Procesos relacionados con la evaluación

The process of mediatization of politics is often introduced and explained within a narrative of modernisation. That is to say, both the increasing importance of the mass media and the consequent reactions in the political system are explained against a historical framework strongly influenced by differentiation theory (Mazzoleni & Schulz 1999; Strömbäck 2008; Schrott 2009; Hjarvard 2013). Differentiation theory emerges from the work of sociologist Emile Durkheim (1893), who identifies the increasing specialisation of human activity as a major social trend in The Division of Labour in Society. This work analyses emerging changes in social organisation resulting from the fragmentation of human labour into a “host of special disciplines, each having its purpose, method and ethos” (Ibid: 2). These ideas served to articulate a narrative of modernity as a process of increasing social fragmentation of labour.

Hallin and Mancini (2004) produced one of the more frequently referenced discussions of contemporary media systems against the framework of differentiation theory. They develop a compelling argument for the use of this approach to better understand recent changes within the media, especially the separation between mass media and party politics observed in most European countries in the second half of the twentieth century, and the differentiation in this case is primarily explained as the result of processes of professionalisation and

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commercialisation that have driven changes within media systems since. This narrative is also an integral component of the social theory of the media developed by Thompson (1995), who describes the media as a constitutive part of modernity and whose institutional differentiation has triggered profound changes in patterns of communication and social interaction, a process he labels the “mediaization of culture” (Ibid: 46).

It is important to note that differentiation theory relies on two central assumptions that are integral to institutionalist descriptions of mediatized politics. First, the differentiation of the mass media implies an important degree of institutional (or system) autonomy. Second, in close connection to the foregoing, the mass media system is able to develop (and export) an operational logic of its own to other societal systems. Both media autonomy and media logic will be discussed in greater detail later in the chapter, however it is important to briefly unpack these concepts now.

Thinking about the media through the prism of differentiation theory implies imagining the media as a social subsystem that is functionally independent from its environment. That is to say, following Luhmann (2000), as a system that is in charge of defining its structure, organisation and own operational standards. The history of the news media in Western democracies during the 20th _century involves a process of differentiation, especially from political parties and other influential groups, a process that is concurrent with the development of commercial media markets and the professionalisation of journalism (Thompson 1995; Hallin & Mancini 2004; Hallin 2005) and political communication (Negrine 1996; 2008). Professionalisation becomes a key driver of the process of

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differentiation, a process that is certainly not unique to the news media but common to other societal domains at the time (Dimaggio & Powell 1983). As a result of this historical development, claims for the autonomy of the media are usually grounded precisely on the expansion of commercial media together with the spread of professional standards in the exercise of journalism (Mazzoleni & Schulz 1999; Hallin 2005).

This narrative about the modernisation of media and communications underlies the more important descriptions of mediatized politics. In a nutshell, the observations that lend support to the argument about the mediatization of politics are grounded in the historical differentiation of the mass media as social institutions, together with their increasing centrality. The main contention of the theory is that this ongoing and intensified societal process would activate visible transformations in the institutional domain of politics, whose actors have to accommodate media languages and formats in order to improve chances of visibility in a mediatized democracy.

Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999) emphasise that this dependence on media resources is “connatural to modern politics”, and situate the beginning of the process during the first age of political communication systems, a phase that Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) locate after World War II, when political communication appears strongly aligned and subordinated to political institutions. Gradually, this status quo would shift in favour of the media institutions, as long as they gained increasing autonomy in establishing the terms of what is communicated and how. Likewise, the four-stage model of mediatized politics developed by Strömbäck (2008) follows a rather historical rationale: the first phase of mediatized politics

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would be reached when politics becomes mediated, that is to say when the media becomes the main channel of communication for the dissemination of political information, “a pre-requisite for the successive stages of mediatization” (Ibid: 236). The second stage in Strömbäck’s model corresponds to a movement of the media towards greater independence from political power, a process driven by commercialisation and professionalisation that culminates when the media begins “to be governed according to the media logic, rather than according to any political logic” (Ibid: 237). Finally, the third and fourth phases of the model would be stages of greater media autonomy from political institutions. During these, political actors and institutions have to incorporate media requirements, such as formats, languages and news selection criteria, for their communicational activities, until they eventually lose control over media contents (third stage), and the media logic become “a built-in part of the governing processes” (Ibid: 240), naturalised by political actors (fourth stage). As Strömbäck himself warns, the four-stage model he proposes is based on the development of Western democracies from the period starting after World War II and, although each of the model stages are not identified with specific time periods, it is possible to observe a clear time progression both in the narrative constructed to describe the process, as well as in the references supporting the description of each phase.

This model has been quite influential in the literature about mediatization of politics since its publication but has not been free from criticism, especially on the grounds of the implicit linearity that it entails (Lundby 2009; Hepp 2012; Hjarvard 2013). I argue that the linearity of this idea is actually problematic on two premises. The first one, fairly simple but not unimportant, refers to the

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complications of an analytical model that is historically and geographically grounded. It is certainly possible to use a historical perspective to research and describe mediatization processes.28 _{However, an analytical framework based on a} specific set of historical developments is also of limited transferability to other geographical or cultural contexts.29 _{The second problem is the implicit assumption} about the ever progressing direction of mediatization, which becomes a modernising force of sorts. In their work on comparative media systems, Hallin and Mancini (2004) discuss at certain length the risks of understanding the relationship between media and political systems from an evolutionary perspective; that is to say, as a normative preference towards ever greater differentiation of the media from politics. They emphasise the complexity of these relationships and the existence of elements that may eventually counterbalance or constrain the development of this process, such as variations among political systems, national legal frameworks or contingent political trends. These concerns have been echoed in the debate on the mediatization of politics, where arguments have been made for avoiding conceptualisations that see mediatization as an advancing universal force (Hepp 2012; Lundby 2009). Commenting on the limitations of the model proposed by Strömbäck, Hjarvard (2013) stresses that “empirical analyses of changing relationships between media and politics not only have to consider variations in a general pattern of mediatization, but the process

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One example of historical analysis about mediatization of politics can be found in the works of Wifjes and Voerman (2009). In a recent defence about the development of mediatization studies, Hepp et al (2015) welcome the emergent field of mediatization history, in particular of those analyses that incorporate historical perspectives on the introduction of new technologies and the transformation of social interactions.

29 _{Few empirical works exist applying the framework of mediatization to non-Western contexts. To the}

analysis of mediatization processes in India, Downey & Neyazi (2014) develop an alternative framework focused on actors (political actors, media actors and mediatized publics). To discuss the mediatization of politics in Venezuela, Block (2013) develops a culturalist approach, based on the concept of media hegemony.

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of mediatization of politics itself may be dependent on systemic characteristics in a particular context” (Ibid: 45).

It is fair to say that the emerging mediatization of politics theory has attempted to incorporate some of this criticism, highlighting the fluidity of the process and nuancing early ideas, to reinforce the concept of complementarity among different dimensions (Strömbäck & Dimitrova 2011; Esser & Strömbäck 2014).