Has government been mediatized? A UK perspective

Abstract

There has been little empirical research to date on the consequences of mass media change for the processes of government in the UK, despite a well-documented concern since the 1990s with 'political spin'. Studies have focused largely on the relative agenda setting power of political and media actors in relation to political campaigning rather than the actual everyday workings of public bureaucracies, although UK case studies suggest that the mass media have influenced policy development in certain key areas. The study of government's relations with media from within is a small but growing sub-field where scholars have used a combination of methods to identify ways in which central bureaucracies and executive agencies adapt to the media. We present the results of a preliminary study involving in-depth interviews with serving civil servants, together with archival analysis, to suggest that media impacts are increasingly becoming institutionalized and normalized within state bureaucracies; a process we identify as mediatization. A specific finding is a shift in the relationship between government, media and citizens whereby social media is enabling governments to become news providers, by-passing the 'prism of the media' and going direct to citizens.

Why do civil servants experience media-stress differently and what can be done about it?

“…Many recent studies suggest that politicians and policy-making have, to varying degrees, adapted to the logic of the media (Elmelund-Prᴂstekᴂr, et al 2011;Garland et al 2017;Kunelius & Reunanen, 2011;Thorbjørnsrud et al 2014a). Research for instance documents that the interactions between politics, bureaucracies and the news media are a struggle for dominance or control (Casero-Ripollés et al 2014;Hepp et al 2015;Isotalus & Almonkari 2014) between institutions with "overlapping interests but different purposes" (Savage & Tiffen 2007: 84).…”

“…Mostly under the banner of 'mediatization', scholars have recently explored news media effects on various types of bureaucracies (Fredriksson et al 2015;Garland et al 2017;Maggetti 2012;Salomonsen et al 2016;Schillemans 2016;Thorbjørnsrud et al 2014b).…”

Is post-truth another word for political spin or a radical departure from it? Evidence from behind the scenes in UK government communications: 1997–2015

“…By 1997, these were no match for the incoming Labour government's more strategic, innovative approach to news management that applied creativity in order to uphold the political objectives of the party in power. Rather than directly serving their ultimate, if distant clients, the public, the permanent officials charged with media relations were increasingly required to serve their proximate clients, the political leadership (Fredriksson et al 2015;Garland et al 2018).…”

“…That's why they take media very seriously' (IV1). The point here is not just that media advisers are influential within government, and within politics, but that mediatized narratives are so internalized within the governing process that they form a constitutive part of policy decision-making by ministers (Garland et al 2018;Dean 2012;Silverman 2012). Given such preoccupations on the part of governing politicians, it should not come as a surprise that once direct forms of communication became available through social media channels, the most determined would…”

Scholarly soundbites

“…The media logics of marketization, popularization, immediacy, and the pursuit of publicity and visibility are tending to permeate or even become embedded in how these institutions function. While this may be most obvious in the political sphere, where the news agenda is increasingly set by what is trending on Twitter (Garland et al 2018), academia and science are also affected: the worldwide university ranking systems turn universities into competitive providers on an educational market (Pallas & Wedlin 2013), academic networks such as ResearchGate turn researchers into 'entrepreneurs of themselves' in a marketplace of ideas (Hammarfelt et al 2016), while the major academic publishers have adopted aggressive marketing strategies online and compete for high impact factors.…”