Why political parties adapt to the media

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.