Introduction: Entangling and disentangling governance and the media

Summary

The book

Over the past decades, governments in most developed countries have for a variety of reasons reformed the ways in which public policy is designed and delivered (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004; Levi-Faur, 2012). Although the trajectories of change diverge across countries and over time, one recurring element is that many governments have systematically, although generally not programmatically, shifted executive powers and responsibilities away from the congested political-administrative centres of the state toward a host of third parties: nonprofit organisations, privatised state enterprises, networks, transnational and international organisations, semi-autonomous agencies and local governments. This strategy has enabled governments to increase their points of contact with societal actors and stakeholders and to develop networks for service delivery and governance (Peters and Pierre, 1998; Torfing and Sorensen, 2014). It has also meant that more actors – and different kinds of actors – now bear at least some responsibility for public policies. This endows them with a strategic interest in the news media as an arena where their interests can be served and where the credit for success and the blame for failures are distributed (Schillemans, 2012; Hood, 2002).

Alongside these developments in democratic governance, the media sector has undergone at least as significant changes as governance. The 24-hour news cycle, the rise of social media, and a more competitive and more vulnerable economy of news production and delivery have changed the landscape of journalism (Krause, 2011; Djerf-Pierre, 2000). In addition, the practice of journalism has increasingly emphasised critical scrutiny and the imposition of a mediatised format on politics (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999; Esser and Stromback, 2014). Meanwhile, the need – or the perceived need – to spin political messages and the ability to manage the blame game has added a new dimension to governing. On the one hand, the role of classical journalistic media has come under pressure, with the rise of social media, the furore surrounding fake news and direct challenges by populist politicians. On the other hand, however, the new social media reality offers opportunities for the traditional media, for instance as new sources of information (Brands et al, 2018) or for the verification of the credibility of sources (Fletcher et al, 2017).