Does European Union politics become mediatized? The case of the european commission
By: MEYER, Christoph O
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ArticlePublisher: Oxfordshire : Routledge, October 2009Journal of European Public Policy 16, 7, p. 1047-1064Abstract: The article argues that a systematic study of mediatization processes promises valuables insights into problems of European Union (EU) governance. It sets out the mediatization argument and explores to what extent the political system and its major components can be expected to adjust to the logics of the news media. The empirical focus is on the adjustments of the Euroepan Commission to six distinct logics of the new media: news values, agenda-setting, news production, news language, investigative/accusatory journalism, and the reciprocal effects of professionalization. The paper finds preliminary evidence of mostly low to moderate mediatization across these six dimensions. Four main moderating factors account for this finding: political disincentives to strive for mass publicity, difficulties of communicating to fragmented audiences, limited scope for legislative initiatives, and the technocratic drawn-out nature of the EU policy process.
The article argues that a systematic study of mediatization processes promises valuables insights into problems of European Union (EU) governance. It sets out the mediatization argument and explores to what extent the political system and its major components can be expected to adjust to the logics of the news media. The empirical focus is on the adjustments of the Euroepan Commission to six distinct logics of the new media: news values, agenda-setting, news production, news language, investigative/accusatory journalism, and the reciprocal effects of professionalization. The paper finds preliminary evidence of mostly low to moderate mediatization across these six dimensions. Four main moderating factors account for this finding: political disincentives to strive for mass publicity, difficulties of communicating to fragmented audiences, limited scope for legislative initiatives, and the technocratic drawn-out nature of the EU policy process.
european commission; governance; journalism; media mediatization; public communication.
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