This article researches the medialization of research policy in Germany. The concept of medialization focuses on adaptation processes by the micro (individuals), meso (organizations), and macro levels (social systems) of society to the logic of (mostly journalistic) mass media. Below, the focus lies on how decision makers in the field of research policy perceive the journalistic logic as well as adaptation processes to this logic in their fields of expertise and their organizations. The study is based on 35 semistandardized interviews with stakeholders in organizations from politics, science, and research funding.

Most research on mediatization focuses on media-related actions and structural adaptations that aim to increase media attention. However, social actors may also opt for defensive strategies and try to avoid media publicity. In this article, we conceptualize defensive and offensive mediatization strategies as complementary methods that social actors use to deal with media publicity and public attention as well as to proactively shape mediatization processes. We employ an exploratory approach to identify and systematize defensive mediatization strategies. Consequently, we contribute to a more complete understanding of mediatization and provide starting points for further empirical analyses of media-related strategies used by social actors. A secondary analysis of the data from previous research projects suggests establishing three categories of defensive mediatization strategies—persistence, shielding, and immunization—with regard to the levels of individual actors, organizations, and social systems’ routines and norms.

The study contributes to mediatization research. Mediatization is understood as a process during which individual and collective actors adapt towards the demands of publicity and public attention. The manuscript introduces a differentiation of mediatization strategies, ranging from defensive to offensive strategies. This conceptual differentiation is applied empirically regarding relevant stakeholders within the German science-policy constellation from politics, science, and science funding. Results are based on 35 in-depth interviews with decision makers. The results section deals with similarities and differences considering the mediatization of organizations, and introduces a typology of science-policy stakeholders based on the conceptual differentiation of mediatization strategies.

Our study provides a model for the history of communication studies that is developed from the state of research and from the sociology of science, and that meets the demands of intersubjectivity. The model provides a system of categories for research and helps to systematically and transparently analyze the development of communication studies. After discussing traditional biographical, institutional, and intellectual approaches in German and U.S.-American historiography of communication studies, we develop a model that integrates the existing perspectives and also considers influences from the constellation of surrounding disciplines and relevant fields of society. Finally, we demonstrate by means of a study on the history of critical theory in German communication studies how the model can be applied.

The study investigates adaptations of organizations in the field of science to the requirements of mass media. Based on the current research, we assume that mediatization is advanced by the need of individual and collective actors for public attention and that this need varies depending on national structural factors. We compared Estonia and Germany where the science and media systems differ in their size and structure but have a similarly competitive funding environment. Our results demonstrate variability considering the intensity of reported implementations of media-related structural adaptations within organizations. These differences can be linked to country-specific structural factors.