Mediatization of Politics or Politicization of Media: Women’s Perspective

Abstract

In accordance with the phased and meta process of mediatization, politicians have grown dependent on media at the cost of their own independence. As a result, politics has become synonym with something negative. Little research in Pakistan has been done to explore perspective of women politicians and journalists on negative perception about politics. To fill up the gap, we constituted focus groups in Multan, Lahore and Islamabad, comprising mostly women politicians (local and national), rights activists and journalists. It has been found that the respondents are mindful of the fact that there has been an increase in representation of women politicians on media since former President Pervez Musharraf allowed private electronic media to operate in 2002. Female participants in Multan feel encouraged by the increase in representation of women on media but those in Lahore and Islamabad believe that media has added to the challenges women politicians are facing. However, all focus groups opined that this situation is reflective of politicization of media, which shows that they have internalized the negative image that media construct of politicians and that they lack the understanding about the process of mediatization of politics.