Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Discussing mediatization of politics based on the portuguese case 131 in their presence coincided with a diversification of the com - mentators’ profile, starting in 2009, and, even more significantly, starting in 2011. Since then, we have met journalists, politicians, academics, and lawyers, even though politicians have been the dominant profile since 2013. Overall, we found that the change in the profile of com - mentators in prime-time newscasts on public television, from politicians to journalists (2015), had already started on RTP’s cable news channel , a few years earlier (2009). In the commer- cial channels, the data indicate a distribution of commentary spaces between journalists and politicians, sometimes in a bal - anced way, sometimes with a distinct prevalence of one profile over the other, with the politicians still standing out. The data , therefore , confirm hypotheses one and two in this study: the visibility of journalists has not decreased over the years, while the visibility of politicians has increased dur- ing the period of analysis. The dominance of politicians in com- menting on private stations may be interpreted as a dimension of the ongoing reaffirmation of the coalition between the media and politics in Portugal. It is also relevant to have in mind that the comment helps to build the career of the politicians who play the role of commentator. Let us recall the case of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, presented at the beginning of the text, and see some more ex- amples. António Costa, current Prime Minister of Portugal, was Minister of Justice in a PS government (1999-2002) before com - menting on the SIC news (2003-2004). During this period, he campaigned for the European elections and became a MEP. In 2007, he was elected Mayor of Lisbon, and, the following year, he has joined the panel of commentators of one of the most important comment programs in the country at SIC Notícias, A Quadratura do Círculo. In 2014, he was elected leader of the PS, and, in 2015, he left the comment and the Lisbon Chamber to run for the legislative elections that year. Pedro Santana Lopes was affiliated with PSD. He began his comments at the Portuguese public station in 2002, when he was Mayor of Lisbon , and commented on RTP1 until 2004, a few months before becoming Prime Minister. In 2010 , he returned to being a commentator on TVI24 , and, in 2012, he was hired by