Explanations: there is something about management…
As figure 2 demonstrates, some agencies are clearly more mediatized than others. This
begs the question of possible causes. Here our results show (table 2) positive correlations
between all six potential explanatory variables (hypotheses 1–6) and the mediatization
process. In this table, the dependent variable represents the level ofmediatization, ranging
from 0 to 8.
As noted, at first sight all hypotheses are positively related to organizational mediatization.
This confirms, we believe, that we have selected a solid set of potential explanations
from the relevant local arenas of agencies. This suggests that mediatization is to some
extent an adaptation to media pressure – that is, organizations that face moremedia attention
invest more resources and become more media-oriented than those receiving less
media coverage. But mediatization is also a reaction to politicization. Organizations that find themselves subjected to Parliamentary questions or debates are considerably more
mediatized than those who operate ‘under the radar’ of national politicians. The direction
of this and the previous correlation, however, is more difficult to establish. These correlations
could be in reverse order as well. That is to say, media engagement of the agencies
can also be the source of interest from the media and politicians.
Mediatization is also functional – that is, agencies that have been explicitly instructed
to communicate via the media are more mediatized than those that are not formally
instructed to do so. This should be a reassuring finding for people in central government
departments.
Furthermore, the out-of-sight argument also offers relevant clues about the level of
mediatization in government agencies. The non-Stockholm agencies clearly exhibit a
more extensive use and adjustment to the media than the Stockholm-based agencies. The
management structure is also found to play a role in influencing which agencies become
more mediatized. To be more specific, it turns out that there is a significant difference
between agencies governed by a body of field-professionals and agencies governed by
career managers with individual responsibilities. Finally, when testing the organizational
capacity hypothesis, we found a significant correlation between the agencies’ size and
the level of mediatization exhibited in their documents. Or simply, the larger the number
of employees, the larger the number of aspects of mediatization included in policy documents
and written instructions; this despite the fact that the mean of the fourth quartile is
slightly lower than the mean of the third quartile.
In sum, all of our six hypotheses are positively related to mediatization and the differences
between different types of government agencies appears to be substantial. However,
when all six variables are put under control of each other, many of the differences disappear,
and a new – but still clear – pattern can be distinguished, as the results in table 3
illustrate.
Five of our six hypotheses show low or no significant explanatory value when we control
these for each other: the media pressure hypothesis (hypothesis 1), the politicization
hypothesis (hypothesis 2), the out-of-sight hypothesis (hypothesis 3), the functionality
hypothesis (hypothesis 4), and the organizational capacity hypothesis (hypothesis 6). The
number of news articles, the type of organizational task, the number of questions and
answers in Parliament, the agencies’ site, and the number of employees do not seem to
have a distinctive effect on the agencies’ tendency to give special attention to the media in
their internal (communications) instructions, documents, and policies.
Somewhat surprisingly, our results indicate that management type is the single relevant
determinant of mediatization. This finding essentially contradicts the notion of mediatization
as a reactive process of adjustment to external pressure – a notion that we develop
and discuss in the concluding part of the article. The fundamental variable in our research
turns out to be the management structure. Organizations led by field-professionals
devote significantly less attention to media and media-related activities than those led
by individual managers. The difference is large: only 4 per cent of the 47 agencies led by
field-professionals have devised any kind of policy document and/or written instruction
for communication at all (not in table). These agencies generally do not draft policies for
how to cope with the media, even when they are subjected to media scrutiny