Media and politics

The course focuses on the scholarly analysis of the relations between media systems and political systems, in a comparative perspective.
Theorists and researchers have worked out theories and models to interpret the patterns of balance or of subservience of either actor, in the frame of the specific features of the existing national political cultures and environments.
Media are themselves political players that impact on government. Political parties, leaders, governing institutions tend in their turn to influence and control the media's role in a given society.
Old and new communication techniques and strategies are implemented by both actors, hence the creation of a power game that deserves to be illustrated and understood.
Mediatization, commercialization, spectacularization, personalization and popularization of politics, closely connected to the action of the media, are the processes that will be examined in the attempt to explain change in contemporary political eco-systems.