The Mediatization of Complex Political Actors - Indicators and Hypotheses. The Case of the Mediatization of Parliaments

Two organizational factors have an effect on the specific form of the mediatization of complex political actors: (1) the inner complexity, (2) the institutional idea of an organization type. This can be illustrated using the example of the mediatization of parliamentary bodies. Parliaments are typologized as loosely coupled organizations granting to their subunits high autonomy. The institutional idea of parliamentary bodies is tightly associated with the "public" and the "public sphere". According to research on this issue, both organizational characteristics are reflected in the quality of the mediatization of parliaments: On the one hand the heterogeneous internal structures of parliamentary bodies prevent a coherent communication management; on the other hand parliaments are highly responsive to changes of their communicative environment. Such a correlation between organizational characteristics and mediatization should also be found in other complex actors - mutatis mutandis.