LIST OF PANELS

We know that events related to politics are widely covered by media. But what about policy? To what extent citizens wishing to be informed about the measures that are under discussion, adopted or implemented, or about their outcomes have the possibility to learn about the issues at stake, the solutions under scrutiny and the controversial matters around them? Which policies are likely to be covered by the media or to be neglected?  How are they framed? Do media help public deliberation on public policy? Does media logic tend to hinder public understanding of problems and solutions? We are then interested on the way policies are presented by the traditional media (newspapers and tv) and by the new ones through the Internet (where citizens can assume a more active role). The information provided to (and by) the citizens about problem definition, solutions formulation, implementation and evaluation is a key issue as it affects the quality of the “deliberative system” (according to Jane Mansbridge’s definition) and hence the quality of democracy. Papers should roughly try to answer to one of the following questions: i)        how much room is devoted to public policy in the media, particularly  compared to the room devoted to politics? ii)       how media logic impacts on the communication of public policies:  which policies are funnelled by the media (and which ones are not), through which frames? does the traditional media logic tend to be altered when public policies are dealt with through the Internet? iii)      to what extent media contribute to public deliberation by presenting arguments and counterarguments? As the topic “media and policy” has been weakly investigated up to now, we would like to gather, in this panel, exploratory papers that begin to tackle this topic with different theoretical perspectives and different  methodological approaches. They may present a policy case study and analyse its media coverage. Or they may consider the content of one or more medium (newspapers, tv programs, e-news, blogs and other Internet spaces etc.) and analyse how they deal with public policies. Comparative studies concerning more than one case, more the one medium or more than one country are obviously welcome.  

We know that events related to politics are widely covered by media. But what about policy? To what extent citizens wishing to be informed on the measures that are under discussion, adopted or implemented, or about their outcomes have the possibility to learn about the issues at stake, on the solutions under scrutiny and the controversial matters around them? Which policies are likely to be covered by the media or to be neglected?  How are they framed? Do media help public deliberation on public policy? Does media logic tend to hinder public understanding of problems and solutions? Up to now the relationship between media and policies has been under-investigated. Neither policy analysts nor communication theorists have devoted much attention to this topic. The main study on Public policy and mass media edited by Katrin Voltmer and Sigrid Koch-Baumgartner (Routledge, 2010), deals with “The interplay of mass communication and political decision making”, i.e. the influence that media exert on policy making or whether the media can be considered as policy actors. The aim of this panel is different. We are rather interested on the way policies are presented by the traditional media (newspapers and tv) and by the new ones through the Internet (where citizens can assume a more active role). The information provided to (and by) the citizens about problem definition, solutions formulation, implementation and evaluation is a key issue as it affects the quality of the “deliberative system” (according to Jane Mansbridge’s definition) and hence the quality of democracy. Our research questions can thus be grouped in three broad fields: i)        how much room is devoted to public policy in the media, particularly  compared to the room devoted to politics? ii)       how media logic impacts on the communication of public policies:  which policies are funnelled by the media (and which ones are not), through which frames? does the traditional media logic tend to be altered when public policies are dealt with through the Internet? iii)      to what extent media contribute to public deliberation by presenting arguments and counterarguments? These threes fields roughly relate to three different strands of literature: i)       the long-standing debate on the relationship between politics and policy; ii)      the political communication studies on the media logic, media framing and on the Internet; iii)     the recent strand on “mediated deliberation”, i.e. the contribution of the media to the deliberative system and the less recent one on deliberative policy analysis. As the topic “media and policy” has been weakly investigated up to now, we would like to gather, in this panel, exploratory papers that begin to tackle this topic with different theoretical perspectives and different  methodological approaches. They may present a policy case study and analyse its media coverage. Or they may consider the content of one or more medium (newspapers, tv programs, e-news, blogs and other Internet spaces etc.) and analyse how they deal with public policies. Comparative studies concerning more than one case, more the one medium or more than one country are obviously welcome.