This is a presentation to the Institute of Government about a new research project at the LSE in the Department of Media and Communications around the idea that government is increasingly subject to media. Internally and externally policy-making - as well as politics - and the work of the executive is conditioned by media influence. From email to social media to marketing to journalism - digital age media is having an impact on the way we are governed. Does it matter? What difference does it make?

1. Mediatisation of Government
Charlie Beckett
Polis, LSE
@CharlieBeckett
Institute of Government June 11th 2014

3. “Governments are
now websites”
Tom Steinberg, 2014

4. Media is now environmental
in government
• Ubiquitous
• Disintermediated
• Networked
• Data
• Branding
• Stream – instant/eternal

5. It’s happening everywhere

6. Not just about media
• Hollowing out of the state
• Globalisation
• Growing individualism/commercialism

7. What’s at stake?
• Pace of processes – efficiency, responsiveness,
sustainability
• Agenda setting – gatekeepers, frames
• Deliberation internally & externally
• Values – media or government values?

8. • “While skilful political leaders and their
supporters may at times be able to use the
media as a means for their political ends,
there is more evidence from a comparative
enquiry that the media add to the manifold
constraints on executives and executive
leadership in the contemporary Western
democracies, making leadership (even) more
difficult than in the past” (Ludger Helms,
2008).

9. What does it mean now that media is
now environmental in government?
• Ubiquitous
• Disintermediated
• Networked
• Data
• Branding
• Stream – instant/eternal

10. What to do?
• Hire more media people from more diverse
backgrounds
• Train everyone in media
• Allocate more resources to media
• Integrate media services at all levels
• Think conceptually: narrative, language,
literacy = strategic

11. Mediatisation of Government
Charlie Beckett
Polis, LSE
@CharlieBeckett
c.h.beckett@lse.ac.uk