Networks, Society, and Polis: Epistemological Approaches on Mediatization

Rita Figueiras 138 The growing presence of journalists in the commen - tary on the news indicates that this space may be seen as one more element of journalistic interventionism, that is, as another media instance where journalists have the power to construct interpretive schemes about political activity. On the other hand, the results also indicate that politicians and parties take advan- tage of the mediatization for their purposes. At a micro level of analysis, determined politicians use the comment as a strategic tool to build their political path and to stand out in the political-media landscape. At a meso level, com- mentary benefits commentators’ political parties, contributing to legitimize their discourse in the public sphere, defining themes in the media and shaping public perception of political issues. From a macro perspective, it appears that the comment may be seen as a strategy of politicization of the media that has always character- ized the way politics views the media . Thus, the division of the comment space between politicians and journalists, translating a model of association, demonstrates that the increasingmediatiza- tion of politics in western societies, and in Portugal, in particular, has not weakened the politicization of the media . Thus, the research results allow us to support the theoretical debate around the concept of the mediatization of politics. Critics highlight the “mediacentric” nature of the con- struct, by placing the media at the center of social processes, and the conceptualization of the media as autonomous insti- tutions and governed exclusively by their internal rules (DEA- CON; STANYER, 2014; 2015; HEPP et al., 2015; LUNT; LIVING- STONE, 2016). In line with these criticisms, the results of the empirical study suggest that the incorporation of media logics in political activity did not replace its original logic but has been integrated into it. We believe that the interest of politicians in commentary spaces is explained by what James Mahoney and Kathleen Thel- en (2010) call institutional layering . The political mediatization may be described as the introduction of new (media) rules over or in addition to existing (political) precepts. In turn, just as the unconditional surrender of politics to the media logics translates a reducing approach to the rela- tionship between politics and the media , the discourse of full