Key Theoretical Approaches to Conceptualizing Mediatization of Politics

In today’s world, political environment is closely linked to the media, which are integrated into a political system’s operation and transform communication processes. The phenomenon of mediatization, which represents interrelation between social spheres and the media, is currently in the focus of researches into the media, communications, and society. The article considers mediatization of politics as a key concept for understanding the importance of the media in the contemporary political communication. In the context of the numerous views on mediatization, the authors attempt to conceptualize the phenomenon. They study the emergence and usage of the term and key approaches to studying mediatization, analyze the weak and the strong theories of mediatization, and examine the contextual levels of social transformations within the process. The general theoretical framework allows for two possible lines of studying mediatization of politics: from media actors’ point of view, and from that of a political system. Basing on features of three models of media systems — liberal, democratic corporatist and polarized pluralist, the authors outline areal models of mediatization of politics and emphasize their importance for related researches. As stated, mediatization of politics, being an interdisciplinary phenomenon, is as a complex ambivalent concept with features of a process. A further research of the concept is necessary due to the development of IT-communications, which provides for media’s penetration into all social spheres.