Javnost - The Public

Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture

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The Medium of the Media

Journalism, Politics, and the Theory of “Mediatisation”

Risto Kunelius & Esa Reunanen

To cite this article: Risto Kunelius & Esa Reunanen (2012) The Medium of the Media, Javnost -
The Public, 19:4, 5-24, DOI: 10.1080/13183222.2012.11009093

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2012.11009093

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 THE MEDIUM OF
THE MEDIA
JOURNALISM, POLITICS,
AND THE THEORY OF RISTO KUNELIUS
“MEDIATISATION” ESA REUNANEN

Vol.19 (2012), No. 4, pp. 5 - 24

Abstract
In academic and popular discourse, the power of Risto Kunelius is Professor
media in current globalised and “postdemocratic” societies in the School of Social
is often discussed with the notion of “mediatisation.” It sug- Science and Humanities,
gests, for example, that media institutions are increasingly University of Tampere;
influential because they dictate the way issues are framed e-mail: risto.kunelius@uta.fi.
for public discussion. Consequently, other institutional ac-
tors (in politics, science, religion) have had to internalise a Esa Reunanen is a Research
“media logic” in order to sustain their power and legitimate Fellow in the School of
their actions. Recent studies of mediatisation largely ignore Communication, Media and
Jürgen Habermas’ early use of the term “mediatization” in Theater, University of
order to analyse the relationship between system impera- Tampere; e-mail:
tives and lifeworlds. While at first this use may seem distant esa.reunanen@uta.fi.
to recent concerns, a return to Habermas can enhance the
theorising of mediatisation and media power in two ways.
First, by underscoring the importance of a system-theo-
retic vocabulary it helps to unpack the notion of “media
logic” and narrow down the specific power resource of the
media (i.e. what is the “medium” of the media). Second, by
articulating a fundamental criticism of system-theoretic
vocabulary it opens a normative perspective for an evalu-
ation of the media’s democratic function (i.e. the “quality”
of mediatisation). This essay highlights, elaborates and
illustrates each of these potential contributions by looking
at journalism research in general and drawing on a recent
empirical study on the mediatisation of political decision-
making in Finland.
5
 Introduction
Broadly put, “mediatisation” has been used to refer to a process in which the
influence of the “media” (i.e. media as institutions or sometimes as technologies)
increases in other institutions (or spheres) of society and in everyday-life. However,
in spite of the popularity of the concept, the “theory” of mediatisation has remained
somewhat descriptive and general.1 In a recent collection, Lundby argues that while
general talk about overall mediatisation can serve as a “reminder of how involved
late modern societies have become with the media (…) a workable analysis has to be
more specific” (Lundby 2009, 4, our emphasis). This is an important demand given
the diffusion of “mediatization” discourse (cf. Livinsgtone 2009) both in popular
and political seings. Sweeping claims stretching from one production culture
to another (say from journalism to the music industries), from one institution to
another (say from religion to science to economics) or from one socio-political con-
text to another (say from China to the USA to Finland) can creatively capture new
insights, but also easily end up simplifying and exaggerating. It seems tempting
to think that we must first develop a set of more focused studies of mediatisation
before launching into broad theoretical claims. Mediatisation means different things
in different contexts (cf. Hepp, Hjarvard and Lundby 2010). In order to build a
general theory of “mediatisation” as one key characteristic of contemporary social
change we must intimately understand the specifics “on the ground.”
In this paper, however, we shall work in the opposite direction. Instead of focus-
ing on a particular media, location, topic or moment we turn to more abstract theo-
rising. We hope to modestly contribute not only to the task of generalisation within
the debate about mediatisation but also to offer a clearly articulated link between
discussions about mediatisation and broader social theory. If mediatisation is a key
characteristic of contemporary social change, these tasks must be essential.
We keep our discussion within Hjarvard’s understanding of mediatisation
as an institutional process in which “the media have become integrated into the
operations of other social institutions, while they also have acquired the status of
social institutions in their own right” (2008, 113). When describing the media as an
independent institution Hjarvard refers to Giddens’ structuration theory and states
that mediatisation implies that “other institutions to an increasing degree become
dependent on resources that the media control, and they have to submit to some
of the rules the media operate by in order to gain access to those resources” (ibid.
116-117, emphasis added). When describing the interfaces between institutions
Hjarvard uses Bourdieu’s field theory. Writing, for example, that art is “dependent
on the media as a field, since media exposure is the key to publicity and fame,
which may be converted into other forms of value on the art market or in culture
policy contexts” (ibid. 126).
The emphasis in mediatisation research have been more on the rules the media
operate by, and not so much focused the resources that the media control. These
rules are oen referred to with a catch-phrase “media logic” (various media values,
genres and formats widely studied in media sociology), which is then juxtaposed
to other logics, such as the “political logic.” However, this juxtaposing does not
explain how the “media logic” becomes influential in other domains (how and why
6

mediatisation occurs). Therefore, in addition to analysing media logic or media

rules, mediatisation theory should put more effort in studying the resources (or

7
in Bourdieu’s terms “capital”) that the media control. As Hjarvard’s example of art
shows, understanding the resources that the media controls is even more crucial
for making sense of the mediatisation than exposing the “logics” that they obey.
An institutional approach to mediatisation and the question of the media’s own
power resource point to one key theme in social theory: the processes of differentia-
tion, the simultaneous specialisation and dependency of different spheres (fields,
institutions, etc.) of social life. It suggests taking seriously the way systems theory
(from Talco Parsons to Niklas Luhmann) and its critics (especially Jürgen Haber-
mas) have applied the notion of “media” (cf. Chernilo 2002; Joas and Knöbl 2010).
In this theoretical field, the use of the term “mediatisation” has a more definite
origin. It is in this context that Jürgen Habermas, who in his Theory of Communica-
tive Action, speaks of “mediatization” as a process in which:
a progressively rationalized lifeworld is both uncoupled from and made de-
pendent upon increasingly complex, formally organized domains of action,
like the economy and the state administration. This dependency, resulting
from the mediatization of the lifeworld by system imperatives, assumes the
sociopathological form of an internal colonization when critical disequilib-
ria in material reproduction – that is, systemic crises amenable to systems-
theoretical analysis – can be avoided only at the cost of disturbances in the
symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld – that is, of ‘subjectively’ experienced,
identity-threatening crises or pathologies (Habermas 1987, 305, emphasis
original).
As Lundby (2009) and Krotz (2009) rightly note, this very abstract and general
definition of “mediatization” is not restricted to the effects of institutionalised
communication media. Mostly because of this, Lundby (and with some broader
remarks, also Krotz [2009, 3]) turns away from a more detailed reflection on Haber-
mas’ contribution. This may at first seem perfectly reasonable, but we believe that
by adopting Habermas’ wider conception of mediatisation it is possible to deepen
our understanding of the dynamics of “mediatisation” – also concerning the media
“proper” (i.e the assumed growing influence of media institutions). First, as an
elaboration of and thus a contribution to systems theory this approach opens a view to
the relationships between different institutions (or socials fields) as well as between
institutions and life-worlds. Second, as a critique of systems theory (or “functionalist
reason”) it evokes an analysis of the particular potentials inscribed in the “medium”
of the lifeworld. This raises questions about the consequences of mediatisation and
the vocabularies with which we evaluate them.
In this paper we (1) briefly situate Habermas’ use of “mediatiatization” in its
context of origin, i.e. the tradition of social systems theory (Parsons and Luhmann).
A systems theory approach offers a useful analytical language for understanding
institutional instances of mediatisation. Following this path raises our first key ques-
tion: What is the “medium” of media institutions? We also (2) try to offer and defend
a tentative answer: the medium of media institutions is “aention” (or: the controlling
of aention). We then turn to Habermas’ specific (3) critique of functionalist reason
and look at how this view helps to articulate further questions about the norma-
tive quality of mediatisation by the media. This leads to an elaboration on the (4)
relationship between strategic and communicative action in the process of mediatisation.
 We will tackle these themes in this order drawing on various kinds of evidence.
Particularly we exemplify and illustrate these theoretical points with findings
from an extensive study on Finnish elite power brokers’ views on journalism and
its influence on their work.2

Mediatisation and Systems Theory

A “medium” in systems theory refers back to Talco Parsons’ legacy. As parts of
his overall AGIL-model of social systems, each of the four main social subsystems
has a designated principal “steering media.” “Money” is the medium of the eco-
nomic system (Adaptation), “power” is the medium of the political system (Goal
aainment), “influence” is the medium of the sub-system of societal community
(Integration), and “value-commitment” the medium of the paern-maintenance
system (Latency). Roughly put, these media serve two functions. By representing
and generalising various action resources in the symbolic exchange between actors,
they secure the effectiveness of sub-systems (the fruits of differentiation). They
perform effectively only within the realm of their own subsystem. But they also
provide the means by which the subsystems communicate with each other. This is
because subsystems (such as “politics”) have their internal AGIL-structure, but are
characterised by the dominance of one particular system media (cf. Joas and Knöbl
2010, 76-80). Steering media work across the boundaries of subsystems, but they
become less effective when operating outside their specific realm or subsystem.
Religious value-commitments play a role in political decision-making, but they
will not – in a modern, differentiated society – outperform power calculations in
the political system. For Parsons, the idea of generalised media was also based on
an evolutionary trajectory: institutional differentiation is a precondition and cause
for generalised media to appear and function (Chernilo 2002, 436).
Anchoring societal differentiation into the idea of institutionally specific media
of interaction (for each subsystem) has since been one driving force of systems
theory. Niklas Luhmann, in particular, has enhanced this strand and a few of these
contributions are important for our purposes here. First, Luhmann turns Parsons
upside down by claiming that the specific media of institutions are the cause of dif-
ferentiation (and not the other way around) (cf. Chernilo 2002, 437-8), thus denying
the more evolutionary claims of Parsons. Second, Luhmann claims that systemic
operations are essentially self-referential, i.e. the media from one subsystem do not
circulate to others. A subsystem can feel the “pressure” of another system or it can
“irritate” other systems, but the only way for a system to adapt to its surround-
ings is to function via its own code or media. Thus, if the system of politics “feels
the pressure” from the system of religion, it will not become more “religious,” but
instead, it will use religion as one resource of power, thus turning religion (in the
political system) into a calculation factor in the power game. Third, Luhmann gets
rid of the idea that there is a specific number and a particular set of institutions or
subsystems. In other words, there is no historically given shape or direction that
institutional differentiation will necessarily take.
Systems theory has developed impressive listings of institutionalised domains.
In a recent contribution, Abrutyn and Turner (2011) list ten different institutional
domains (from kinship, economy, polity, law and religion to education, science,
8

medicine, sport and arts) and their respective generalised symbolic media (from
love/loyalty, money, power, influence and sacredness/piety to learning, knowledge,

9
health, competitiveness and aesthetics, respectively). They also argue that these
generalised symbolic media comprise meta-ideologies that in different combina-
tions dominate societies. For example, in current advanced capitalist societies, polity
and economy might be dominant institutional domains, and the meta-ideology
combines their symbolic media, money and power, respectively (ibid. 289).
Generally speaking then, “mediatisation” refers here to a process where a “me-
dium” of one institution or subsystem penetrates or forces its influence outside
its core field. This abstract definition can also be used to formulate questions con-
cerning mediatisation “proper”: the whole idea of mediatisation (as the increasing
influence of media institutions) presupposes both the image of an institutionally
differentiated society and a particular medium that characterises “the media” as a
sub-system. Hence, thinking about mediatisation (by media institutions) in this
parlance takes on a somewhat annoyingly tautological form: what is the medium of
the media? This question – that logically underlies much of the mediatisation debate
– is oen weakly pronounced. It is also a question that sociologists (though not
Luhmann, as we will address below) have oen overlooked, perhaps thinking of
media lamely as something that just mediates rather neutrally.
Following the trail of systems theory has also raised the question of the differ-
ences between the qualities of different steering media. Parsons, famously, identified
the whole idea of steering media through an analogy to money. This analytical
insight becomes increasingly difficult to spell out once one moves from the realm
of economy (money) and politics (power) to realms of integration or paern-main-
tenance (value-commitments) (cf. Habermas 1987, 269-282; Joas and Knöbl 2010,
82-84). Abrutyn and Turner (2011) elaborate this question by distinguishing between
the coolness and hotness of system media. Cool media, like money and power, are
“universalistic,” while hot media, like love/loyalty and sacredness/piety are more
“particularistic.” Three crucial capacities differentiate cool media from hot. 1) They
circulate freely, because they do not limit permissible actions by generating intense
moral codes in their respective ideologies. 2) They increase the complexity of any
domain they become influential in (outside their “original” domain). 3) They also
have an ability to replace the ‘indigenous’ medium of another domain. (Ibid. 288.)
For mediatisation theory these are all crucial points. Domains functioning with a
“cool,” easily circulating medium obviously have more potential to “mediatise”
other domains. Thus, although the “media proper” is not on Abrutyn’s and Turner’s
list of institutional domains, they help to formulate another important inquiry: how
cool (or hot) is the medium of (communication) media?
In this parlance, “mediatisation” thus refers to a diffusion of the “media’s me-
dium” into other domains. The “increasing influence” of media, in turn, means that
the “media’s medium” has an effect on the way that the dominant (or self-referen-
tial) medium of another given field, institution or subsystem can function.3 This
way of posing the question about mediatisation is, we think, worth considering for
several reasons. First, it forces to the forefront the neglected focal point about the
media’s medium. While many influential analyses of mediatisation have referred to
a particular “media logic,” they have also oen implied that this is best captured by
referring to something “behind” the media (as institutions), most oen money (but
also technology). Effectively, the claim is that the real “medium” that is mediating
 is actually money. The oen cited and influential references to the mediatisation
debate – from Altheide and Snow (1979) to Bourdieu (1998), for instance – can be
seen as examples of this kind of reasoning. It is, of course, true that money and
business affect the media. However, in order to have a more elaborated view of
how this takes place we also need an idea of what the original dominant medium
of the media is that is being affected by the economic system. Second, reducing
mediatisation to money and the logic of markets oen produces a prematurely
normative perspective on mediatisation. We believe that following a more analytic
route in thinking about mediatisation enables us to beer recognise its different
aspects and potentials. This will, to be sure, lead to a normative discussion, but to
one that is less determined and one-sided from the outset.

“Media’s Medium”: Attention?

Media researchers writing of “mediatization” (cf. Hjarvard 2008) have, of
course, provided some food for thought pertinent to our quest for the medium of the
media. Early on, for instance, Kent Asp (1986) described the relationship between
politics and the mass media as an exchange where politicians have information
(or knowledge) and the media holds the capital of publicity. To varying degrees,
research concerning source–journalist relations has suggested that this exchange
is either strongly dominated by sources (the “primary definers” in Hall et al. 1978)
or that there is more contingency (e.g. Schlesinger 1990), because journalists hold
something that politicians and sources need to control. For Habermas (1996, 376),
the media’s power (here: the influence on other institutions) seems to lie in its abil-
ity to choose issues that will be taken under the scrutiny of public discourse. While
such a gatekeeping metaphor might be broadly useful, there has also been a lot
of research pointing to the ways that the media agenda is in fact controlled and
structurally dominated by other institutions (e.g. Benne 1990; Schudson 2003).
John B. Thompson (1995; 2005) has developed a line of thought suggesting that
it is the control of visibility that is indispensable for understanding contemporary
society.4 Thompson emphasises the importance for politicians and other actors to be
visible in the media, but at the same time underlines the risks of media exposure:
1) gaffes and outbursts, 2) performance that backfires, 3) leak and 4) scandal. The
need to control these risks, then, encourages different institutions to increase their
PR-efforts. Such reaction to media (the increased investment of controlling medi-
ated visibility) is, from a systems theory point of view, an important evidence of
“mediatisation,” showing how the influence of “the medium of media” increases
the complexity of other domains.
Thompson’s emphasis on visibility and the history of scandal also links to the
changing role of the media (as a general social force). Robert Darnton (2010a; 2010b)
recently produced a fascinating account of how the increasingly flourishing illegal
publishing business of the late 18th century produced a viable stream of scandalous
pamphlets for Parisian readers (usually about the political, financial and sexual
corruption in the court of Versailles). This bad aention and damage to reputation
was irritating enough to the power holders to sustain constant police aempts to
control this literature, oen penned by authors who had escaped to London.
This early example of the social strength of visibility, of the power of exposing
10

(true or imagined) elite vices, points to the role of public aention as one key ingre-
dient of the idea of “public opinion” which began to emerge aer the spread of the

11
printing press. The idea of “transparency” and the power of the “curiosity of the
public at large” was a key part of understanding the power of “publicity,” both at
the high theoretical level of philosophers (e.g. Bentham, cf. Splichal [2006]) and at
the level of everyday survival in the popular markets of literature.
We can also look at the history of journalism and its professionalisation with
an eye on what might be called the particular differentiating force of the media as
institutions. At least a brief and eclectic history of the media in this respect points
to how crucial the (almost technical) question of the authority over aention is in
the development of journalism and media. Think, for instance, of the progression
of journalistic storytelling from the early invention of shorthand journalism in
reporting on parliamentary debates (cf. Smith 1978), or the development of an
interview as a genre (cf. Schudson 1995), or the emergence of the news lead, or of
journalism’s increasing authority over what is quoted (and how long) (c.f. Hallin
1992). These events indicate not so much journalistic “power” to control the general
flow of political information but its apparently increasing ability to suggest what
parts or details of this flow are worthy of the most aention.
In order to bring this historical narrative to the present and, more importantly, to
illustrate the influence of aention as a circulating, “cool” medium of the media, we
turn for a moment to our recent empirical work in Finland (cf. Kunelius et al. 2009;
Reunanen et al. 2010; Kunelius and Reunanen 2012). In this extensive study on the
relationship between decision-makers5 and the media the question of aention also
surfaced quite powerfully from the experiences of decision-makers.6 In a survey
informed by an analysis of 60 thematic interviews with Finnish decision-makers,
we got the following results:

Table 1: Statements Characterising Media Impacts in Decision-making (Reunanen

et al. 2010, 301)

Agree Agree Disagree Disagree

Sum Sum
totally some-what some-what totally
% % % % % N
I have noticed that media attention
increases my own or my institu-
tion’s authority in working groups, 25 54 18 3 100 371
negotiations and other similar
situations
Our organisation’s communication
is open, and aimed at transparency 60 36 4 0 100 409
regarding our actions.
I avoid public presentation of con-
crete goals and opinions on issues 24 42 26 8 100 398
that are not yet decided.

Some 79 percent of decision-makers admied that media aention increases

their authority inside political networks (i.e. the subsystem of politics). This can
be taken both as evidence of mediatisation, and also as a potential identification
of aention as a primary resource that the media control (in the field of politics).
The fact that 96 percent of respondents present their organisation as being “aimed
at transparency” (while, at the same time, 66 percent say they avoid the public
 presentation of concrete goals and opinions on open issues) is also a testimony to
how “aention” (as the media’s medium and, correspondingly, “transparency” as
a meta-ideology of the day) puts contradictory pressures on actors in different sec-
tors of society. While media aention was felt to increase decision-makers’ personal
authority in decision-making situations, it was also oen seen as a potential threat
to rational decision-making (Reunanen et al. 2010, 302). It was aention especially
– due to the unpredictable consequences it might cause – that the decision-makers
felt they needed to take into account. Aention is something that is needed but it
is also something to watch out for.
Suggesting “aention” is the key medium of media comes close to Niklas
Luhmann’s (2000) view of the code of information vs. non-information as the “medium
of mass media.” For Luhmann, the mass media is regulated by an internal binary
code in which basic selection involves the question of whether something is news or
not. Luhmann thus basically says that the media controls descriptions of reality
(i.e. representations).7 However, we know that many media studies would claim
otherwise: reality constructions or representations in the mediated public sphere
are heavily structurally dependent on the information, views and knowledge produced
by other institutions. We also know that institutions exchange crucial (oen more
crucial, surely) information and knowledge between themselves via other means
than the media. In a more specific sense, however, what is (or at least might be)
controlled by the media is a momentary aention to particular issues, to particular
actors and situations and to details (choosing parts of the reality constructions it
has been offered). Analytically put, aention as the media’s medium would, then,
be differentiated from representations, i.e. the act of pointing to something would
be distinguished from the act of naming, framing and interpreting the issue or
thing pointed at. The “coolness” of aention (management) as a medium can be
seen as related to this. Whereas all linguistically (and potentially propositionally)
differentiated media – to borrow a key point from Habermas that we shall return
to below – are necessarily “hot,” one could perhaps suggest that, analytically, at-
tention is something almost quantifiable and fundamentally undifferentiated: in
itself it makes no explicit validity claims. It is also worthwhile to underscore the
time-dimension here. Media’s chance of directing momentary aention, its some-
what unpredictable capacity of pointing at something, is the uncontrollable aspect
of mediatisation. The more sustained media aention is, the more manageable it
becomes to other institutions, as the agenda-seing tradition has taught us well.
Tentatively, then, we will re-formulate the mediatisation thesis like this: mediatisa-
tion is the increasing influence of public aention (as the generalised medium of the media)
in other fields and institutional domains. The ability of “aention” to circulate and
exert its influence is itself a piece of evidence of its “coolness” as a medium. But its
ability to “mediatise” other institutional domains testifies further to its “coolness.”
First, aention does not – by itself – dictate specific moral codes that would restrict
permissible actions. Sure enough, it oen provokes spontaneous moral reactions
– this is what scandals are made of – but the media’s stake in what follows from
the scandals is always (much) smaller than its stake in the scandals themselves.
Aention can serve celebration just as well as condemnation. Thus, it is both a lucra-
tive and volatile intruder in various institutional domains, and a general medium
12

applicable in almost any institutional domain. Second, aention easily builds com-
plexity in domains by increasing potential contacts and encouraging organisational

13
efforts in order to gain aention and to control it. Third, aention seems capable of
influencing (if not replacing) the “original” media of another domain by integrating
into its meta-ideology as something desirable and even indispensable. This can be
illustrated by the role of “transparency” as an explicit ideological conceptualisation
in the integrated dominant meta-ideologies of current societies.8
These features of a “cool” medium were also easily discernible in our recent
media-politics research (Reunanen et al. 2010; Kunelius and Reunanen 2012). Media
aention was felt in all sectors of society from civic activism to business and polic-
ing. However, the response seemed to be clearly differentiated according to the
power resources the actors had at their disposal.9 The increasing needs and risks
of media aention complicated the lives of politicians much more than the experts
of the judicial system, for instance. It was also evident that media aention seemed
to complicate the decision-makers’ actions and action-networks, demanding them
to invest a lot of time in controlling media aention. The interviewees explained
that when making decisions, they always think about how to “sell” them in the
publicity.10
Generally speaking, the whole discourse (and its spontaneous “lament”) of
mediatisation also testifies to the “coolness” of aention as a medium. There is a
kind of nostalgic tone in the (popular) mediatisation debate – a feeling that a cer-
tain domain is being colonised by something else. This lament resembles the one
represented by Habermas’ notion of the colonisation of the lifeworld. However, in
connection with mediatisation, it is not the lifeworld that is threatened but other
institutional orders (or parts of them) that rely on less cool media than the aention
that media controls. The popular laments of mediatisation of politics, religion or
science are apparent examples here.

Limits of Systems Theory

From a systems-theoretical perspective, mediatisation itself is a non-normative
concept: it only describes – or points to – a process in late-modern societies. But
since mediatisation is always a historically situated process that shakes the existing
order of things in different fields and institutions, it also evokes responses that are
articulated normatively. However, as Hjarvard (2008, 114) states, they are empirical
questions.
To elaborate this discussion conceptually, and to find a normative framework
for evaluating mediatisation’s empirical consequences, we return to Habermas.
While adopting some systems theory vocabulary from Parsons and Luhmann, he
sees systems theory as fundamentally insufficient as a (comprehensive) theory of
society. One important reason for this is that the systems (like economy, politics,
and bureaucracy) themselves are embedded in lifeworld contexts where the inte-
gration medium is natural language. Systems need lifeworld resources to function
and the system media, such as money and power, also need to be legitimised in
lifeworld contexts.
Luhmann’s systems functionalism is actually based on the assumption
that in modern societies the symbolically structured lifeworld has already
been driven back into the niches of a systemically self-sufficient society and
been colonized by it. As against this, the fact that the steering media of
 money and power have to be anchored in the lifeworld speaks prima
facie for the primacy of socially integrated spheres of action over objectified
systemic networks. There is no doubt that the coordinating mechanism of
mutual understanding is put partially out of play within formally organized
domains, but the relative weights of social versus system integration is a
different question, and one that can be answered only empirically. (…) I
see the methodological weakness of an absolutised systems functionality
precisely in the fact that it formulates its basic concepts as if (…) a total
bureaucratization had dehumanized society as a whole, consolidated it into
a system torn from its roots in a communicatively structured lifeworld, and
demoted the lifeworld to the status of subsystem among many. For Adorno,
this ‘administered world’ was a vision of extreme horror; for Luhmann it
has become a trivial presupposition (Habermas 1987, 311-312, first two
emphasis added).
There are several points that Habermas’ critique of systems theory adds to the
discussion of mediatisation. First, while some institutionalised systems are based on
non-reflexive (non-communicative, not “propositionally differentiated”) mediums
like power and money, the lifeworld’s medium of natural language, instead, carries
with it the structure of rational criticism. This sets it qualitatively apart from other
steering media and enables its status as an “integrative” medium that can build
intersubjective relations and temporary consensus among actors. This, in turn,
offers us a vocabulary with which to further elaborate the claim about mediatisa-
tion. Mediatisation is a process where aention (the principal medium of the media
institutions) is a non-linguistic, propositionally undifferentiated (and cool) medium
that circulates relatively easily in late modern societies. It passes institutional
boundaries without being (as such) tied to normative implications (this is part of
its potential of circulation). But – just as is the case with money and power – it does
not completely detach media institutions from lifeworld rationality. Aention in
itself does not “mean” anything. Just like power (cf. Kunelius and Reunanen 2012,
60-61), it will have to be communicated, i.e. its meaning and potential consequences
will have to be interpreted, negotiated and framed by the use of language. The use
and managing of aention can also be framed and criticised communicatively using
the lifeworld medium of natural language.11
The structure of a propositionally differentiated natural language carries the
potential of criticism and the possibility of deliberation in democracy. Habermas
argues that human communication is ultimately impossible without reference to the
three implicit validity claims: truth, rightfulness, and truthfulness. He also makes a
distinction between communicative action, in which arguments are criticised on the
basis of these validity claims, and strategic action, in which these validity claims are
ignored (or muted) when orienting to success (Habermas 1991a, 273-337).
On the foundations of communicative action Habermas elaborates his conception
of the political public sphere and deliberative politics. The political public sphere is
a communicative structure that identifies, thematises and dramatises problems in
such a way that they can be taken up and dealt with by parliamentary complexes
(Habermas 1996, 359). To be genuinely deliberative, this process of identifying and
solving societal problems should be based on argumentation where arguments
14

should be criticised communicatively by referring to the validity claims.

 This discussion raises two other simple but fundamental points. First, natural

15
language, the medium of the lifeworld, is qualitatively different from system steering
media. Here Habermas takes distance from Parsons, saying that lifeworld media
cannot be understood through the analogue of money.12 Second, natural language
potential is widely spread and diffused in society: it is not a domain specific medium.
It is the medium that all social systems are dependent on, and it is the medium of
legitimation that all social systems (or most of them) have to use to build up the
public arguments that defend their action. Therefore, natural language becomes a
crucial factor both in intra- and inter-institutional communication (it is a channel with
which institutions communicate, however imperfectly, but always in much more
nuanced and consequential ways than merely by “irritation”) and in system-lifeworld-
relations where institutions will also have to retain and reproduce their legitimacy
(in democratic contexts, at least). Armed with these Habermasian insights, we now
take another look at mediatisation in a more empirical and historical sense.

Mediatisation as a Strategic and Communicative Process

The “public sphere” debates have – far too oen than would have been healthy
– circulated around Habermas’ early work (1991b [1962]) on the bourgeois public
sphere. They have been fruitful in producing diverse critical reflections but also
tended to polarise the discussion about publicity and the dynamics of journalism,
media and rationality (e.g. Fraser 1992; Mouffe 1999). Craig Calhoun’s (2012) recent
work offers a welcome corrective to these dualisms. He argues that the 18th and 19th
century “counter-publics” were not isolated from the idea and emerging practices
of more dominant public spheres. Indeed, they were constituted in the same pro-
cess and as a consequence of various kinds of exclusions from the larger public.
In the parlance of later Habermas, this actually makes a lot of sense. It points to
the way in which the critical resources of the emerging public sphere were located
not only in the private bourgeois sphere (which Habermas himself emphasised in
the 1960s) but also in the more collectively shared life experiences of crasmen,
workers and other communities.
In media research, the link between everyday talk, discussion or conversation
and the production cultures and practices of the media has been a long and rich
source of theoretisation.13 A key theme has concerned the media’s (in)ability to
capture and represent the experiences or “logic” of lifeworlds in relation to current
issues and its skills of bringing these communicative potentials into lively and fair
interaction with system-actors. This is also the task that Habermas imposes on the
mass media:
The mass media ought to understand themselves as the mandatary of an
enlightened public whose willingness to learn and capacity for criticism they
at once presuppose, demand, and reinforce; like the judiciary they ought to
preserve their independence from political and social pressure; they ought to
be receptive to the public’s concerns and proposals, take up issues and con-
tributions impartially, augment criticisms and confront the political process
with articulate demands for legitimation (Habermas 1996, 378).
By mass media Habermas seems to refer especially to journalistic media insti-
tutions.14 This is natural, because journalism as a media genre and profession has
 explicitly adopted these kinds of tasks.15 In our quest to evaluate the normative
“quality” of mediatisation, we also limit our discussion here to journalistic media.
To be sure, the communicative role of journalism presented by Habermas is a nor-
mative ideal that cannot be fully realised in the empirical world, for a number of
reasons. First, journalism also follows market strategies when competing for audi-
ences, and the control of aention can be trivialising, sensationalist and unfair to
many participants (i.e. strategic and excluding). Second, communicative criticism
is by no means a monopoly of journalism. Instead, it is a general lifeworld medium
and the principle that the public sphere (which is a much wider and diffuse thing
than journalism) is based on. Thus, journalists can criticise other actors appear-
ing in the public sphere communicatively, but the other actors can also criticise
each other – and journalism. Of course, strategic action is also possible for all the
participants.
In order to clarify this, a distinction between journalism’s action logics and the
effects (consequences) they may cause is needed. Our study of Finnish political
decision-makers illustrates well how the quality of mediatisation depends on its
consequences in the fields that it affects.16 Moreover, these consequences can vary
considerably, even within a single institutional context (such as the political sys-
tem). When elaborating this it is useful to analytically distinguish between two
questions. First, we can roughly think that the control of “aention” by journalists
can be communicative or strategic (e.g. is journalism itself critical, inclusive and
rational or uncritical, exclusive and sensationalist). The control of aention is com-
municative when journalism critically questions the strategic aspects of the claims
of actors, takes up issues, augments criticisms and confronts the political process
with articulate demands for legitimation. Second, we think that the effects (the re-
actions) of journalistic aention in target domains can be either communicative or
strategic (e.g. media aention can increase or decrease the quality of deliberations
in decision-making processes).
Distinguishing these two questions helps us to see how even if journalism acts
communicatively, it can generate strategic action in target domains, and conversely,
that strategic journalism can cause communicative action. These somewhat (demo-
cratically) paradoxical situations were well in evidence in our interviews among
Finnish decision-makers (Figure 1).17 However, it is not insignificant if journalism
controls aention communicatively or strategically. Acting communicatively jour-
nalism can also actively organise the rational argumentation of issues, not only
focus aention on them.
In the interviews, Finnish decision makers talked a lot about situations where
they saw that journalism and journalists were acting in a narrow, strategic manner
(the upper half of the figure). They widely shared a general understanding that
journalism exaggerates, plays with emotional responses, sharpens policy-conflicts
and gets hung up on details. This aitude came up as a general lament about “me-
diatisation,” but also as detailed and well-argued evidence concerning the case
issues the interviews focused on. However, the decision makers were also able to
recognise that they themselves acted strategically (or at least, that other decision
makers, and thus the system of politics, did so). The right half of the figure points
to this kind of negative (strategic) mediatisation. The decision-makers thus (both in
the interviews and in the survey) articulated a moral (or moralistic) ideal according
16

to which media pressures are “temptations” that should be resisted when making
 Figure 1: Strategic and Communicative Control and the Effects of Media Attention

17
Strategic control
of attention

- Opening the rules of the - Compromising one’s

game principles because of
Communicative - Accountability of the public attention Strategic effects
effects in the decision makers - Unproblematised in the political
political system - “Sparring” with decision- strategicity in publicity system
making - Shamefulness of
- Committing opponents backing away
to decision-making - Withholding real
processes arguments and negotia-
tions from publicity

Communicative control
of attention

actual decisions (cf. Kunelius and Reunanen 2012, 65). However, there seemed to
be no moral concerns about being able to use media strategically to further one’s
own serious political ends. Effectiveness in gaining a positive public image and
public support seemed to be more important than open and honest public discus-
sion (ibid. 67). On balance, in our material the decision makers dominantly saw
the media acting strategically, based on a logic of aention that is detached from
rational political decision-making. This, in turn, seemed to legitimise a counter-
move: the aempt to strategically manipulate the public discussion.18
The upper le corner of the figure identifies situations where the strategic (sen-
sationalist, aention-driven) acts of journalism can actually provoke communicative
processes or reactions in the political system. It is noteworthy that exaggerations
and the overblown emotional media coverage sometimes make the decision-mak-
ers worried about their reputation or honour – and force them to react and take a
stance on real problems. This was quite directly recognised by political decision
makers. Such pressure of aention can also make visible some habitual rules and
rituals of behaviour between decision makers and question their legitimation.
These positive (communicative) consequences of strategic media aention were
brought up particularly by respondents who did not belong to the innermost core
circles of power.
Oen, even if the ministry has been informed about a particular issue and demands, and
pleas have been made, nothing really happens before it is made public on a TV-show. Then,
things start moving. It is in my view quite incredible, actually. Apparently, that people would
like to make some things beer has no meaning or relevance. But if somebody’s own name
and reputation is threatened, and the support of the party, then they start to act. (Trade
union actor)
Even if the respondents emphasised the strategic nature of media aention
(and thus reproduced the general narrative of mediatisation), they also recognised
the possibility that the media’s contribution in itself (and not only by virtue of the
consequences of its aention) was more communicative.19 Typically, this came out
when decision makers talked about their relationships with specialised reporters
 they trusted (the lower le corner of the figure). In such moments, by calling po-
tential critical voices and perspectives to the fore, media and journalism can also
(in the views of the decision makers) enhance the quality of the decisions that are
reached. Furthermore, such media coverage can begin to aach opposing actors
to the process of decision-making and help the formulation of compromises by
making different parties more aware of each other’s arguments. Media and journal-
ism can then, ideally, act as a “sparring opponent” to decision makers. However,
the general view of decision makers was that media is usually unable to bring up
issues, facts or arguments which would not otherwise have been taken up in the
preparatory work of policy networks.
It would be horrible if everything would function on media’s terms. Then, we would not
need much education or specialisation either, right, a kind of general expertise would be
enough (…). But on the other hand, the media is a good “sparring” opponent. It is of course
a good challenger. It is oen said that a good enemy is the best thing you can have. (…) It
presents questions, and if you are not able to answer those, something is probably wrong
with the project (Civil servant).
The lower right corner of the figure also came up clearly in the interviews, show-
ing how the communicative or critical contribution of journalism (or anticipation
of it) can lead to strategic reactions. Especially when dealing with maers that are
seen as potentially sensitive to criticism and resistance, even the media’s communi-
cative (not sensationalist, not overblown etc.) intrusion can be seen as threatening
the insider-rationality or critical communicativeness of decision-making. Public
aention was seen as something that easily provokes conflicts of power and status
positions which, in turn, sharpen arguments and can lock people publicly into
positions from which they cannot move when a reasonable compromise becomes
necessary. There was indeed a rather widely shared view among the respondents
that serious talk of maers of deep interest conflicts should be conducted outside
media publicity (Reunanen et al. 2010, 301-303).
Altogether, then, it is fair to say that because of these increasingly felt media
pressures, two separate realms dominated the imagined political landscape of de-
cision makers. In the realm of network rationality, decision-makers concentrate on
routine, everyday preparatory consultations and bargaining taking place in policy
networks, largely outside media aention. In the realm of media rationality, they
turn towards political performance and public discussion. Some interviewees even
saw that these two logics are becoming more detached from each other (Reunanen
et al. 2010, 302).20
Indeed, if this sharpening distinction of action logics is the main consequence of
mediatisation, it is clearly bad news for democracy. Hard-working, issue-centred
and humble dedication to common interests (as they are understood by the elite)
is in decision-makers’ discourse juxtaposed with the media’s emphasis on quick
reactions, egoism, and sharply oscillating moralism. In the Finnish context, it is
tempting to distinguish here an ethos that springs from the “lifeworld” experience
of a traditionally small and personally networked, ideologically divided but practi-
cally consensus-driven political elite of a Northern (“secular” Lutheran) welfare
society. Securing common interests calls for self-discipline while the media offers
18

the temptation of quick and easy (short lived) victories. However, from a broader
horizon the judgment concerning the quality (or normative interpretation) of me-

19
diatisation does not have to be quite so grim. There is distinct potential (also inside
the political system or elite networks) for media to – even by focusing exaggerated,
non-communicative aention – create public pressure which can also lead to debates
about the rules of rationality on which elite discourses function. Media drama and
spectacles themselves are hardly model examples of critical discussion. Neverthe-
less, the arguments and rationalisations (in both senses of the term) provoked can
lead to new insights. Media itself is not a sufficient – neither always the dominant
– actor in such cases, but perhaps it is a necessary catalyst for various social actors
to see – even momentarily – that there are questions, views, logics and experiences
that have been bracketed out of public discourse. Of course, a journalism that would
serve democracy much beer would be one that would also be able to mobilise
diverse and clearly argued public debates about the spontaneous (and necessarily
historically and culturally narrow) moral outrage that it provokes.

Conclusions
Reading social theory is an invigorating experience for a media scholar in two
ways. On the one hand, broad sociological perspectives have a sobering effect on the
dangers that always lurk when social theoretisation tends to centre around media.
The “media” does not develop with a logic of its own. Its “medium” is always a
historically defined factor. Thus, “mediatisation” has to be understood in a socio-
historical context that media research cannot capture by itself.21 On the other hand,
for a media scholar, it is inspiring to see how thinly sociologists seem to be aware
at times of the rich empirical research on the practices and production cultures
of media institutions.22 Playing both these games a lile bit – media research and
social theory – we have aimed in this essay to make a theoretical contribution to
the general debate about mediatisation, understood as a narrative of the changing
relations between some modern institutions, and the “increasing influence” of
the “media” as an institution. The suggestive contribution of this excursus can be
summed up in the following points:
(i) By taking seriously the abstract, systems-theory originated vocabulary of
“mediatisation,” the debate of mediatisation inside media research can be elabo-
rated and sharpened. Defining the dominant steering media of different institutions
(or: dominant capital in their fields) enables potentially sharper questions and
research angles on how the “medium of media” penetrates other fields, redefines
their internal orders and possibly redefines their dominant steering media or their
functional dynamics.23
(ii) By following the system-theory vocabulary, it is possible to offer a tenta-
tive answer to the question: what is the medium of the media? Our candidate for an
answer is “aention.” “Aention” can also be seen mostly or potentially as a “cool”
medium, which explains its ability to circulate widely and complicate other insti-
tutional orders.
(iii) While systems-theory offers analytical rigor in specifying differentiation,
its extreme forms easily overlook the mechanisms and “mediums” of coopera-
tion and integration. Here, Habermas’ definition of mediatisation is particularly
useful, since it describes a process that comes to be identified when something
is “mediatised” by system forces. Thus, the strategic biases (or violence) toward
 the communicative potentials of life-worlds (which in turn are always somehow
narrowly actualised historically and locally) not only “irritate” but also provoke
critical, communicative responses.
(iv) Conceptualising “mediatisation” (1) as an increasing influence of the
media’s medium and (2) as (legitimation) discourses concerning its consequences,
helps to avoid premature normative conclusions about mediatisation. Instead, it
makes it possible to identify a sociologically distinct process of increasingly intensive
competition over aention in current societies. This process in itself is neither good
nor bad, but can only be normatively discussed in its historically specific instances
and against our historically contingent understandings of values and norms.
(v) For journalism (and journalism research) such vocabulary offers a (some-
what poetic but provocative) chance to talk about the “mediatisation of journalism”
(i.e. the increasing weight of aention as the key capital in the journalistic field).
“Aention” (cf. Splichal 2006) can historically be seen as a necessary ingredient and
aspect of the (theory of) modern forms of democratic publicity. But “publicity” as a
democratic force necessarily calls for the interplay of “aention” with another ingre-
dient: “argumentation.” The modest reminder that our paper offers to journalism,
then, is this: Resources of “argumentation” which are necessary for making the most
of the good consequences of “mediatisation” and the “mediatisation of journalism”
are always crucially located “outside” journalism: in system-institutions, between
them and “out there” in the uncategorised experiences of the changing lifeworlds
of real people. Defending the critical “rational” aspects of journalism, its ability to
function for democracy, depends on its ability to remain open to these interactions.
Fundamentally (and only superficially paradoxically), it is this openness that also
builds its necessary independency from political and social pressure for fulfilling
the Habermasian task to “take up issues and contributions impartially, augment
criticisms and confront the political process with articulate demands for legitima-
tion.”

Notes:
1. Some, like Schulz (2004), have tried to be more specific, listing processes of change that
represent different aspects of mediatisation: 1) the media extend capacities for communication
in time and space; 2) they substitute social activities and social institutions; 3) they amalgamate
with various non-media activities that 4) accommodate to the media logic. Some formulations, like
Strömbäck (2008), describe aspects of mediatisation in particular fields (here, politics), suggesting
that mediatisation refers to the degree to which 1) the media constitute the most important
or dominant source of information; 2) they become independent from political institutions; 3)
their content becomes governed by media logic, and the degree to which 4) political actors are
governed by “media logic” instead of “political logic.” Some analyses, like Gitlin (2003), look at the
overall saturation effects of the media in society and everyday life.
2. The study was based on 60 thematic interviews and an elite survey of 419 respondents. The
Media in Power (2007–2009) project was conducted at the University of Tampere and funded by
the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation. The research was reported in Kunelius et al. (2009). See also
Reunanen et al. (2010) and Kunelius and Reunanen (2012).
3. The media’s medium will, then, logically, have different effects on different kinds of institutional
domains. Thus, as we suggested in the beginning, research on mediatisation must, indeed, be
concrete and specific (in domains and in locations). The mediatisation of religion, for instance, is
different than the mediatisation of politics. The mediating medium (the penetrating code) may be
20

the same but the dominant medium affected is different.

4. Thompson develops this into an idea about publicness which is not dependent on the co-
present dialogical burdens of the earlier Habermasian public sphere theory (1995, 260ff ). This

21
connects with our increasing ability to become exposed to experiences and suffering at a distance
(see also Silverstone [2007]).
5. By “decision-makers” we refer to a broader category of actors than merely politicians. We have
categorised our interviewees into eight groups and survey respondents into seven sectors of
society: 1) labor unions, 2) business, 3) administration, 4) NGOs, 5) police and judiciary, 6) politics, 7)
the research sector, 8) public sector employers (interviews only).
6. For similar lines of research often with similar kinds of results, see particularly the work of Davis
(2007; 2010) and Spörer-Wagner and Marcinkowski (2010).
7. To be sure, Luhmann puts this in a complex and typically paradoxical and ironic form: “It is not,
what is the case, what surrounds us as world and as society? It is rather: how is it possible to accept
information about the world and about society as information about reality when one knows how it
is produced?” (Luhmann 2000, 122).
8. In our data 96 percent of respondent agreed to the claim about the “openness” of their
organisation. This can be seen as a reaction to the problems and complexities produced by
mediatisation and its medium of attention. The claim of being “transparent” can be seen as an
attempt to neutralise the influence and complexities of not being able to control attention.
“Transparency”, somewhat fascinatingly, combines the suggestion that everything is there to be
seen in the first place (this partly neutralises the effects of attention) and the idea that what is
transparent is actually often invisible or difficult to see. Of course, transparency as a legitimation
strategy for institutions also leads to an overflow of information and data, reinstating some of the
power related to focusing attention.
9. The most prominent pattern seemed to be that mediatisation correlates with other power
resources. Those with official status and who are actively involved in policy networks also make
use of media resources and, to differing extents, mold their actions to the demands of the media.
However, there are also small minority groups who (according to their own report) seem to be
quite independent of the media. On the one hand, there are (in most sectors of the political system)
those who seem to have enough other power resources to be fairly indifferent to the media. On the
other hand, there are those who seem to work independently (or in an independent field) and who
do not need to struggle for influence or to bargain on their issues in policy networks. In this group
the judiciary is especially well represented (Kunelius and Reunanen 2012).
10. One interviewee, for instance, told that potential media attention makes decision-making
complicated, because when writing meeting memos one must be careful not to write down anything
too concrete or controversial that would arouse opposition if it generated publicity.
11. This, of course, does not mean that these interpretations, in turn, cannot be controlled and
closed by ideologies (power) or money.
12. This, in fact, does not mean that lifeworld could not in some degree be made sense of via the
Parsonian media-idea (or via the “hot” indigenous media of Abrutyn and Turner 2011). Commitments,
for instance, can, of course, function in some sense like money (propositionally undifferentiated), but
they too are exposed to the critical potentials of language use and – despite the ritualised nature of
social life – to a need to every now and then be argumentatively legitimated.
13. Think, for example, of John Dewey’s dream of Thought News (albeit from the perspective of
making science meaningful in society) (cf. Westbrook 1992) or the early theoretisations of the
public (de Tocqueville, de Tarde, Park, etc). Several kinds of experiments and journalistic genres
have been built on the idea of “public access.” In election coverage, debate formats including
“citizens’ questions” have been a standard part of the journalistic imagination for some time. And of
course, the vast array of possibilities currently explored in the interface between social media and
journalism links to and continues – sometimes also claims to redefine – these efforts. While some
research has tended to underline the ideal that journalistic professionalism has incorporated into
itself and its values as the task of “representing” the lifeworld perspective of the people (against
system forces and vocabularies), a steady line of research and theorising has also underlined
the insufficient nature of this effort (at least from Tuchman [1978] and Gans [1979] to the “public
journalism” movement in the 1990s (cf. Rosen 1999; Glasser 2000; Friedland 2003).
 14. Habermas also refers here to a list of the media’s tasks in democratic political systems presented
by Gurevitch and Blumer (1990): Surveillance, agenda-setting, platform for advocacy, dialogue
across a diverse range of views, holding officials accountable for their exercises of power, giving
incentives for citizens to become involved in political processes, defending the media’s autonomy,
respecting audience members as potentially concerned and being able to make sense of his or her
political environment.
15. Of course, other kinds of media, like entertainment and art, can more implicitly fulfill democratic
or public sphere functions, for example by taking up social problems or deconstructing oppressive
cultural beliefs (cf. e.g. McGuigan 2005).
16. Here we use the self-reported evidence from interviews to illustrate the complexity of
“mediatisation” by looking at the consequences of the increasing importance of journalistic
attention in the field of political decision-making. To be sure, part of such evidence is to be analysed
with a healthy dose of suspicion: even if produced in a research context, it is not free of strategic
formulations. But we also want to underscore two issues. First, following the Habermasian notion
of the role of language as a shared, potentially rational medium means recognising that such
interviews can also capture “genuine” moments of criticism and valid evidence. Second, even if
some combinations (for instance: strategic media causing communicative results) might be seen
fitting into a strategic explanation frame (for instance: we politicians are under constant scrutiny
and therefore legitimised), all combinations are not as self-celebratory (for instance: communicative
journalism causing strategic reactions from decision makers).
17. Because the effects are not clear-cut according to the communicativity or strategicity of the control
of media attention, the upper and lower parts of the figure are not decoupled as separate fields.
18. Of course, this is also because of the fact that other political actors are assumed to do the same.
Hence, this is not merely a reaction towards media and its somehow independent, strategic use of
attention logic.
19. This, of course, offers some kind of evidence that media functions with other media (natural
language) than merely with its dominant medium (attention).
20. Similar or parallel interpretations have also been suggested by other Finnish scholars (Alho 2004,
310; Kantola 2002, 297).
21. For instance, mediatisation now (with the recent emergence of global capitalism) means
somewhat different things than it did in the early 19th century (during the emergence of national
states and world capitalism), albeit these can also be seen as historically connected waves of
“mediatisation”.
22. This is, of course, understandable in a sense, however Habermas’ (1996) account of the media
and Luhmann’s (2000) reading of news research, tend to overlook the media as an institution.
23. Our research on how Finnish decision-makers feel the pressures of media attention and how
they control it is an example of an attempt to ask these questions empirically.

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