
reduces the quality of democratic representation. Furthermore, negative media coverage
might not only be detrimental to the credibility of politicians and politics but also to news
credibility itself (Patterson 2002). As Patterson (2002: 93) suspects, ‘knee-jerk criticism only
weakens the press’s watchdog capacity. When the press condemns everything and
everyone, audiences will shun the messenger.’ Similar effects have been found for

15
horse-race coverage. It points citizens to the power-seeking self-interests and strategic goals
of politicians. As a result, politicians’ substantive frames are perceived as less credible and
more tactically motivated. Such reporting nourishes a spiral of cynicism, with ‘cynicism not
only in terms of politics, politicians, and policy but also vis-à-vis the messengers themselves,
the journalists as the reliable and trustworthy guardians of democracy’ (Brants et al. 2010:
26).

The dissolving boundaries between the genres of news and entertainment, especially, have
– in the eyes of some scholars (e.g. Jamison and Baum forthcoming; Patterson 2000) –
alarming consequences for the citizens’ capacity to fulfill their responsibilities in a
democracy. Findings by Aarts and Semetko (2003), for instance, suggest that tabloid news
users are less informed and involved than users of classic news formats. Also new US
entertainment formats such as The Daily Show by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s
Colbert Report have unwittingly become recognized by citizens as legitimate news sources
and trustworthy political commentators. The use of The Daily Show, for example, has been
found to increase political distrust and decrease support for presidential candidates,
especially for young voters (Morris 2009).

The results of a study by Schemer (2009, 2010a) also demonstrate that only specific media
outlets are likely to arouse voters’ emotions, mainly due to their style of reporting. Some
media outlets provide factual background information that may even decrease emotion
arousal. Extensive panel survey studies on three Swiss direct-democratic campaigns
(asylum policy; corporate taxation; naturalization of immigrants) found strong evidence that
especially elite newspapers and some regional papers are excellent in providing background
information about political issues. However, other outlets, such as tabloid news, and intense
political talk may be detrimental to democratic processes of opinion formation. In fact, it was
found that the use of tabloids such as 20 Minutes or Blick increased negative emotions
toward asylum seekers in the course of the political campaign. That is, the more people use
tabloids as important sources of information, the more they see anger and fear toward
asylum seekers. Moreover, political talk and campaign advertising had the same effects: the
more people relied on talk shows such as Arena, the more negative their affective reactions
toward asylum seekers. This effect can be traced back to the conflictive nature of this
specific genre. The focus on conflict and the polarization of political positions in these
broadcasts may have created the impression that asylum policy is a big problem that political
actors cannot solve. Additionally, campaign ads that portrayed asylum seekers mainly in a
negative light (e.g. refugees as bogus asylum seekers and scroungers that abuse the Swiss
welfare system) also aroused negative emotions such as anger and fear in audience
members (Schemer 2010b). In contrast, however, the use of elite press decreased negative

16
emotions toward asylum seekers (Schemer 2010a). Obviously, the focus of these media
sources on facts and background information worked against the emotion arousal of tabloid
news.

Pointing to the larger questions of democratic citizenship, these studies make a clear case
that the arousal of negative emotions in political campaigns can have a considerable impact
on the voting intentions of citizens. For the direct-democratic campaigns, negative emotions
turned out to be important predictors of voting intentions above and beyond the approval of
arguments that were relevant in the specific campaigns (Kühne et al. 2011; Schemer 2009).
Thus, emotions can directly enter the judgment formation of individuals and distract people
from deliberating on the relevant campaign arguments. In this context, affect functions as a
surrogate for information. However, this effect was only present for tabloid media outlets. In
fact, the opposite was true for quality news media that largely dominate direct-democratic
campaigns when it comes to the sheer quantity of coverage (see Hänggli 2010). How far the
specific conditions of the Swiss political and media system can account for this positive
finding remains an issue for further exploration.

In the more general body of scholarly work, though, not all research points in the same
direction. Some studies found that media use is positively correlated with political interest,
political knowledge, and political participation. Others found that media use can also foster
cynicism, apathy, ignorance, and disengagement. There is even some evidence that
negative coverage raises citizens’ interest in campaigns, which leads Patterson (2002:
90–91) to conclude that there ‘is something worse than exposure to persistently negative
news, and that’s no news exposure at all’ (Patterson 2002: 97). There is also some evidence
indicating that political comedy programs have the potential to educate viewers and
stimulate interest among those citizens who may otherwise be disengaged from the political
process. Baum (2002) suggests an ‘incidental byproduct’ model, which holds that soft news
makes political information accessible to otherwise politically inattentive viewers (see also
Van Zoonen et al. 2007). Similarly, Baum (2003) observed a ‘gateway’ effect, whereby
exposure to soft news outlets motivates viewers to consume additional political information
via traditional news sources.

Research by Matthes et al. (2010) found no indication for negative effects of news exposure
on political trust. Using survey data on the issues of asylum policy and the World Economic
Forum, they could demonstrate that exposure to Swiss news coverage actually increased
rather than decreased trust in politicians and the political system. This effect can be
explained by the lack of negative news footage characterizing politicians as unreliable,
selfish, or lacking credibility. For these two issues, by contrast, politicians were largely able

17
to stage themselves in positive terms, demonstrating their substantial competence, good will,
and broad issue knowledge. With such a positive (and uncritical) depiction of political actors
in the news, it is not surprising that exposure to news content led to outcomes likely to foster
participation and engagement.

One approach to resolving the contradictory expectations caused by political mobilization

approaches and media malaise theories is to start at the beginning of the effects chain, the
early socialization phase of children and young adults. A study by Bonfadelli, de Vreese, and
collaborators (Kunz 2011; Möller 2010) analyzes how adolescents develop democratic
competencies and participatory repertoires in today’s multichannel environments. This
process is heavily mediated since very few adolescents have any direct experience with
politics. Relying on representative surveys in the Netherlands and Switzerland among
teenagers aged 15–18, this study finds four universal factors for political engagement in both
countries: participating (high involvement), deliberating (online discussions), contributing
(donating and collecting money), and voting. With regard to political attitudes, though, there
are significant cross-national differences. In Switzerland, where people can participate in
direct-democratic procedures and are exposed to extensive media coverage of the
accompanying issue-centered campaigns, teenagers have a much stronger sense of being
‘able to influence policy outcomes’ than their Dutch opposites. Thus, the ‘internal efficacy’ of
teenagers being socialized into a direct democracy is significantly higher than of those living
in a representative democracy. A moderating effect of news-media use could not be
established but the results underscore the great importance of the institutional framework
conditions – the polity imperative of politics – for socialization effects.

In sum, democracy requires its citizens to have an ‘enlightened understanding’ of the issues
that concern their lives (see Chapter 3). They are dependent on a political communication
environment that provides the resources necessary to understand and evaluate the available
political options. So far the Swiss media system seems to fare better in this regard than
comparable systems (for instance in the Netherlands), although important qualifications must
be made for the emotion-driven discourse in tabloids and talk shows. If the political
communication behavior of the Swiss youth is any indication of the future then the Swiss
system may be in for a change. Only a very small minority is politically active (at a level
comparable to those in the Netherlands) and their current online communication behavior
seems to carry them away from the center of institutionalized politics rather than toward it. If
correct, this process is likely to have feedback implications for the system itself, at least in
the long run.

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Conclusion

The model of representative democracy as laid out in Chapter 3 is undergoing change. On

the one hand state politics is embedded in an increasingly international, multi-layered
political structure (chapters 5 and 6), and on the other it is confronted with an increasingly
selfdetermined media system (chapters 7 and 8). As a result of these developments national
sovereignty has been compromised in various ways, and conventional political actors and
institutions have suffered a similar challenge to their status. In many (although not all)
Western democracies we observe a decline in public support for traditional parties and
institutional politics, declining membership and turn-out levels, and falling levels of citizen
engagement. At the same time, mass media has grown enormously in significance. A wide
range of channels and genres provides a large diversity of content, and this content
addresses people less and less in their roles as democratic citizens and more and more in
their roles as consuming audiences. This is the outcome of a long-term process that has
evolved in stages, which have been described variously as a sequence of ‘political
communication eras’ (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999) or ‘phases of mediatization’ (Strömbäck
2008). The conditions of the current era, as laid out in chapters 1 and 7, have led scholars to
describe most Western societies as ‘media democracies’ (see Jarren 2008b; Pfetsch and
Marcinkowski 2010).

In a neutral understanding, the term media democracy refers to the fact that fundamental
elements of the ‘chain of responsiveness’ and ‘chain of accountability’ cannot be realized
anymore without the services of a mass communication infrastructure. Both chains require –
as explained in Chapter 3 – that citizens are reliably and accurately informed, and that their
choices in elections and other contexts are reasoned and rational. In practice it often suffices
that citizens scan the political process from a distance and use heuristic shortcuts, rather
than elaborate arguments, to make up their minds. The normative democratic ideal,
however, is one of enlightened citizenry to which the news media are key contributors. In
addition to information, the news media are also expected to provide analysis: coherent
frameworks of interpretation that help citizens to recognize their own interest and
preferences, evaluate political outcomes, and comprehend globalized and mediatized
politics. An extension to the information and analysis function is the role of critical scrutiny
over the powerful, be they in government, business, or other influential spheres of society. In
the capacity as watchdog, the news media monitor whether politicians fulfill their
responsibilities to the people who elected them, and whether their policies and programs are
based on sound judgment. In addition to providing transparency and checks and balances in
their information and watchdog role, the news media serve as a mediator between the
citizen and the politician. In this role as public representative they are expected to ensure

19
that the preferences of the public are heard. This is aided by pluralist and inclusive news
coverage that serves as a mediated proxy of the public sphere. Finally, the news media can
assume the role of an advocate or champion of the people. The news media can serve as
advocates for particular political programs and perspectives, and mobilize people to act in
support of these programs.

In their provision of information, analysis, critical scrutiny, public representation, and

advocacy the news media have a wider range of content genres at their disposal. The media
are thus moving toward the center of the democratic process by providing a shared forum
that other political institutions and social actors increasingly use as an arena for their
interaction.

Whether or not the news media fulfill their intended democratic functions in practice has
become a matter of fierce debate. It is here that the neutral use of the term media
democracy is tipping into negative territory. In negative use, media democracy refers to
conditions in which the imperatives of media logic (and its underlying powers of critical
professionalism, commercialism, and technological change) undermine journalists’ ability to
be objective, pluralistic, and conscious of society’s needs. Critics claim that many Western
democracies are pushed and deformed by media organizations which find pleasure (and
professional and commercial satisfaction) in interfering with political processes. The
information value and orientation value of their media coverage is said to be decreasing due
to a growing fixation on sensation, conflict, drama, triviality, and negativity – all of which is
expected to foster public cynicism and political alienation (Blumler and Gurevitch 1995; Lloyd
2004; Meyer 2002; Patterson 1993, 2002). In its extreme, this scenario expects societies to
turn into ‘mediacracies’ in which informed citizenry and traditional political institutions
deteriorate beyond recognition (Meyer 2002).

A counter-scenario to mediacracy is ‘telecracy’ – another negative outgrowth of media

democracy (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999; Pfetsch and Marcinkowski 2010). The term
telecracy describes political actors not as victims but beneficiaries of mediatization. Here,
politicians govern ‘with’ and ‘through’ the media, and rely heavily on strategic communication
and news management. They employ professionalized communication experts who help
them exploit media logic for their own purposes. A prototype is said to be Berlusconi’s Italy
(Croci 2001; Raniolo 2009).

Both scenarios are obviously gross exaggerations but help explain the scholarly attention
this line of research has received. Following recommendations by Jarren (1996, 2008b),
Donges (2008), and particularly Marcinkowski (2005, 2007) we have developed a
neoinstitutionalist conceptualization of mediatization. It helps us explore potential challenges

20
to democracy that can be traced either to the initiative of the media or the self-mediatization
of political actors. In a neo-institutionalist perspective the media are considered as providing
a ‘regular and persisting framework’ through which and within which political actors operate
(Sparrow 1999: 10). The media thereby guide and channel – or structure – the actions of
those working in government, public administration, and the various stages of the political
process (Donges 2008; Jarren 2008b; Marcinkowski 2007; Sparrow 2006). Put simply, the
media constitute the communicative infrastructure through which politics presents itself to
the public (reflexive mediatization via self-presentation) or is represented by the media itself
(direct mediatization via news coverage). As an institution in its own right it is guided by an
autonomous operating logic. Everything that ‘runs through it’ will be formatted by media
logic. This process can obstruct, enhance or substitute political functions. However, not all
political institutions are equally dependent on mediated services and, hence, are less
pressurized to adapt (or even submit) to media logic. The research we discussed in this
chapter confirms this by showing that not all political organizations, institutions, and systems
are equally prone to become mediatized. And not all media organizations and systems are
driven by the same blend of media logic. Its three constituents – professional, commercial,
and technological aspects (see Table 7.2 in Chapter 7) – mix differently in different settings
and therefore produce different mediatization effects on their own content, political actors,
organizations, institutions, and audiences (see Chapter 3).

Three characteristics of mediatization effects are crucial to understand: first, in addition to

direct, media-induced effects we must pay at least the same amount of attention to reflexive,
self-mediatization effects initiated by political actors in response to what they perceive as a
powerful media environment. The ‘professionalization’ of self-mediatization (i.e. the
externalization and scientification of political public relations) is one of the best-documented
consequences of direct mediatization. Second, mediatization effects ought to be studied at
three levels of analysis: the micro-level of individual actors or recipients (and their opinions,
decisions, and behaviors); the meso-level of parties, governments, interest groups,
decision-making institutions, but also media organizations; and the systemic macro-level
where implications of media logic for political culture or consequences of national media
policy styles for media logic can be studied. Third, and related to the second, it is important
to realize that mediatization effects can be assumed for the interactions between political
actors (politics), the definition of political issues and problems (policy), and the normative
and institutional order of a system (polity). We argued in the context of our definition of
political logic (Table 7.1 in Chapter 7) that the politics sphere is the easiest to mediatize and
the polity sphere the hardest.

21
Although it may be natural to ask whether mediatization improves or worsens the quality of
democracy, in actual research this question needs to be broken down in more specific
investigations. Does mediatization have a positive or negative influence on the structure and
functioning of public communication? This is a key issue addressed by the first dimension of
our mediatization concept. It examines the representation of politics in the news and is
interested in the information quality of political news coverage, particularly in the framing of
public issues and debates, the involvement of different types of actors in the discourse, their
communication style and level of argumentation analysis.

Does mediatization improve or dampen the responsiveness of the political-administrative

system and the control of political power? This question is behind the investigations on the
diversity and quality of political coverage as well as agenda-building and agenda-setting. It is
also tied to the question of whether mediatization puts political organizations or institutions
under stress so that their political functions begin to suffer. These questions are addressed
by the second and third dimension of our mediatization concept.

Does mediatization promote or constrain people’s access to political information and their
political competences? This is related to whether mediatization favors or reduces political
engagement and political participation of citizens. It also asks whether mediatization
promotes or diminishes the public’s confidence in democracy and its institutions. These
questions refer to information processing, media use, and political awareness as well as the
relationship between political communication and political engagement. It has also prompted
investigations into concepts such as video malaise or political cynicism, which are all
discussed in the context of the fourth dimension of mediatization.

This chapter showed that although the adaptation of democracies to the mediatization of
politics has so far been cast in mainly negative terms, our research comes to quite moderate
conclusions. Any premature talk about ‘media democracy’ must be checked to see if really
all political structures, processes, and policy fields are mediatized – and not just those which
are inherently dependent on public support. In many areas we do see clear trends toward
mediatization of politics but they constitute less fundamental discontinuities than anticipated
in some parts of the literature. These trends do, however, signal a growing tension between
the needs of democratic institutions and the media, which sporadically claim to be the
guardians of democracy but just as often neglect or deny the responsibility that goes with the
job. These changes vary in severity from one political system to another, and one should
beware of over-generalization.

In some European countries (and this includes Switzerland) governments are still in a
position to tackle these problems by way of media-policy initiatives aimed at securing better

22
media performance or limiting media commercialism. This route of action is no longer
available in the US, and many European states have also been moving in the direction of
deregulation and neo-liberalism lately.

Whatever may be done to remedy some of the problems discussed here will have to be
gradual and long term, and will depend on the ability of democratic institutions to solve their
own problems of communication effectively. As argued by McQuail et al. (2007: 276): ‘It will
involve the combined efforts of active citizens, politicians who take a wider view of their
responsibilities, and journalists and other media people who recognize a professional and
institutional task of informing citizens.

23