Media, Power, Citizenship: The Mediatization of Democratic Change

The chapter investigates the concept of mediatization as a theoretical framework to understand the dynamics of democratic transitions and democratization conflicts in an era of hybrid media ecologies. Existing literature on mediatization has focused on advanced Western democracies and the transformative power that media and communication technologies have on democratic politics, assuming an increasing dominance of ‘media logic’ in the political process. Drawing on evidence from Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa, this chapter extends this debate to transitional politics, arguing that mediatization in emerging democracies is a multi-faceted and often ambiguous process that is used as a resource both for citizen empowerment and authoritarian manipulation, thus at times serving to strengthen democratic transition, at others to undermine it.