Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Rita Figueiras 124 resentation and public perception of politics-, according to their interests. This is a consequence of journalism intending to fulfill professional and economic objectives, but it also corresponds to a desire to demarcate itself from politics, which increases as the communication of institutions and political actors becomes more sophisticated. This means that the more politicians de- velop strategies to determine media coverage, the more journal - ists react by increasing interventionism to maintain control over how they (re)present the political world. Structural aspects that shape the media system and the political system must also get considered when analyzing the relationship between both. Media systems are structurally and historically connected to the development of political systems, evolving both indissociably (HALLIN; MANCINI, 2004, p. 5). Dan Hallin and Paolo Mancini (2004) identified three different mod - els of the relationship between the media and politics in West- ern societies. The pluralist-polarized model describes the coun- tries of southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece) and is defined by political control of the media by external actors, like political parties and economic agents, to obtain political in- fluence. This relationship can also be described by its clientele nature (HALLIN; MANCINI, 2004; FIGUEIRAS, 2017b). These characteristics are in line with what Gianpietro Mazzoleni (2004) defines as a “ collateral model” between po- litical elites and the media . They share points of view expressed by the elites, which leads them to support positions close to the status quo . This compatibility of interests between politics and mainstream media happens because traditional politics offers better guarantees for media companies to continue to operate in a determined political-economic macro context. According to Mazzoleni, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon “adversarial model”, the collateral model better reflects the European tradition of cul - tural ties between the media and politics, even though different degrees of intensity exist in different countries. In national con- texts where political control of the media seems to be stronger, like in southern Europe, the interests of the media and political elites tend to be closer. Although the Portuguese case gets systematically in- tegrated into the pluralist-polarized model (HALLIN; MANCINI,