Politics in Media: Power Dynamics

Key Concepts in Politics in Media

• One-dimensional definitions of power are limited which constrains people to do what others want restricting their own interests in the decision-making process
• Two-dimensional power is not only about forcing decisions, but also the ability to prevent challenges or alternative claims from arising- also known as the agenda setting dimension
• Three-dimensional power, related to hegemony, involves persuading people that those in power are acting in their best interest
• This perspective highlights how power extends beyond rational decision-making into latent, less visible forms

Media and Power

• Hypothesis 1: Media as channels/means information and propaganda= linear understanding of symbolic power, where the media is a tool of political power that informs or manipulates citizens
• Hypothesis 2: Media as subjects/institutions exhibiting replacement and complementarity, not mere channels but own-right institutions with profit motives, which may conflict or complement political power interests
• Hypothesis 3: Media as an apparatus (dispositif) showcasing complexity, hybridization and ambivalence, acting as institution with agenda setting power, operates under Foucauldian "apparatus," shaping the social reality

Assumptions Regarding Participation

• Participation in communication and media remains structurally under-theorized, its political nature under acknowledged
• Democracy emphasizes inclusion in political decision-making, which is a key site for articulating the concept of participation
• The internet provides new opportunities for 'structural participation within the media'

Internet and Participation

• Structural participation on the internet includes:
  • Hacktivism like denial-of-service attacks of corporate/government websites and systems eluding censorship like WikiLeaks practices
  • Alternative, grassroots, self-organized, and citizen journalism projects serve as alternatives to mainstream media
• Web 2.0 opens participation to broader public through:   - Content-sharing sites, social networks, blogs and wikis
  • Editing ease introduced by Web 2.0 has transformed the audience into 'produsers'
• Internet users can produce and distribute 'mass self-communication' self-generated/directed towards global audience unlike press and broadcast media with limited influence
• 'Networked publics' manage their multidirectional communication, ceasing media representations of 'lived experience,' activating own experience representations due to Internet expansion

Debates on Web 2.0 and Public Sphere

• Multidisciplinary social research questions whether Web 2.0 enhances social spheres, or encourages ghettoization/opinion polarization among like-minded people

Minimalist vs. Maximalist Democratic Participation

• Minimalist participation focuses on media effects on voting and representation/delegation of power, limiting participation to macro-level elite selection
• Narrow definition of politics as institutionalized, unidirectional participation focuses on a homogeneous popular belief
• Maximalist represents balance between representation and participation is balancing representation and participation in attempt to combining macro and micro participation
• The broad definitions of the political takes on a dimension of social multi-directional participation, focuses on heterogeneity

Assumptions Regarding Media Power and Effects

• Media are always particular, historically embedded in communicating meaning/information
• Social, cultural, political, and economic particularities shape each age's understanding and experience of media
• Interpretations of how media works must be socially and historically situated

Media and Infrastructures

• Technological artifacts facilitating communication practices, organized in/around institutional arrangements, fitting media landscape are crucial
• A three-party media definition includes production, texts, and audiences before the mass diffusion of the internet
• The effects of technological artifacts depend on practices & Institutional arrangements
• Acknowledging that the media are services, tools, platforms, and technological materiality's and also the industry behind them defines consequences and significance

Theories of Media and Communication

• Theories fit specific moments in media system development, and rest on fixed ingredients
• A theory's features include:
  • Idea of short vs long term media effects, and passive vs active audience
  • Methodology employed, along-with communicative model
• Theory foundations include:   - Sociological and/or Psychological theory, plus Socio-historical context

Media Effects Cycle

• Starting from strong, direct effects (1920-40), media shifted
•   To limited, indirect (1940-60), and   - To the powerful audiences (from the 1908s)
  • To the all powerful media (social media logic, data algorithms, AI) as of current times
• Everyday exposure to media cultivates manipulation

Three Hypotheses: Relation Between Media and Power

• Media as channels/means transmits information &
• The media as subjects/institutions showcasing replacement or
• The media as an apparatus (dispositif), displaying complexity

Understanding Mediatization

• Mediatization is about the relationship between the media and society resting on technological determinism
• Technological determinism assumes media alone generates social change
• Consequences depend on how technologies are both taken up and used
• The consequences from technological artefacts depend on practices and institutional arrangements

Media Logic Theory

• It is crucial that the media are acknowledged as institutions, not simply channels
• Political communication must adapt to social expectations in media-dominated public spheres
• Political actors the public internalize media culture and utilize staging of media events, which is why public relations were born

Influence Over the Media

• Media's institutional power requires adaptation to their logic to be visible
• Focus shifts to:
  • Mediatization of certain actors   - Mediatization of particular events
• The mediatization of poltical discourse (speech)
• Media logic as commercial logic driving spectacularization
• Adaptation of political language patterns
• Media plays central role in societal change

Progression of Mediatization

• Mediatization stems from the printing press, featuring elective media wave which results in quantitative and qualitative phenomena influencing society/complexity
• Social spheres depend on media logic creating suitability of everything for media representation
• Mediatization is common across democratic political systems where the media has taken on character of “necessity” in politics.
• According to Couldry & Hepp the social world is transformed in dynamics/structure with media playing continuous roles in construction and the horizon for media’s practices are the social world’s fundamental reference points