Lecture 2 Flashcards
When the authorities lose control over the political environment they also lose control over the news (the media can go from lapdogs to attack dogs)
Ø To what extent to which those in charge have control over the political environment Political environment = everything people are doing, thinking, and saying about an issue at a particular place and time.
Breaking down the political environment surrounding an issue into 3 components: factors that tells somethings important about the control over the political environment
- The authorities’ level of control over important events (allies, leave, people wait and see)
- Their control over the flow of relevant information (more leaks, people speak up)
- Their ability to maintain a high level of elite consensus surrounding their policies (negative publicity, people leave stinking hip) (important: major sources for journalists)
- Causing more loss of control over the media
- When consensus breaks down (public and/or elites), policy changes occur. Moreover: “the news media do not merely reflect political change, in many cases they can magnify and accelerate change” (Wolfsfield).
- These 3 indicators of success are the best way to understand the notion of a leaders’ political control.
Consensus around the crisis = Rally around the ‘flag’ (show increased support or solidarity for one’s government or country, especially during times of war or strife.)
points on a continuum:
Right end: news media are completely dependent on the authorities for everything they report (VB; presidents declare war on another country, they have a large amount of political support)
Left end: news media exhibit the highest level of independence, when they become true watchdogs (instead of being dependent on elite sources they initiate or uncover critical news stories on their own: investigative journalism)
Middle point: news media are getting a substantial amount of information that contradicts the official line concerning an issue. VB: when authorities only have partial control over the political environment.
Investigative reporting example: Watergate scandal.
The news media spend the vast majority of time transforming events that are initiated by others. This is why it is so important to look first at what is happening in the political world in order to understand how the news media cover issues and events.
Media & War: clear relationships between political control and control over the news: role the media play in wars.
Politics-Media-Politics (PMP) cycle:
interaction media-politics: cause and effect relationship.
When leaders lose control over the political environment:
P: changes in politics / elite concensus
M: Lead to changes in media coverage
P: Which magnify / accelerate the change
Political change leads to changes in the way the news media cover issues, which leads to further political change.
The news media do not merely reflect political change, in many cases they can magnify and accelerate change
Positive feedback loops both of consolidating and losing control
PMP cycle = ongoing process
To understand which direction the political wind is blowing is to ask, “who is on the defensive?”
From controversial to consensual
When officials lose control over the information and events, they also lose control over the news
Social / digital media and losing control
Increased danger of losing control over information:
- Easier to accidentally leak information / get hacked
- Easier to disseminate/publish information
- More interaction is recorded: greater chance of scandal
Increased danger or losing control over consensus
- Quicker news cycles: harder to regain control if scandal breaks
- Easier to mobilize supporters / form opinion outside of institutional gatekeepers
→ Increased risk of losing control → more scandals, volatility, polarization?
Event-driven journalism
basic idea is that technological innovations have increased the number of “spontaneous” news stories that are neither planned nor driven by the authorities.
Technology provides new opportunities for a more independent press and public, but doesn’t completely strip the authorities of their power over the news.
The importance of political control has as much to do with how the news media cover peaces as it does with how they cover wars.
Mutual dependence:
Politicians need good media coverage
Journalists need information and justification
2 theories: Mediatisation & Indexing
Change in political control over the media, or media over politics?
- Influence of media is increasing (as media is important tool in all political contests) plus functional loss of political parties (reducing direct contact with voters)
- Actors adapt to ‘media logic’ as a strategy
- Media logic (= the way the media works) influences political behavior = Mediatisation theory
A four-dimensional conceptualization of the mediatization of politics
- Information source
- Media autonomy (dependence of political institutions)
- Media practices (media content - political or media logic)
- Political practices (political actors/ organizations mainly guided by political / media logic)
Artikel Blumer: Placing mediatisation in a historical background of past understandings of politician–media relationships.
Relationship between politicians and journalists: entangled and mutual dependency.
Assumption that the priorities of a polity’s short-term and long-term agendas were often lodged in daily news reports (project their own agendas to the public through the news media)
As Zaller (2001) explained, the “strategy of aggressive news management attempts to force journalists into a role they detest, that of mechanically conveying politicians’ words and actions to the public.
Mediatization
a process whereby politicians (and by extension other opinion advocates) tailor their message offerings to the perceived news values, newsroom routines and journalism cultures prevalent in their societies.
- a long-term process (of increase in)
- The importance of the media
- And its spill-over effects
- On political processes, institutions and actor (Esser & Stromback)
Consequences of mediatisation:
- Increased complicity: with politicians as courtiers and journalists willing to be seduced.
- Mediatisation might tend to favor processing over probing routines. - The “here today and gone tomorrow”: high rhythm of shallow news production. Conflict rather than issues.
- Dramatic incidents: The news often reports dramatic and shocking incidents in the conduct of public institutions. Erosion of institutional trust because the focus is on the negative.
- Ratcheting up the tone of political rhetoric: The defining of issues, the presentation of policies on them, the rejection of opponents’ stands on them – all may be expressed in more strident terms. Loss of standards of rhetorical propriety.
- Stereotyping minorities and other vulnerable groups: stereotyping of minorities, distorted depictions of social reality, predominant portrayal of politics as a power game
- Distorted depiction of reality: of crime and violence in society. You don’t often go to the core structural problem of society.
- Predominant portrayal of politics as a power game: instead of sphere of reflection and consideration.
BUT: “In order to make politics comprehensible to the citizen, it must first be reduced by journalists to a few simple structural patterns.” Mass media make politics comprehensible to citizens when journalist reduce social and political complexities to a few simple structural patterns.
–> Democracy may be threatened when: political logic is converted into or displaced by media logic.
Negative effects of mediatized political communication on democracy:
- Communication injustices: when “out-groups” are shut out of the national conversation
- Neglect of or pay only erratic attention to society’s major, long-term challenges
- Limits citizens’ awareness of the choices available for tackling important issues and their ability to make informed choices when acting politically themselves.
- Policy proposals, decisions and outcomes may be subjected less often to informed scrutiny (=onderzoek).
- The possibility that citizens can gain something worthwhile from the voicing of political differences – such as a clarification of what is at stake – may be reduced if those exchanges are little more than slanging matches.
- Most seriously perhaps, mediatization seems to confuse, perhaps even fracture, the chain of accountability that is supposed to operate in a democracy.
By identifying two main ways in which the systemic foundations of mediatization may be changing.
Political communication system
as pivoting on two sets of institutions – political and media organizations – which are involved in the course of message preparation in much “horizontal” interaction with each other while on a “vertical” axis, they are separately and jointly engaged in disseminating and processing information and ideas to and from the mass citizenry
Other forms of political communication:
- Rationalization stream: there’s still high quality news
- Single issue of cause stream
- Grass-roots stream: less powerful groups get it in the public sphere
- Popularizing stream
- Party faithful stream
What is ‘media logic’?
Professionalism: news production according to distinctively journalistic norms and criteria
Commercialism: news production according to economically motivated rationales
Media technology: News production according to different media technologies affordances
What is ‘political logic’?
Polity: The institutional and formal framework of politics: written or unwritten rules
Policy: Policy-and decision based production of politics: what you actually trying to achieve
Politics: Power- and publicity - gaining presentational politics: the context and the power.
Indexing theory
- Source dependency causes focus on political elite
- Range of views in media ‘indexed’ by (limited to) elite views
- Powerful politicians can most easily get good media attention (need good media attention least)
- “News media are major agents for maintaining and even intensifying the power gaps in society”
- The theory predicts that political news content generally follows the boundaries of the elite debate.
- When political elites are in general agreement on an issue, news coverage of that issue reflects that concensus. When political elites disagree, news coverage will fall more or less within the countours of that disagreement.
Result: issues and viewpoints that are subject to high-level political debate will receive most news attention, while issues that are not politicised by elites will largely be ignored.
- The theory predict the nature of the content of political news: as the degree of conflict among elites increases, so too will the degree of conflicting views found in news coverage of that topic. Conversely, when elites ignore an issue the range of
views included in the news will be smaller. - Views not voiced by members of the elite will be marginalized in the news.
- Bennet : this applies most centrally to how the range of… legitimate, or otherwise
credible news sources is established by journalists - indexing is both an empirical theory of how daily news is constructed, yet at the same time a normative framework for press performance in a deomcracy. A well-functioning democracy will have an elite that broadly represents public opinion (reflected in the media), while elites that ifnore or blur important issues for citizens will limit the scope of the debate to an extent that it misrepresents and may undermine the legitimact of democratic decisions and institutions.
The background/history of
politician-journalist relations
< 1970?: platforms and windows
journalists as “lap dogs”
1970? - 1990?: professionalization of journalism, political communication
journalists as “watchdogs”, emergence of spin doctors
1990? - now?: mediatization
Increased adaptation of political actors (self-mediatization)
Increased external pressure on journalists
Self-medization
= A process whereby politicians [..] tailor their message offerings to perceived news values, newsroom routines, and journalism cultures prevalent in their societies” (p.33-34; Esser 2013)
Politicians (and PR profs) understand media norms, routines and news values
Message is more successful if it matches these norms & values
Politicians will adapt their behaviour to “tell a good story” (Wolfsfeld 4th pr.)
Effects of (self-)mediatization on democracy
Complicity
Here today, gone tomorrow
Predominant framing
Dramatic portrayal of failing
Tone of political rhetoric
Negative consequences of mediatization
Lack of informed scrutiny
Out-groups shut out of conversation
Little attention for systematic problems
Stereotypical depiction of (especially) out-groups
Mediatization: what’s next?
New “structured flux”
Rationalization stream
Single issue streams
Grassroot stream
Popularizing stream
Party faithfuls stream
What are the effects of social/digital media?
Does the idea of a single journalistic “institution” still make sens
Conclusion
Losing control over events, information, consensus → losing control over media
Often driven by outside events (leaks, wars, developments)
Politics - Media - Politics feedback loop
Mediatization: adaptation to media logic by other (political) actors/institutions
Self-mediatization: politicians use media logic to increase (media) success
Can have (negative) implications for functioning democracy
