Medialisering och makt: En analys av mediernas politiska påverkan

Abstract

Mediatization and Power: An Analysis of the Media’s Political Influence. During the last few decades it has become increasingly common to characterize modern politics as mediated and mediatized. Problematic, though, is that both concepts are referred to more often than they are properly defined, and that there is a deficit in systematic empirical studies on the degree to which politics has become mediatized. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to analyze the concepts of “mediated” and “mediatized” politics, and to empirically investigate how Swedish members of parliament and political journalists perceive the media’s political influence. The theoretical analysis suggests that the mediatization of politics should be understood as a multidimensional concept, whereas the empirical results show that both members of parliament and political journalists believe that the media do have extensive influence over politics as well as the general public.