Why political parties adapt to the media - SAGE Journals

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Why political parties adapt to the media: Exploring the fourth dimension of mediatization

the International Communication Gazette 75(4) 341–358 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1748048513482266 gaz.sagepub.com

Jesper Stro¨mba¨ck Mid Sweden University, Sweden

Peter Van Aelst University of Antwerp, Belgium

Abstract One key concept in research on how the media influence political processes is mediatization, which denotes a long-term process through which the media have become increasingly independent from politics and through which political actors and institutions have become increasingly dependent on the media. While it is often claimed that politics has become increasingly mediatized, the process of mediatization has not yet been properly addressed in the literature. Against this background, and based on the literature on mediatization and strategic party behavior, the purpose of this article is to theoretically explore the processes through which political parties become mediatized, and to suggest a model of media adaptation by political parties. Keywords Media logic, mediatization, news management, political logic, political news journalism, political parties, strategic party behavior, strategic political communication

Corresponding author: Jesper Stro¨mba¨ck, Department of Media and Communication, Mid Sweden University, S-851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden. Email: [email protected]

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the International Communication Gazette 75(4)

Introduction The mediatization of politics has been described as a long-term process through which the media have become increasingly independent from politics and through which politicians and political institutions have become increasingly dependent on the media (Asp and Esaiasson, 1996; Hjarvard, 2008; Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999). As part of this process, political actors have come under increasing pressure to adapt to the media and their logic (Altheide and Snow, 1979), and it has been theorized that the extent to which political actors adapt to the media and their logic constitutes the ‘fourth dimension of mediatization’ (Stro¨mba¨ck, 2008). Still, thus far mediatization remains a concept referred to more often than used to guide systematic research, and the processes of mediatization remain largely unexplored. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to theoretically explore the processes through which political parties in western democracies become mediatized. While there are many types of political actors, in this article we focus on political parties since these are the most central political actors in democracies (Bardi and Mair, 2008; Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000). Because of this central role political parties have been paid extensive attention in political science literature. However, there has been very little scholarly attention to how mediatization has affected their functioning and central position. To remedy this, the article integrates traditional literature on political parties with communication studies.

Mediatization as a four-dimensional and process-oriented concept A basic assumption in the mediatization literature is that media and politics constitute two separate, albeit interdependent, systems guided by different logics. As the media become increasingly independent from politics, they increasingly follow their own logic, which creates incentives for political actors to adapt to this logic instead of following what might be called a party logic (Mazzoleni, 1987; Van Aelst et al., 2008) or political logic (Stro¨mba¨ck and Esser, 2009). According to Schrott (2009: 42), ‘The core of mediatization consists in the mechanism of the institutionalization of media logic in other societal subsystems. In these subsystems, media logic competes with established guidelines and influences on the actions of individuals.’ Meyer (2002: 71–72) similarly posits a process of colonization that entails ‘the almost unconditional surrender of politics . . . to the logic of the media system.’ The concept of media logic, coined by Altheide and Snow (1979), has however been criticized because of its elusiveness and because it lends itself to technological determinism (Lundby, 2009). ‘Media’ is also a broad concept, and there are many differences between, for example, mobile phones and newspapers. In addition, theorizing on mediatization of politics generally focuses not on all kinds of media, but on the news media. Stro¨mba¨ck (2011a: 373) has thus suggested that ‘news media logic’ is a more appropriate term, defined broadly as ‘the institutional, technological, and sociological characteristics of the news media, including their format characteristics, production and dissemination routines, norms, and needs, standards of newsworthiness, and to the formal and informal

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rules that govern news media.’ In this sense news media logic in democratic settings refers to both an audience or commercial logic and a practical organizational context. The latter means that political news should be able to fit or adjusted to fit to media routines and media formats. A smart politician will for example adjust the timing and length of his or her message in order to increase his or her chance of getting covered in the evening news. In addition to these more practical considerations the message should also be in line with how journalists value and select what’s news. This news-value orientation refers to perceptions about what is believed to be intrinsically relevant and interesting for the public (O’Neill and Harcup, 2009). Thinking in terms of news values is far from a recent phenomenon (Galtung and Ruge, 1965), but the focus on news with great news value has become more dominant over time because of growing competition and commercial pressure. At heart, mediatization refers to a long-term process of increasing influence of the media and their logic. Focusing on politics, Stro¨mba¨ck (2008, 2011a; Stro¨mba¨ck and Esser, 2009) has suggested that mediatization should be conceived as a multidimensional concept where four analytically distinct, but highly interrelated, dimensions can be identified. Each of these dimensions constitutes a continuum, where politics can be more or less mediatized. The first dimension relates to the extent to which politics has become mediated, in the sense that the news media have become the most important source of information about politics and society and the primary channel of communication between political actors and citizens (Mazzoleni, 2008). This dimension does not cause, but is a necessary prerequisite for, the further mediatization of politics. It is however when media institutions become increasingly independent from political institutions that the process of mediatization gains pace. Although political and news media institutions should be perceived as interdependent (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995; Cook, 2005; Sparrow, 1999), the more independent from political institutions the news media become, the more inclined they will be to set their own priorities and follow their own logic and needs, and the less inclined they will be to subordinate themselves to routines and needs of political institutions and actors (Cook, 2005; Meyer, 2002; Schiffer, 2008). Gradually, a pragmatic approach will replace a sacerdotal approach to politics (Esser, 2008; Semetko et al., 1991), and news media logic will become more important than political logic for how the news media operate. This leads to the third dimension of mediatization, the extent to which media content is governed by news media logic as opposed to political logic (Brants and Van Praag, 2006; Stro¨mba¨ck and Dimitrova, 2011). The most explicit manifestation of the news media following their own logic is that the selection and framing of news are guided by the news media’s own news values and need to garner audience attention while keeping down the costs, rather than by the needs of political actors or what kind of news people need as citizens rather than as consumers. When the news media’s coverage of politics is largely shaped by the news media’s own logic, while they continue to constitute the most important source of information and channel of communication, political actors find themselves in a position where they need but can no longer simply control the media and their coverage. This creates strong incentives to adapt to the news media and their logic (Cook, 2005; Stro¨mba¨ck, 2011b).

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The fourth dimension of mediatization thus refers to the extent to which political actors adjust their perceptions and behavior to the news media logic rather than political logic. This might affect not only their communication efforts, but also the actual political output and the way political actors are organized. The question then is not if political parties need to take the news media into consideration. To understand the process of mediatization, the key questions are rather how and, on a more detailed level of analysis, why parties adapt to the media and their logic.

How political parties have adapted to the media Parties can adapt to the process of mediatization in different ways and different levels. A first distinction can be made between structural adaption of the party organization and adaption of the party’s communication behavior (Donges, 2008). With respect to organizational adaptation, we distinguish three steps of structural changes as a reaction to the increasing importance of the news media. First, parties have adapted to the media by hiring specialized personnel to manage and respond to the mass media, by establishing press offices, and by increasing the resources allocated for media management. At this level, building an organizational infrastructure for communication and media management is the key response to mediatization. Without ignoring the differences between parties and countries (Donges, 2008), it is safe to say that most political parties in western democracies have made such organizational changes (Farrell and Webb, 2000; Negrine, 2008). A second means of adapting to the media is by including the senior press officer or communication manager in the top of the party decision-making structure or ‘dominant coalition’ (Dozier and Grunig, 1992) within the party. By doing this, political parties can make sure that media considerations are an integral part of everything the party does, rather than some kind of after-thought. Today, most political parties across Europe have integrated ‘in house’ media experts in their headquarters (Karlsen, 2010; Webb and Kolodny, 2006). As a third ‘ultimate’ step, political parties may also adapt to the media through their selection of representatives. When parties select leaders and candidates, many considerations are important. They should be highly skilled in handling the substance of policy matters; they should be able to manage intraparty tensions or conflicts; they should be able to establish, build or maintain relationships with important stakeholders and publics; they should function as symbols for what the party stands for; and they should have charisma and be skilled in communicating with the media (Sheafer, 2001). Although the number of competitors for leadership positions differs between parties and elections both within and across countries, at this level, emphasizing media performance and skill when selecting representatives are key means of adapting to the media (Davis, 2010; Sheafer and Tzionit, 2006). With respect to party communication adaptation, this may manifest itself through mainly three changes in the party communication strategy. First, the parties have become more active in and devote more resources to their efforts to proactively shape the media agenda and promote their issues and frames through the media (Hopmann et al., 2010). Second, those responsible for communicating the official party line may attempt to do so by adapting their communication to the media and their needs and standards of


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newsworthiness, i.e. news media logic. One important aspect of this work is through the provision of ‘information subsidies’ (Gandy, 1982), that is, efforts to make it easier and cheaper for the media to cover them. Prime examples are by organizing press conferences or ‘pseudo-events’ (Boorstin, 1962) designed to attract the media, and provide information in forms and scheduled at times that conform to the media’s production routines. Third, party leaders and spokespersons may use less formal ways to create a more fertile ground for interactions with journalists by trying to build personal relationships with them. Both party leaders and parties’ communication experts can establish such relationships by meeting in formal and informal settings, and by providing journalists with exclusive information (Van Aelst et al., 2010). Of course the adaption of the party’s organization and its communication strategies also implies the adaption of individual politicians. Parties do not act themselves, but through their leaders, representatives, activists, and members. The means by which individual politicians adapt to the media are however highly similar to the means used for the party adaptation, and parties provide media training and means to enhance the knowledge of how the media work. A key distinction between meso and micro level, however, is that the party adaptation seeks to promote the party itself and the official party line, while individual adaptation may also seek to promote the individual politician. It is important to note, however, that media adaptation does not have to signal the surrender of politics to the media. If we assume that political parties and individual politicians are rational and strategic actors, adapting to the media should rather be perceived as a means to reach other strategic objectives (Stro¨mba¨ck and Kiousis, 2011).

Explaining media adaption by political parties The assumption that political parties are rational and strategic actors has been the starting point of several theories on party behavior (Downs, 1957; Harmel and Janda, 1994; Sjo¨blom, 1968; Strøm, 1990). To understand the party as an actor these theories focus mainly on the behavior of party leaders as a unitary team of individuals (Strøm, 1990: 574). In line with these authors we contend that parties and their leaders do not adapt to the media for their own sake. Constrained by the context in which they operate, they rather seek to accomplish certain goals. In these processes, the media may function both as help and hindrance. From this perspective, adapting to the media should be perceived of as a strategy to regain control, increase the usefulness of the media in parties’ pursuit of other goals, and decrease the risk that the media function as a hindrance. As a consequence, parties’ and politicians’ approach to the media should not be understood as merely reactive. It should rather be understood as located on a continuum ranging from proactive to reactive. In analyzing why parties adapt to media we will devote attention to both reactive and proactive strategies. First we will elaborate on the strategic goals of political parties in different arenas.

Political parties and their leaders as strategic actors The strategic goals of political parties are crucial for understanding their behaviors. Although it is often assumed that political parties’ primary goal is ‘to maximize political

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support’ (Downs, 1957: 11), in most cases, parties have numerous goals, and the primary goal may vary across parties (Harmel and Janda, 1994). According to Strøm (1990), three different types of parties can be distinguished depending on their primary goals: vote-seeking, office-seeking and policy-seeking parties. The distinguishing feature of vote-seeking parties is that they seek to maximize their share of votes, similar to Downs’s assumption that parties’ primary goal is to maximize political support. Office-seeking parties, in contrast, ‘seek to maximize, not their votes, but their control over political office’ (Strøm, 1990: 567), while policy-seeking parties’ primary goal is to maximize influence over public policy. These models of party behavior are ideal types. In reality, parties may attempt to maximize the share of votes as well as to win office and maximize influence over public policy, although ‘Party leaders rarely have the opportunity to realize all of their goals simultaneously. The same behavior that maximizes one of their objectives may not lead to the best possible outcome with respect to the others’ (Strøm and Mu¨ller, 1999: 9). For example, a more outspoken position on certain issues may increase the vote share of a party, but it may at the same time endanger its position as a reliable government coalition partner. There may also be internal divisions over which goals should be primary, and all parties are constrained by both internal and external, institutional, factors. This trade-off between different goals is the central topic of Sjo¨blom’s theory of strategic party behavior in multiparty systems (1968). According to this theory, political parties act not just in an electoral arena but also in an internal and a parliamentary arena, each with limitations in terms of different members and decision types. In Sjo¨blom’s words: The members in the internal arena are the party members in a particular party; they make decisions about whether or not they are to support the party’s official standpoints and candidates. The members in the electoral arena are those entitled to vote; they make decisions about whether they are to use their voting right, and if so which party to support. The members in the parliamentary arena consist of the parliamentary groups of the various parties; they make decisions about collaboration or conflicts with one another. (Sjo¨blom, 1968: 26)

While Sjo¨blom (1968: 73) assumes that the primary party goal is that ‘The party itself shall make the authoritative decisions in accordance with its evaluation system,’ to realize and reach this goal, parties also have ‘basic goals’ for their strategic behavior in each of the three arenas. More specifically, in the electoral arena, the goal is to maximize the share of votes; in the internal arena, to maximize internal cohesion; and in the parliamentary arena, to maximize parliamentary influence. The theories by Strøm (1990) and Sjo¨blom (1968) should be perceived as complementary. For analytical purposes, we may assume that all parties act in an internal, electoral, and parliamentary arena, each accompanied by different members, decision types, and strategic goals; but that the relative weight of the strategic goals in each of the arenas and the primary goal varies across office-, vote- and policy-seeking parties. For example, a vote-seeking party can be assumed to have as its primary goal to maximize the share of votes. It will consequently consider the electoral arena to be the most important, and the goals in the internal and parliamentary arenas to be instrumental. A policy-seeking party,


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in contrast, can be assumed to have as its primary goal to maximize its influence over public policy. It will consequently consider the parliamentary arena to be most important, and the goals in the internal and the electoral arenas to be instrumental (Wolinetz, 2002). Neither of these theories devotes more than scant attention, however, to the role of the media. Sjo¨blom (1968: 207) devotes extensive attention to ‘output variables,’ but the discussion of what he calls ‘party-independent communicators of political news’ remains minimal. This lack of attention might have been understandable more than 40 years ago, but is not today. To remedy this, Nord (1997) suggested that political actors also act in a media arena, where the members are journalists and editors, the primary decision whether to give positive or negative publicity to parties, and where the strategic goal of parties is to maximize positive and minimize negative publicity. From the perspective of mediatization and seeking an understanding of why political actors adapt to the media, it is important yet still not sufficient to consider the media yet another arena, separate from the other arenas. In fact, what makes the role of the media particularly important is the dual and integral role of the media in all other political processes. Thus, regardless of whether political actors proactively attempt to use the media to further their strategic goals, or reactively attempt to counteract obstacles raised by the media, they have to take the news media into consideration.

Why do political parties adapt to the media In the following, we analyze why political parties and politicians adapt to the media. When doing so, we assume that all parties act in an internal, parliamentary, electoral, and media arena; that each arena has different strategic goals; and that parties have to take the media into consideration either reactively or proactively to obtain these goals.

The electoral arena In the electoral arena, the strategic goal is to maximize the share of votes. In contemporary societies, the media are key in the battle for votes and public opinion. Both old (canvassing) and new (social media) alternative ways of reaching out to and influencing voters are also important, but mostly have a more limited reach. Most people still rely on mass media, or online versions of traditional mass media, for political information (Purcell et al., 2010). On a general level, political parties need the media to maximize positive publicity and minimize negative publicity among the general public. More specifically, parties need to influence the media on different aspects ranging from their party program to their image and reputation as well as how current political challenges are framed. The electoral importance of issues for political parties has been mainly shown by agenda-setting studies: issues that get more attention in the news will be at the forefront of the voters’ minds when entering the voting booth, and used by voters when evaluating political alternatives (Iyengar and Kinder, 1987). According to the issue-ownership theory, voters also associate certain issues with certain parties (Petrocik, 1996; Walgrave and De Swert, 2007). Therefore, parties need to get their issues on the media agenda to influence the public

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issue agenda; and influence the media framing to influence how voters perceive issues and policies (Iyengar, 1991). They also need to influence how the media cover the party itself and its leader, since such coverage may have great influence on how voters perceive the party and its leader (Kleinnijenhuis et al., 2007). While the media cover politics extensively at least during election campaigns (Stro¨mba¨ck and Kaid, 2008), their interest lies less in just describing what the parties are doing and saying. For professional and economic reasons, their most basic interest rather lies in telling good stories that will attract audience attention among those audience groups that advertisers are most interested in reaching (Hamilton, 2004). Hence, the media often tend to focus on other aspects than those the parties would want them to, not least the horse race and the strategies of the political campaigns (Aalberg et al., 2012; Patterson, 1993). To explain this, Zaller (2001: 255) proposed the ‘rule of product substitution,’ according to which ‘the more strenuously politicians challenge journalists for control of a news jurisdiction, the more journalists will seek to develop substitute information that the mass audience is willing to accept as news and that gives expression to the journalistic voice.’ In other words, political parties cannot control how they are covered in the news. They have to adapt to the media and their logic and involve themselves in what Cook (2005) has labeled ‘negotiations of newsworthiness,’ that occur simultaneously on several levels. First, both journalists and political actors ‘seek to specify the conditions and circumstances under which they will meet.’ Second, when journalists and politicians meet, they have to battle over what issues and frames are important and should be the focus of attention. Third, there is an ‘indirect and implicit negotiation’ when political actors attempt to anticipate what will make news and as journalists produce their stories (Cook, 2005: 102). In the electoral arena, the proactive reasons why political parties and politicians adapt to the media and their logic is consequently that they have to, in order to reach out to, communicate with, and influence voters and public opinion. As stated by Wolfsfeld (2011: 1), ‘if you don’t exist in the media, you don’t exist politically.’ Reactively, they adapt to the media and their coverage because not doing so would increase the risk of negative publicity or at least suggest that they are indifferent to the issue at stake. Parties are often forced to react to statements or events to publicly show ‘that they care.’ At the end of the day, the battle for public opinion and for media coverage is largely a zero-sum game: if a party or politician fails to influence the media agenda or media framing, others may succeed, and to prevent that, political actors have to battle fiercely to influence the media. Thus, political actors continuously attempt to anticipate and adapt to the media and their logic – what Davis (2007: 188) labels an ‘anticipatory media effect.’ The target is the general public or target groups within the public, but to reach them, political parties and politicians attempt to present news that is heavily subsidized, fits news values such as conflict, drama, and visual attractiveness (O’Neill and Harcup, 2009), in forms and at times that appeal to the media and conform to their production routines. They also try to minimize the risk for negative publicity while preparing to respond rapidly in case of negative media coverage. This holds true for office- as well as policy- and voteseeking parties, although vote- and office-seeking parties may place the greatest weight and emphasis on the electoral arena.


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The parliamentary arena The parliamentary arena includes both the parliament and the government that is either elected by parliament or dependent on support in parliament to move legislation forward (Sjo¨blom, 1968: 250). In the parliamentary arena, the strategic goal is to maximize legislative influence. This arena is particularly important for policy-seeking parties. On a general level, to increase their parliamentary influence, political parties and their leadership have to ensure that all or most members of the parliamentary group act in unison. They also have to find support from and build alliances with other parties. The scope of such alliances can vary. In some cases, parties decide to join forces on single issues, in other cases they seek to build more general and lasting alliances. According to Sjo¨blom (1968: 116–118) the media are, in contrast to the electoral arena, of little use in the parliamentary arena as most politicians are already highly informed. This may however have been truer in the 1960s than it is today. While negotiations may mainly take place out of the media, the parties can also attempt to use the media to signal their preferences to other policy elites and members of parliament (Kumar, 2007). As defined by Eshbaugh-Soha (2007: 7), ‘Signals are the means by which [politicians] express their preferences to other actors in the policy process.’ The target of attempts to use the media for signaling is not the media or the general public but rather other politicians (Davis, 2007). Actions to win media visibility as a means to signal to other politicians may be substantial – for example, proposing laws – but also more symbolic – for example, writing letters to the editor – or straddling between the substantial and the symbolic – for example, posing parliamentary questions. The more parties succeed in gaining media publicity for their efforts to move an issue or promote a policy, the greater the pressure on other parties in parliament to consider the same issue or policy. This can be perceived as part of the strategy of ‘going public’ – appealing to and enlisting public opinion in efforts to exert pressure on other policymakers (Kernell, 2007). In these respects, the parties may attempt to take advantage of the fact that the media have an influence on the agenda of parliament (Soroka, 2002; Van Noije et al., 2008), government (Walgrave et al., 2008), and other parties (Green-Pedersen and Stubager, 2010). By doing this proactively, they may also attempt to frame an issue in ways that ‘promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation’ (Entman, 1993: 52). Another reason to go public with respect to the parliamentary arena may be to influence politicians of the own parliamentary group. Heffernan (2006), for instance, has shown that Tony Blair went public before the Iraq War not only to influence the public but also the backbench MPs of his own party. In the parliamentary arena, the proactive reasons why political parties adapt to the news media and their logic is consequently that they need the media to signal to other policymakers, to increase their strength in parliamentary negotiations and influence the policy agenda, to enlist the media and public opinion in efforts to influence other policymakers, and to influence the terms of the debate through framing. The proactive efforts of some parties force other parties to reactively adapt and adjust to the fact that policymaking processes are no longer exclusively played out behind closed doors. This may create a spiraling process of media adaptation in parties’ efforts to increase their influence in the parliamentary arena.

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At the same time, independent media interventions may make the negotiation processes more difficult, for example by focusing on conflicts within or between parties or by demanding clear policy commitments before negotiation processes have been completed. Therefore, in some cases parties can be expected to try to avoid media communication. Even then, the parties must however take the media and their logic into consideration, by playing to the media’s logic or by actively attempting to avoid unwanted media attention.

The internal arena In the internal arena, the strategic goal is to maximize internal cohesion. More specifically, parties want the party members to ‘support and externally defend the standpoints and candidates presented in the name of the party,’ and that decisions within the party are taken with ‘maximum party unity’ (Sjo¨blom, 1968: 85). The media, on the other hand, are seldom interested in stories about internal cohesion (Groeling, 2010). Following news media logic, the media are rather interested in stories about internal conflicts, in particular if they involve factions with identifiable leaders or if they suggest lacking support for the party leadership. Such stories lend themselves easily to storytelling techniques such as personalization, polarization, and dramatization, considered to have great news value. In this arena, generally speaking parties have no real incentives to seek media attention. Rather, their main incentive is to work to ensure that the media do not direct any attention to their internal processes. No news focusing on the internal arena is generally considered good news, with the exception that parties may seek to demonstrate strong party unity at events such as conventions or rallies. From one perspective, this suggests that political parties do not have to adapt to the media and their logic with respect to the internal arena. However, they need to make sure that journalists do not focus on conflicts or tensions within the party that may decrease internal cohesion or highlight internal differences. Understanding how to create disincentives for particular kinds of media coverage also entails some form of adaptation. In addition, from another, more proactive, perspective, parties may seek to use the media to reach out to their members and to motivate them to be active. Although often forgotten in the literature, active members still contribute to electoral success (Fisher et al., 2006), and may operate as ‘vote multipliers’ or as ambassadors (Scarrow, 1994). Although many political parties in Europe have lost members (Van Biezen et al., 2012), there is little reason to assume that the remaining members will turn out to be less useful. The mass media are not the only channel to reach party members, but as studies have shown that alternative channels are not always very effective (Van Aelst et al., 2012), the mass media could be helpful in mobilizing members and supporters. To sum up, the main reactive reason for adapting to the media and their logic is to avoid the impression of lacking internal cohesion and unity. This holds true for office- as well as policy- and vote-seeking parties. The main proactive reason for media adaption is to signal party unity and the potential campaign benefits of mobilizing members and supporters.

The media arena The media arena was not included in Sjo¨blom’s (1968) theory, and it can be debated whether it should be considered a separate arena. From the perspective of mediatization, what makes


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the media particularly important is that they have become an intrinsic part of and influence all aspects of politics. Failing to consider and adapt to the news media and their logic threatens to derail any attempts to win votes and opinion support, to influence public and political agendas, to send signals, and to avoid negative publicity. Considering the media as just another arena may fail to appreciate how integral the media have become with respect to all parts and processes of politics, including the electoral, parliamentary, and internal arenas. Still, the media are important in themselves, and regardless of other reasons for adapting to the media, positive media attention is often considered a goal in itself, over which political parties and others battle fiercely. In essence, beyond the importance of the media with respect to how they influence processes related to the electoral, parliamentary, and internal arenas, evidence suggests that parties themselves consider the media a separate arena where a strategic goal is to cultivate a good and stable relationship with journalists, and to win positive publicity (Davis, 2007; Stro¨mba¨ck, 2011b; Van Aelst et al., 2010). On balance, we thus think it makes sense to include a media arena, separate but interwoven with the other arenas. The main reasons for why political parties and politicians adapt to the media and their logic does however not differ from why they do this with respect to the other arenas.

Towards a framework for understanding why parties adapt to the media Integrating the theories of vote-, office- and policy-seeking parties with the theory of strategic party behavior in different arenas suggests that all types of parties are active in several different arenas, but that the relative importance of each arena varies between party types, and hence that the motives for adapting proactively to the media may vary (see Table 1). For vote-seeking parties, the most important arena is the electoral arena. The main proactive reason to adapt to the media is to increase positive visibility and minimize negative publicity in those media that most people consume, as this should be considered a necessary albeit not sufficient precondition for electoral success. For office-seeking parties, the most important arenas are the electoral and parliamentary arenas. The electoral arena is crucial because increasing voter support increases the likelihood of becoming part of government, although minor parties may also be included in coalition governments. Ultimately, it is however in the parliamentary arena where decisions about coalitions are taken. The main reason to adapt proactively to the media in this arena is to influence and send signals to other parties as part of negotiations. The most important media in this context are elite media used by other policymakers. For policy-seeking parties, the most important arena is the parliamentary arena where policies are crafted and decided upon. Similar to office-seeking parties in the parliamentary arena, the main reason to adapt proactively to the media is to influence and send signals to other parties as part of negotiation processes. In terms of the internal arena, there is no a priori reason to consider this more important for some party types than for other party types. Regardless of whether a political party is vote-, office- or policy-seeking, strong internal cohesion helps them reach their strategic goals in different arenas. It is important to note, though, that adapting to and communicating through the media not only carries potential rewards. It also carries risks. In the electoral arena there is not

Parliamentary arena

Internal arena

Main goal of media communication

Improve/restore public support

Improve/restore internal Improve/restore strength in cohesion policy and negotiation processes Main target of media General public – potential Politicians from different parties Members of and activists in the communication voters party Most important media Mass media with a broad Elite media Elite and mass media with a outlets reach broad reach Formal and informal negotiations Direct contact, party meetings, Alternative channels Direct contact, internal media, digital media for communication advertisements, digital media Damage trust and relationships Repel part of the members and Risks of media Repel part of the with politicians/parties activists communication electorate, straying off message Mainly symbolic Mainly substantial Both symbolic and substantial Political actions to obtain media attention Likelihood of adaption Large Moderate Limited to media logic

Electoral arena

Table 1. A model of media adaption by political parties.

Large

Damage mutual trust among politicians/ parties Mainly symbolic

Formal press releases, press conferences

Improve/restore relationships with newsmakers Journalists, editors, and media owners Off the record

Media arena

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only a risk that a party will suffer unfavorable coverage; there is also the risk that adapting to the media will carry the party off message, or that communication about a certain topic might repel part of the electorate. Similarly, communicating through the media might repel part of the members or damage the party cohesiveness, undermine internal democracy, and thus affect the internal arena. In the parliamentary arena the main risk is that media communication might endanger the trust among parties and other politicians. For instance, government coalition negotiations seldom benefit from ‘going public’ and rather need secrecy and trust among the key negotiators. More in general, media adaption may also encourage short-termism at the expense of longer-term strategic behavior. This holds particularly true considering the media’s penchant for conflicts and novelties, which creates incentives for political parties and politicians to attack and for the media to search for and exploit potential conflicts. The media’s penchant for novelty similarly creates incentives for political parties and politicians to stray off message and for the media to search for new issues and arguments while avoiding to cover what is considered ‘old news’ (Groeling, 2010). This may in turn affect actual policymaking. How willing are parties to take these risks of communication through the media? Part of the answer is related to the alternative channels of communications that parties have at their disposal. Again, these alternatives vary across arenas. In the electoral arena the alternatives are most limited: parties can opt for direct contact with voters, invest in ads, or use their own online media, but these channels are costly or mostly reach a smaller public. The growing importance of social media has at least the potential to become a powerful alternative to the mass media as the 2008 Obama campaign has shown (Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez, 2011). For the time being, however, new social media can in the majority of western democracies hardly compete with the news media as a channel to reach such a large audience on a steady basis (Gibson and Cantijoch, 2011). Therefore, we expect the likelihood of adaption to the media and its logic to be large in terms of this arena. An opposite reasoning applies to the internal arena where parties still rely on alternative channels to communicate with members and party activists. For the same reason the adaption to news media logic in the parliamentary arena probably remains moderate: front- and backstage negotiations among policymakers remain the foremost important way of communication, although the media increasingly play a part also in policymaking processes (Davis, 2007; Koch-Baumgarten and Voltmer, 2010; Sellers, 2010). Summing up, this discussion suggests that a model of media adaptation by political parties needs to consider several aspects linked to the different arenas that parties act in: the main goal of media communication, the main target or audience of media communication, which media are most important, alternative channels of communication, potential risks of media communications, and – hypothetically – how strong the incentives are to adapt to the media and their logic (see Table 1).

Discussion and conclusions Based on the analysis in this article, the question is not if political parties adapt to the media. They do. Hardly any political actor today would seriously claim that they do not take the media into consideration, either as presenting opportunities or threats. Considering the major importance of the media in all political communication processes, the

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media could be described as having become ‘environmental’ (Silverstone, 2007: 5), and similar to the physical environment, cannot be avoided or neglected. In this sense, all social and political institutions and actors, including the political parties, have become more dependent upon the media. This has, however, not downgraded all politicians to ‘media slaves,’ but rather created incentives for political parties to adapt to the media, either proactively or reactively, and has contributed to the process of mediatization of politics. More than ever, political actors try to anticipate how media will react to their words or deeds and incorporate this reaction in their decision-making. Mediatization and media adaptation should consequently not be considered as a matter of either/or, but as a matter of degree. The degree of mediatization may vary across parties as well as across countries or other contexts, for example in conjunction with election campaigns compared to non-election campaign periods. A full model of mediatization along the fourth dimension and of media adaptation thus needs to consider not only how and why political parties adapt to the media. It also has to consider the contingency of media adaptation and when media adaptation is most likely. Besides time period (election vs non-election periods), recent studies on political agenda-setting have identified other relevant contingent factors related to the institutional position of the political party. For instance, parties in opposition may have a higher need to adjust to the media logic than parties in government (Vliegenthart and Walgrave, 2010). Furthermore, the mediatization of political parties might be dependent on parties’ issue agendas, as parties tend to react on media attention that fits their strategic interest with regard to issue competition (Green-Pedersen and Stubager, 2010; Yanovitsky, 2002). The identification of these and other contingent factors that influence the degree of media adaption is a necessary step to get the full picture of how, why, and when parties adapt to the media. Next, such a model should be translated in concrete research hypotheses and tested empirically to further contribute to a comprehensive theory on the mediatization of politics. We hope this article has made a modest but significant contribution to this major challenge. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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