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b. Mediatisation and the logics
The concepts of media logic and mediatisation (and mediation) are often
used as synonyms in the literature of political communication (Hepp
2011; Livingstone 2009). Some scholars regard it as an all-encompassing,
collective term (Deacon and Stanyer 2014), while others approach it as a
continuously “unfolding historical process” (Livingstone 2009, 7). A related
term is mediation. Mediation is a natural, pre-ordered mission of media
where communicators denote meanings to happenings for their audience
(Mazzoleni 2015, 378). Despite all this, in the European literature of political
communication, the phenomenon of mediation is regarded as more valuable
than mediatisation, and is used - in a broader sense than transmission - as
a collective term (Couldry 2008; Livingstone 2009).
Aside from the inconsistencies in the literature, we will look at the two
concepts as two different phenomena, though similar in their effects. As
described above, media logic means adaptation to the work of media. In
contrast, mediatisation means a political system greatly influenced by the
media and adapted to the mediation of politics (Asp 1986, 359 quoted in
Hjavard 2008, 106.). Other scholars claim that politics has lost its autonomy
against media with mediatisation, as it communicates to the public from the
ground of media regularities (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999).
The case is different on social media sites, where other regularities prevail
as well. Political actors do not only get mediatised by the media, but they
intend to raise their potential audience’s attention effectively. That is how we
find self-mediatisation or reflexive mediatisation describing the process of
how political actors make traditional media react to their communication
via social networking sites (Marcinkowski and Steiner 2009; Meyer 2002).
Jesper Strombdck describes mediatisation as a process through which the
independence of politics from media can be studied. The mediatisation of
politics can be examined by the degree of constraints, on which basis four
phases can be differentiated. The first phase is when politics takes notes of the
transmission role of media, and politics gets mediated. In the second phase
of mediatisation, media becomes more independent and the media logic,
rather than any political logic, prevails, with the need for political actors to
develop their public relations and news management skills and capacities.
In the third phase, media logic becomes dominant, to which politicians
have to adapt, including by further increasing their news management and
spinning competences. By doing so, they ultimately put party logic aside.
In the fourth phase of mediatisation, politicians internalise the media logic
and use it not only during the campaigns, but also between two political or
election campaigns, leading to a colonisation of politics by media (Strömbäck
2008, 235-241).
Mediatisation and self-mediatisation are not a linear but a multidirectional
and multidimensional compelling force in social networking sites. Also,