Esa Reunanen

Media in Political Power A Parsonian View on the Differentiated Mediatization of Finnish Decision Makers

This article looks at the role of media in political decision making by making use of Parson’s concept of political power. It enables a look at how media is both an essential resource of political power and a crucial factor in the environment in which political power works. Drawing on a qualitative interview sample of 60 elite decision makers and an elite survey (N = 419), Finnish decision making is found to be quite thoroughly mediatized. Mediatization is differentiated in distinct actor profiles found with Latent Class Analysis of the survey data. The most prominent pattern seems to be that mediatization correlates with other power resources. Those who have official status and are actively involved in policy networks also make use of media resources, and to differing extents adapt their actions to the demands of the media. However, there are also groups of decision makers who still seem to be quite independent of the media.

Mediatization in context: Consensus culture, media and decision making in the 21st century, the case of Finland

Abstract This article makes an empirically based contribution to the general debate on the mediatization of politics by looking at the Finnish policy networks as a particular context in which the general processes of mediatization are recognized and where the influences of mediatization are negotiated. Drawing on a qualitative interview sample of 60 elite decision-makers and an elite survey (N = 419), three themes related to mediatization are highlighted: the role of trust in policy networks, the dynamics of the mutual professionalization of media and politics, and the differentiation of network rationality and media rationality. These findings are at the same time evidence of a general process of mediatization and of how local conditions shape that process.

The Medium of the Media Journalism, Politics, and the Theory of “Mediatisation”

Abstract In academic and popular discourse, the power of media in current globalised and “postdemocratic” societies is often discussed with the notion of “mediatisation.” It suggests, for example, that media institutions are increasingly influential because they dictate the way issues are framed for public discussion. Consequently, other institutional actors (in politics, science, religion) have had to internalise a “media logic” in order to sustain their power and legitimate their actions. Recent studies of mediatisation largely ignore Jürgen Habermas’ early use of the term “mediatization” in order to analyse the relationship between system imperatives and lifeworlds. While at first this use may seem distant to recent concerns, a return to Habermas can enhance the theorising of mediatisation and media power in two ways. First, by underscoring the importance of a system-theoretic vocabulary it helps to unpack the notion of “media logic” and narrow down the specific power resource of the media (i.e. what is the “medium” of the media). Second, by articulating a fundamental criticism of system-theoretic vocabulary it opens a normative perspective for an evaluation of the media’s democratic function (i.e. the “quality” of mediatisation). This essay highlights, elaborates and illustrates each of these potential contributions by looking at journalism research in general and drawing on a recent empirical study on the mediatisation of political decision-making in Finland.

Not Partisans, But Participants

There is ample research confirming that journalistic interventionism in political reporting has increased and that journalism has become more interpretive during the past few decades. Drawing from semi-structured interviews (N = 30) and a survey (N = 330), this article presents a concrete and practice-oriented view of journalistic interventionism in the professional ethos of Finnish journalists working in mainstream newsrooms. Theoretically, it suggests a distinction between the quantity (degree) and quality (nature) of journalistic interventionism, which will help empirical research to be more open to different kinds of interventionist practices and journalists’ own ways of incorporating them into their professional ethos. By analyzing journalists’ self-reported descriptions of how journalistic interventionism occurs in their actual work practices, this article describes how Finnish journalists negotiate their professional ethos as financial pressures, heightened competition, and assertive forms of public life seem to be questioning objectivity and nonpartisan neutrality.