Making Sense of Mediatized Politics
Over time and across Western democracies, the media have 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 this process, and setting the agenda for further research.
This book was originally published as two special issues, of Journalism Studies and Journalism Practice.
Jesper Strmbck is Professor in Political Communication and Ludvig Nordstrm Professor and Chair in Journalism at Mid-Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden, where he is also research director at the research institute DEMICOM. His books include Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World (2008) and Political Public Relations (2011).
Frank Esser is Professor of International & Comparative Media Research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is co-director of the National Research Centre on the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century (NCCR Democracy). His research focuses on cross-national studies of news journalism and political communication. His books include Comparing Political Communication (2004), Handbook of Comparative Communication Research (2012), and Democracy in the Age of Globalization and Mediatization (2013).
Making Sense of Mediatized Politics
Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives
Edited by
Jesper Strmbck and Frank Esser
First published 2015
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ISBN 13: 9781138860117
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Journalism Studies: Theory and Practice
Series editor: Bob Franklin
Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies,
Cardiff University, UK
The journal Journalism Studies was established at the turn of the new millennium by Bob Franklin. It was launched in the context of a burgeoning interest in the scholarly study of journalism and an expansive global community of journalism scholars and researchers. The ambition was to provide a forum for the critical discussion and study of journalism as a subject of intellectual inquiry but also an arena of professional practice. Previously, the study of journalism in the UK and much of Europe was a fairly marginal branch of the larger disciplines of media, communication and cultural studies; only a handful of Universities offered degree programmes in the subject. Journalism Studies has flourished and succeeded in providing the intended public space for discussion of research on key issues within the field, to the point where in 2007 a sister journal, Journalism Practice, was launched to enable an enhanced focus on practice-based issues, as well as foregrounding studies of journalism education, training and professional concerns. Both journals are among the leading ranked journals within the field and publish six issues annually, in electronic and print formats. More recently, 2013 witnessed the launch of a further companion journal Digital Journalism to provide a site for scholarly discussion, analysis and responses to the wide ranging implications of digital technologies for the practice and study of journalism. From the outset, the publication of themed issues has been a commitment for all journals. Their purpose is first, to focus on highly significant or neglected areas of the field; second, to facilitate discussion and analysis of important and topical policy issues; and third, to offer readers an especially high quality and closely focused set of essays, analyses and discussions.
The Journalism Studies: Theory and Practice book series draws on a wide range of these themed issues from all journals and thereby extends the critical and public forum provided by them. The Editor of the journals works closely with guest editors to ensure that the books achieve relevance for readers and the highest standards of research rigour and academic excellence. The series makes a significant contribution to the field of journalism studies by inviting distinguished scholars, academics and journalism practitioners to discuss and debate the central concerns within the field. It also reaches a wider readership of scholars, students and practitioners across the social sciences, humanities and communication studies, encouraging them to engage critically with, but also to interrogate, the specialist scholarly studies of journalism which this series provides.
Available titles in the series:
Mapping the Magazine: Comparative Studies in Magazine Journalism
Edited by Tim Holmes
The Future of Newspapers
Edited by Bob Franklin
Language and Journalism
Edited by John Richardson
The Future of Journalism
Edited by Bob Franklin
Exploration in Global Media Ethics
Edited by Muhammad Ayish and Shakuntala Rao
Foreign Correspondence
Edited by John Maxwell Hamilton and Regina G. Lawrence
How Journalism Uses History
