Risto Kunelius

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.

Journalists Imagining the European Public Sphere

Abstract This article aims to analyse journalists’ professional imagination in connection to EU news. A special attention is paid to the variety of ideas about European public sphere that inform (or fail to inform) journalists’ work. The article is based on 149 semi-structured qualitative journalist interviews conducted in the home offices of mainstream news organisations in ten European countries.The article takes up Charles Taylor’s idea that public sphere belongs to the key social imaginaries of modernity and treat journalists as important carriers of these social imaginaries. These professional imaginaries are traced by looking at how journalists perceive the locus of news, how they define their professional role vis-á-vis their audience, and finally, how they would describe the political and communication problems within the EU. From this reasoning three relatively coherent lines of thought were derived: classical professionalism, secular discourse, and cosmopolitan discourse. As a conclusion the article attempts to map out these different discourses in connection to modes of political communication.The three discourses detected in the article can be seen as contemporary versions of professionalism in European news organisations. As such, they do not give much ground to assume that a European public sphere would emerge out of national journalistic cultures. Given the emergent nature of publics and public spheres, this does not mean that such practices may not be developed outside journalism.

Problems with a European public sphere: an introduction

Abstract This introduction discusses some of the problems of applying the concept of the public sphere to the current situation in the European Union. The EU is a body that is beginning to have many of the features that were historically associated with states, and therefore the issues of openness to public scrutiny that occasioned the birth of the classical public sphere begin to become important in this new context. The citizens of the EU gain their information mostly from the mass media, but these remain predominantly organised along the lines of the constituent states of the Union, rather than on any genuinely transnational basis. This means that there is always a tension between the discussion of issues as European issues and their discussion as issues of national interest within Europe. The concept of a public sphere is a much-contested one, and it is important to determine whether it is the correct starting point for considering the openness of political processes in the EU. The introduction reviews some of the issues, and concludes that it seems very difficult to hold on to some of the strong formulations that are associated with the category. On the other hand, the idea of the public sphere in its more radical formulation illuminates very clearly some of the issues of the practice of democratic political life that are currently absent from, and urgently needed by, the European Union. Modified to take account of what is now known about the reality of public life, and linked more closely to concepts of social and political action, the concept can provide a useful starting point for further enquiry.

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.

Ambivalent ambassadors and realistic reporters The calling of cosmopolitanism and the seduction of the secular in EU journalism

The European Union represents an emerging transnational political system for mainstream professional journalism. As a developing and enlarging system of power, expertise and a field of negotiation for compromises it provides a new horizon for journalism and journalists who have been strongly shaped by national discourses about politics, democracy and the public sphere. This article tackles this broad challenge in three steps. First, a synthetic analysis based on interviews with European journalists from 11 countries describes the dominant professional horizons of professional identities and relates them to EU news. Second, an interpretation of the generic forms of journalistic storytelling is suggested by linking the professional identities and trends into an idea about the dynamics of chronotropes of EU-journalism. Finally, a third layer of the discussion is provided by connecting the potentials and pitfalls of professional journalism to theorizations about transnational democracies and public spheres.

FROM CREDIBILITY TO RELEVANCE

Uncertainty about the future of journalism and what may be expected from the news media have generated special interest in how news organisations connect with the audience. In this paper three analytical approaches are described: institutional connection, market connection and public connection. While the two former approaches are more familiar to the media industry, it is argued that the latter seems theoretically and empirically more useful. Future studies on journalisms public connection should consider the fact that the relevance of journalism for its readers is embedded in the social fabric of their everyday lives. This approach needs to be informed by the key sociological concepts of networks, habits and interests. At the end of the paper a short outline of an audience research project recently launched in Finland is introduced.

Surveillance and the Structural Transformation of Privacy

This article provides a conceptual and methodological outline for studying the social and political implications of digital surveillance, as it opens itself to journalists and media researchers. Digital surveillance yields a profound social transition, which can be tentatively called as “structural transformation of privacy”. We propose that the empirical analysis on this gradual and abstract process can proceed in two phases. Firstly, attention should be paid key stakeholders and their deeply conflicted positions on the issue of digital surveillance. Secondly, an analytical focus should be set on the dominant discursive principles and justifications that inform the suggested public solutions. This framework is illustrated by some empirical findings from a transnational empirical study that analysed opinionated journalism on Edward Snowden’s revelations from June 2013 to the end of 2014.

Key Journalists and the IPCC AR5: Toward Reflexive Professionalism?

This chapter uses the framework of journalistic professionalism to explore how the specific challenges of climate journalism are affecting the profession. In particular, we consider how some key journalists from around the world reflected on the task of reporting climate change in general and on the IPCC AR5 in particular. 16 prominent professional journalists were interviewed to gather the data analysed in this chapter. The main findings were that while covering the field of climate, journalists adhere to professional journalistic norms, but as science journalists on one hand and environmental journalists on the other, also allow themselves to adopt more of an activist frame.

The Problem: Climate Change, Politics and the Media

The quotes above—one from a handbook by social scientists and one from an action manifesto by a radical global journalist and author—say the same thing in different ways. Climate change is a historically unique problem. Indeed, it is key proof that humans and their actions have become “central” on a planetary scale. This importance betrays a daunting sense of weakness. Perhaps we have become too central in our political and organizational capacities. Thus, paradoxically, from the overwhelming complexity of climate change as a challenge (in Dryzek), dawns a glimmer of radical system critique (in Klein): in order to adapt to what is coming, we must transform ourselves.