Mass Media Logic and The Mediatization of Politics

This article proposes a theoretical framework for analyzing both mass media logic as a driving force for social change and, probably more importantly, that change itself as caused by the mass media. Mass media logic as a highly complex construct of interacting structures has changed society fundamentally, as actors in different social functional systems believe in first-order mass media effects and, therefore, adapt to the mass media logic. In the case of the mediatization of politics, this refers both to the adaptation of mass media logic by political actors and media-induced changes in the public representation of politics. Those adaptation processes have one pre-condition (the existence of a more or less autonomous mass media system) and are three-fold: political actors modify their individual strategies (micro-level), rearrange resources of political organizations such as parties, lobbying groups, or non-governemtal organizations (meso-level), and rewrite the programs of the political system (macro-level). Here, those second-order long-term mass media effects are called mediatization.