nment, producing enormous amount of abundant information good . If before the 1980s technical and economic conditions restrained the development of mass media, nowadays such restrictions are minimal - the cost of information production and distribution dropped and quantities of information skyrocketed.factors, described above, inevitably cause the situation in which the functions of political and media systems are either overlapping or not well balanced. This is the starting point for the mediatization theory that looks at the increasing influence of media on politics. The basic claims are the following: firstly, if one system (political) becomes weaker the other system (media) will overtake its functions; secondly, if one system (media) is getting more important for the society the other system (political) will try to strengthen itself too using every possible tools (even if these tools belong to the media system); thirdly, if one system changes the change of the other is inevitable due to competition and cooperation modes that exist in social system. Eventually, widely accepted but controversial assumption is that changing systems can converge (create a symbiosis/unity), not overlap (duplicating their functions). Notably, such convergence theory generally emphasizes the importance of mass media: usually, media-political system forms because of the existence of a weak state.
Television in postmodern political communication
symbolic politics belongs to the phenomenon of post-modern communication era. A large part of messages in the flow of political communication is aimed not at providing a description of reality, but at creating some desired images, emotions and symbols. This post-modern era could be characterized by features such as: fragmentation of audiences, tabloidization of news, permanent political campaigns, fierce commercial pressure. No matter how called, media revolution , media-saturated age or postmodern the existence of this era with its specific rules and images influences the form and the content of the news media.politics transformed not only because of the political and social factors but also as a result of the existence of so called McLuhan s Galaxy , the reality that emerged in the era of electronic media (primarily television) supremacy. McLuhan s theory about the TV medium allows us to better understand the nature of symbolic politics transformation. McLuhan sees television as the dominant medium that forms the message of our epoch. Although today this medium is seriously challenged by...
