The adapted position: preparing political contents for a hybrid media environment

Abstract

In today’s hybrid media environment, political representatives are expected to deliver their programmatic positions in multiple yet coherent versions. To synchronize these programmatic contents with an accelerated and fragmented media system, they are subjected to what I call ‘adaptation work’. Using ethnographic insights gathered at a party’s headquarter in the Austrian national parliament, the article shows that adaptation work happens in interaction between a digital infrastructure (intranet technology, specific documents) and a writing team (knowledge managers, staff advisers, assistants). This sociomaterial distribution enables practices for archiving and sharing internal knowledge on party positions as well as literary strategies of adjusting positions to different recipients and media. At the same time, adapted positions deliberately shade the internal infrastructure and experts involved in their preparation in order to present representatives as the ones to be held accountable for positions.