Mediatization of Political Organizations: Changing Parties and Interest Groups?

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the mediatization of politics at the meso level of political organizations. According to the theoretical framework of this book, our issue is located on the fourth dimension of mediatization, “the degree to which political actors are governed by a political logic or by media logic” (Stromback, 2008, p. 234; see also Stromback & Dimitrova, 2011). Our theoretical argument will challenge the idea of a single and homogenous media logic and of a clear dichotomy of political “versus” media logic. Instead, we want to argue that political organizations are influenced by a diversity of political as well as media logics. To develop our argument, we will first discuss what kind of actors political organizations like parties and interest groups are and what we can learn about them from organizational theories. Secondly, we will propose that we should broaden our scope by natural and open system views of organizations. Thirdly, we will reformulate the concept of mediatization at an organizational and institutional level. Fourthly, we will present some empirical results from surveys of party and interest-group organizations to illustrate our theoretical argumentation.