Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Rita Figueiras 128 Table 1 shows that the comment spaces were opened by politi- cians and that this profile has stood out over the years. These commentators have in common the fact that they are perform- ing, have performed, or will perform top positions in national politics, as in the cases of the already mentioned Marcelo Re- belo de Sousa, but also of António Costa, José Sócrates, and Pe- dro Santana Lopes. If the second is the current Prime Minister of Portugal, the other two commentators previously held that same role. Despite a more numerous presence of commentators coming from politics, the space of opinion has been shared with journalists. The aggregate data indicate that, between 2000 and 2015, the presence of politicians and journalists in the com - mentary spaces in generalist newscasts has combined different modalities: equitable sharing between both (2000-2001), more politicians than journalists (2002-2011; 2013-2014), and more journalists than politicians (2012; 2015). It should be noted that, in all channels, we have not found in any year only journal - ists or politicians commenting on the news. However, if we look at each of the broadcasters, in par- ticular, we find nuances that suggest different strategies for man- aging the comment space. RTP1 had commentators exclusively from politics for 15 years to, in 2015, radically change course: in that year, we found only journalists as fixed commentators, with their presence in the news not defined by any periodicity but by the topics on the agenda. At TVI, the distribution of the comment by the two profiles mentioned has also combined different modalities over time: equitable sharing between journalists and politicians (2000-2004; 2012-2014), only journalists (2005-2009), more politicians than journalists (2010-2011), and only politicians (since 2015). SIC started by having commentators exclusively from politics (2003-2004), only to, then, have commentators from journalism (2010-2012), and, finally, to share the space of opinion between them (from 2013).