The first book-long analysis of the 'mediatization of politics', this volume aims to understand the transformations of the relationship between media and politics in recent decades, and explores how growing media autonomy, journalistic framing, media populism and new media technologies affect democratic processes.

Over time and across Western democracies, the media has become increasingly influential, and a great deal more political processes have become altered, shaped or structured by the media and the perceived need of individuals, organizations and social systems to communicate with or through the media. The key theoretical perspective to understand this process is mediatization. As a long-term process which has increased the importance of the media and their spill-over effects on political processes, institutions, organizations and actors, mediatization is one of the most important processes reshaping politics and transforming democracies across the Western world. While the theoretical perspective of mediatization has become increasingly popular in recent years, scholarly understanding of the mediatization process and its antecedents, consequences and contingencies are still hampered by unresolved questions and a lack of systematic empirical studies. This volume addresses this by bringing together contributions that analyze and investigate different facets of the mediatization of politics, making a significant contribution to our theoretical as well as empirical understanding of the mediatization of politics, and setting the agenda for further research on the mediatization of politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

This book examines under what scope conditions foreign policy actors adopt media logic. The authors analyze media logic under three specific scope conditions: uncertainty, identity, resonance. First, they lay out the general adaptation of media logic in the general debate of the UN General Assembly 1992-2010. They then explore the adaptation of media logic in Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom concerning the cases of humanitarian intervention in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, both in 2011. The results indicate the need to move beyond the assumption of a general process of mediatization affecting politics in total. Instead, they point in the direction of a nuanced process of mediatization more likely under certain scope conditions and in certain political contexts.

This handbook on Mediatization of Communication uncovers the interrelation between media changes and changes in culture and society. This is essential to understand contemporary trends and transformations. “Mediatization” characterizes changes in practices, cultures and institutions in media-saturated societies, thus denoting transformations of these societies themselves. This volume offers 31 contributions by leading media and communication scholars from the humanities and social sciences, with different approaches to mediatization of communication. The chapters span from how mediatization meets climate change and contribute to globalization to questions on life and death in mediatized settings. The book deals with mass media as well as communication with networked, digital media. The topic of this volume makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of contemporary processes of social, cultural and political changes. The handbook provides the reader with the most current state of mediatization research.

The media are ubiquitous and constantly changing, causing social and cultural shifts. This book examines how processes of mediatization affect almost all areas of contemporary social and cultural life, and takes the theoretical debate on mediatization in communication studies and media sociology to a critical edge.

The dynamic relationship of media and politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a new field in historical scholarship. The mediatization of politics is a central topic in current debates on the role of media in society and culture. Until now a historical perspective has been strikingly absent from this debate. At an international congress at the University of Groningen in November 2006 a wide range of scholars tried to address this lack. The result is this book, in which an interdisciplinary effort is made to shed light on the historical background of media processes and media forms influencing politics. Also included are articles that analyze the ways in which politicians and parties tried to mobilize media power for their own goals.

This volume sheds light on the underlying dynamics of mediatization, disentangling the actual unfolding of mediatization processes. The wide adoption and deep embedding of digital media and technology brings new questions to mediatization studies: how can we grasp this ‘deep mediatization’? In which way should we develop existing approaches of mediatization to analyse such dynamics? What are the consequences of this for theorising and empirically studying mediatization? By using these questions as a starting point, this book presents an innovative and original collection that is dedicated to both the underlying dynamics of mediatization and recent dynamics related to digital media.

Mediatization has emerged as a key concept to reconsider old, yet fundamental questions about the role and influence of media in culture and society. In particular the theory of mediatization has proved fruitful for the analysis of how media spread to, become intertwined with, and influence other social institutions and cultural phenomena like politics, play and religion. This book presents a major contribution to the theoretical understanding of the mediatization of culture and society. This is supplemented by in-depth studies of: The mediatization of politics: From party press to opinion industry; The mediatization of religion: From the faith of the church to the enchantment of the media; The mediatization of play: From bricks to bytes; The mediatization of habitus: The social character of a new individualism. Mediatization represents a new social condition in which the media have emerged as an important institution in society at the same time as they have become integrated into the very fabric of social and cultural life. Making use of a broad conception of the media as technologies, institutions and aesthetic forms, Stig Hjarvard considers how characteristics of both old and new media come to influence human interaction, social institutions and cultural imaginations.

The role of the media has become a central part of politics and policy in the twenty-first century. That dominance has led many to suggest a trend of 'dumbing down': the privileging of style over content. In this provocative new book, Maarten Hajer takes issue with the 'dumbing down' thesis both on theoretical and empirical grounds. He aims to show how authoritative governance remains possible in crisis driven circumstances and a highly 'mediatized' world. The book elaborates a communicative understanding of authority, which, the author argues, can create a new basis for authoritative governance in a world marked by political and institutional fragmentation. Extending his discourse-analytical framework, Hajer uses both discursive and dramaturgical methods to study policymakers in their struggle for authority. Three detailed case studies-the plans to rebuild Ground Zero, the aftermath of the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, and the recent role of the British Food Standards Agency -provide a wealth of detail of the dynamics of authority in today's mediatized polity and bring out the peculiar role that crises now play. The argument of the book is that in the age of mediatization governance needs to be 'performed'. Hajer describes a genuinely new authoritative governance that breaks with existing interpretations. He demonstrates ways in which the traditional government of standing institutions and notions of network governance can be combined in actively creating relations with a variety of publics.

To what extent have political decision-making processes become mediatized? Based on this question, the author analyzes media coverage and parliamentary actors' (MPs) strategies and perceptions in three conflicted decision-making processes in Switzerland. Mediatization of politics refers to behavioral changes and adaptations of political actors, institutions, and processes that are related to (mass) media. According to some scholars, mediatization may lead to politics of immediacy, conflict, drama, and personalization, thereby challenging established institutions and processes in liberal democracies. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of MPs' strategies and perceptions provide new insights into how political actors may "self-mediatize" in the advent of globalization and polarization. Overall, the book adopts an actor-centric approach and shows that mediatization of politics is not a fate, but a strategic choice.