The mediatization of politics in the hybrid media system: the case of Italian political journalism

Despite the major changes that have occurred in the ecology of media, this article considers mediatization to be still a concept valuable for grasping and interpreting relations among political communication actors. This article analyses the use of Twitter by politicians as evidenced by journalists’ accounts (and practices). In particular, it focuses on journalistic uses of Twitter in the context of political current affairs. This article investigates how and to what degree the use of social media has changed journalists’ practices in gathering political news. Moreover, it analyses how journalists describe politicians’ use of Twitter and how they reflexively conceive whether adjustments by those politicians to the media logic exist. To this end, the studies present results from 25 semi-structured interviews with Italian journalists occupying prominent roles within the Italian news organizations most important in terms of newspaper circulations and unique visitors to their websites. The research proves that mediatization is still an important framework within which to interpret practices in the new media environment.