News Coverage of Politics and Conflict Levels

Abstract

Our study explores the state of mediatization in a comparative framework. We ask how political and journalistic elites in eight European democracies (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) perceive mediatization with respect to the coverage of politics and the dynamics in their professional relationship. The comparative approach allowed us to assess mediatization in settings where the political impact on the media system takes on different forms and strengths, and, hence, the media enjoy different degrees of autonomy. We argue that these structural differences act as a moderator in the progress of the mediatization of politics. Our results suggest that political and journalistic elites across media systems agree in their belief that the political logic has been replaced by the media logic in news coverage. We also find that this outcome of political communication coincides with perceived tension between the actors, particularly in the polarized-pluralist media system context.