Mediatization at the Structural Level: Independence from Politics, Dependence on the Market

Abstract

Whenever we examine the mediatization of politics, we address inherently normative and fundamental issues concerning the quality of democracy (Kriesi, 2013). So far, it seems that media system analyses at the macro level with links to democracy theory have tended to be conceptual and only rarely include empirical tests, such as analyses of media structures and content. At the same time, the empirically rich mediatization research that focuses on the media logic reflected in the media content (the third dimension of mediatization, according to Strömbäck, 2008) relies on sophisticated analyses to explain how structural features, such as the degree of media autonomy (the second dimension of mediatization), shape news coverage. However, this research tends to concentrate on finding mechanisms for specific types of news outlets and devotes less attention to the media system as a whole and the (normative) social implications of these mechanisms. For instance, although it may be possible to explain why a certain media type shows more signs of media logic over the course of time, it would also be useful to know whether this media type becomes more or less representative in the context of a specific media system over time and what this may mean for the quality of democratic debate.