This was a talk to George Washington University students about how the process of government and politics is becoming 'mediatised'. By that I mean that the process of creating and implementing policies, as well as reporting and deliberating upon politics, is becoming saturated in an unprecedented volume and variety of sources, platforms and content creators. This creates a kind of networked politics. This has good aspects and bad.

1. The Mediatisation of Politics:
what happens when government and journalism
become networked?
Prof Charlie Beckett
GWU Seminar Dec 2014

2. What does journalism do for politics?
• Information
[facts, records, statistics, events,
policies]
• Deliberation
[debate, analysis, comment, opinion]
• Accountability
[investigation, audit, voice for
citizen, campaigns]

4. Politicians/executive
News Media
Public

5. Political reporting is now networked
Journalism, social media & data
Politicians/executive
Citizens

7. Networked politics
• SATURATION
• ACCELERATION
• DISINTERMEDIATION
• VOLUME AND VARIETY

8. Media for democracy
• “…the information revolution makes possible
for the first time in history something we have
only dreamt about: A global society where
people anywhere and everywhere can
discover their shared values, communicate
with each other and do not need to meet or
live next door to each other to join together
with people in other countries in a single
moral universe to bring about change….”

10. Media against democracy
• “It used to be thought – and I include myself
in this – that help was on the horizon. New
forms of communication would provide new
outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor
of traditional media. In fact, the new forms
can be even more pernicious, less balanced,
more intent on the latest conspiracy theory
multiplied by five”

12.  The average length of articles about the Prime Minister in the Guardian and
Times halved between 1945 and 2009 but the average number of articles
mentioning the Prime Minister doubled (Langer 2011).
 Television news sound bites related to US Presidential campaigns shrank from
just over 43 seconds in 1968 to just under 9 seconds in 1988 and less than 8
seconds in 2004 (Hallin 1994; Bucy 2007).
 In its first four-year term, the Blair administration issued 32,000 press releases
(cited in Dean 2012).
 The number of civil service information officers doubled in the Cabinet Office
between 1979 and 2006, tripled at the MoD and Prime Minister’s office, and
quadrupled at the Home Office (Davis 2007).

13. The vicious cycle of mediatisation
More, faster
media
Increased
spin control
More cynical
public
More
Politics
becomes
media
orientated
aggressive
social media
& journalism

14. Does it matter?
• Spin: Truthfulness and trust undermined?
• Politicization of civil servants?
• ‘Tail wags the dog’: policy follows a media
agenda?
• Focus on immediate results, not long-term?
• Chilling of policy deliberation?
• Journalism not trusted

15. The (politician’s) problem with
political journalism is..?
• Unaccountable power
• Bias
• Obsession with process
• Cynicism
• Lack of information
• Lack of expertise
• Loss of local press

16. The (journalist’s) problem with
political journalism is..?
• Lack of resources for (political) journalism
• Government secrecy
• Government and party spin and manipulation
• Disintermediation: increased role of social
networks & public relations

17. The (public’s) problem with
political journalism is..?
• Too complicated
• Too cynical
• Too belligerent, biased
• Too much process
• Boring
• Irrelevant – ‘Westminster
bubble’
• Too simplistic
• Not critical enough
• Too complicit – not critical
or radical enough
• Sensationalist
• Not informed enough about
realities of policy-making

18. Democratisation?

20. The song

23. 47%: Citizen + journalist =
transparency

24. Potential of new media for democracy
• Gives citizen direct voice
• Gives citizen direct access to information
• Allows citizen to organise and campaign
• Allows the public to critique mainstream
media

25. Dangers of new media democracy
• Fragmentation/polarisation
• Bad information/propaganda
• Distraction
• Short attention span

26. #Ferguson tweets by party affiliation

27. Filter bubbles then?

29. More democratic?
“Journalism will continue to become more plural
in its forms, its functions, and its practitioners.
It will become more difficult to distinguish it
from advocacy political communications,
public relations alternative and participatory
civic information, personal commentary,
poplar culture and so on”
Dahlgren 2009

30. The real problem
for mainstream
politics and
journalism is
engagement,
attention &
authenticity

31. The political role of networked
journalism
• Job of the political journalist becomes to filter,
curate and make relevant the right
information for the right people
• To be public-centred, customer-focused,
reliable, transparent and credible
• While continuing to uphold the traditional
functions of acting as an independent
reporter, investigator and critic of government

32. Keep in touch:
Prof Charlie Beckett
Twitter: @CharlieBeckett
My blog: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/
Email: c.h.beckett@lse.ac.uk
I am also on Facebook and Medium