Mediatization And Political Discourse: Impact Of Selective Content On The Voting Behaviour Of People

Abstract

The media is the Fourth Pillar of a democratic society. It works as a watchdog over the legislative, executive, and judicial systems of the government. The media’s fair and unbiased reporting is essential for the smooth and better functioning of a democratic setup. The media, which once functioned as mere channels of communication within the election process, have now emerged as independent power centres operating ‘autonomously, according to its own economic and symbolic logics’.  The capacity of the media to set political agendas, which has been defined as the ‘assignment of special relevance to one particular issue or set of information by the source of the message’ with the expectation that the audience will respond with heightened attention to the content and format of the message has also been noted. The broad aim of the present paper was to explore the current academic literature in the field of Mediatization of Politics and Political discourse in India. Hence, this study looked into the following problems, through which we try to find out how media affect society in terms of political discourse especially during the elections and secondly we will also try to find out how opinion polls or elections surveys help to enhance political awareness of voters and how it affects their voting behaviour during elections.