Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Rita Figueiras 122 of the political system, mediatization may then get understood as a reaction to a structural deficiency in this system, due to its inability to guarantee public attention and to ensure, efficiently, its visibility (THOMPSON, 2005). Public visibility anchored in media logics has given the media an increasing power in the (re)presentation of political reality. The media build a certain political reality by using de- termined explanatory frames (frameworks) that are negotiated with political actors (interaction between the media and poli- tics) and that impose a specific definition of reality (definition of the public agenda). The media ’s ability to influence public at - titudes and opinions is considerable, even though it is always difficult to find clear evidence of a causal relationship between a given stimulus and a certain response. The rules involved in political coverage include at least three interconnected regularity systems (MARCINKOWSKI, 2014, p. 7): selection regularities – a conscious choice of events, situa- tions, and issues; narrative regularities – the way of telling stories that obey a standardized sequential structure; and regularities of interpretation – a patterned construction of meanings. The media use these routines to select and present public affairs to the audi- ence in familiar formats. Under such conditions, the political com- munication produced by the media often has predictable prop- erties, such as a focus on strong images, a preference for events over structures, as well as for people over institutions or ideas. The media also pay special attention to conflicts and deviations from the norm and to interpretations of politics as a competition. These systems of interconnected regularities allow the perspective of news organizations in the northern hemisphere as an inter-organizational institution (ESSER; STRÖMBÄCK, 2014). This is because their constituent organizations – which we commonly refer to as media or news media – are structured in identical ways, following well-known patterns of what is con- sidered proper professional behavior, operating in similar eco- nomic and political environments, and adopting the same basic rules about what they define as important and interesting to be transformed in news. Toril Aalberg et al. (2012) consider that intervention- ism is one of the primary strategies used by journalists to main -