The Idea of Political Communication Cultures and its Empirical Correlates

During the last decade, scholars from several Western countries1 have observed that the relationship between politicians and journalists has reached a new quality with respect to their institutional and organizational framework and their cultural roots. For instance, Davis (2009) found for the UK that the interaction has become more reflexive over time and now includes much more than the basic exchange of information for publicity. The new quality has been attributed to the fact that, in addition to functional exchange relations with the media, politicians seem to use encounters with journalists for their own information purposes, and they also draw on journalists’ policy and media expertise and their judgment about ongoing politics. Journalists are perceived to play an active role, for instance, in political agenda-setting (Walgrave, 2008), and as mediators of information and power brokers within the political system (Davis, 2010). At the same time, they seem also to have become more cynical with regard to their feeling of being instrumental to politics (Van Dalen et al., 2011). Politicians on the other side of the table, however, are found to increasingly adapt their behaviors and strategies to media requirements (Kepplinger, 2009a), and they seem to have become quite comfortable with their media dealings (Ross, 2010; Elmelund-Praestekaer et al., 2011).