Mediatisation and political language

Concerns over the relationship between media and politics have echoed over much of the last century. Remarking that ‘if Stalin smiles at a visitor, the news is flashed to the world before the smile has left his face’, Gorman (1945: v) alludes simultaneously to a quickening effect of mass media on the fortunes of politicians and to its supposed preference for demeanour over matters of substance. Jamieson (1996) and Franklin (2004) describe an emerging dynamic between the politicians, their communications advisers, industry lobbyists and media organisations, all vying to influence the ‘packaging’ of politics for public consumption.