Media In Media

To what degree is politics being ‘mediatized’?

Within past decades media has become a powerful complex mechanism, which is one of the dominant parts of a rising promotional culture. Its influence has become noticeable all over the globe. This mechanism can affect almost every single human decision at conscious and/or unconscious level, and it does not matter whether it concerns cultural, social, economic or political areas. It is believed, that ‘the media's the most powerful entity on earth. <...> Because they control the minds of the masses.‘ (Keeble,2010:99) However, this writing will concentrate on the analysis of only one specific area, i.e. politics, and its interaction within the media. The topic of this essay is politics, its connection and cooperation with the media in a contemporary capitalist Western world. This writing will define to what degree politics is mediatized and how ‘institutional politics has been affected by promotional needs.’ (Davis,2013:11) Therefore, it will be examined how media and politics work together, and what impact has a rise of promotional culture, which according to Aeron Davis, ‘directs media and public attention to public figures.’ (Davis,2013:202) In order to give a complete picture, the concepts of ‘promotional culture’ and ‘mediatization’ will be explained, and the liaison between media and politics will be defined. It will be questioned if media and politics affect one another, or whether politicians manage media, or maybe media controls politics in the promotional contemporary culture. Consequently, three major aspects proving that politics is fully mediatized, an example of Lithuanian well-known celebrity, and the government election of 2008 will be given and investigated. To make th...

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... the media and promotional culture is a very important issue, they converge. For it to happen, this convergence ‘requires responsive changes to be made not only by the promotional industries, but also by the media in which their promotional messages are positioned.’ (Powell,2013:4) Moreover, according to Dwyer, media convergence is shortly described as ‘the process whereby new technologies are accommodated by existing media and communication industries and cultures.’ (Dwyer,2010:2) Likewise, Helen Powell in her book ‘Promotional Culture and Convergence: Markets, Methods, Media’ stressed that:

‘Convergence is centered on the flow of media across national boundaries, across platforms and across the bridge between producers and consumers, and is realized physically through a plethora of technological devices and mentally through our thought processes.’ (Powell,2013:8)