Untitled - socium.ge

376 Araba Sey and Manuel Castellscharacter assassination as a means of promoting or demoting political candidates.There is, for instance, a direct connection between media politics andthe widespread use of the politics of scandal; that is, the use of damaginginformation (true, false, or halfway) to undo political adversaries in the publicmind (Thompson, 2000). Furthermore, media politics is expensive, particularlywhen it is considered that it runs well beyond the periods of politicalcampaigning. It is expensive in money and resources to be present in themedia with a favorable spin, and this activity becomes a key mechanism inensuring the dependence of politicians on donors and their lobbyists. In theUnited States, the repeated failure of congressional efforts to legislate oncampaign financing derives from an obvious obstacle: the majority of therepresentatives in congress are elected by their skillful use of the very mechanismthat they are expected to restrict. So, unless a large majority decidessimultaneously that it is in its interest to disarm, there is little chance of obtainingthe unilateral disarmament of politicians, with some honorable exceptionswho are either above the fray or choose to keep their integrity and lose theirseat.Overall, media politics has transformed political practice and affected politicalbehavior. The net result is not that people are less politically activebecause of the media. Indeed, the contrary seems to be the case, as PippaNorris (2000) has demonstrated: media exposure and political interest correlatepositively, although the causal relationship may work both ways.However, there are reasons to believe that there is a connection betweenmedia politics and its consequences (personalization, image-making, financialdependence on interested donors, scandal politics) and the crisis of politicallegitimacy (Fallows, 1996; Dautrich and Hartley, 1999). In other words, it isnot that people withdraw from politics, but that they tend to disbelieve formalpolitics and politicians and engage in a number of alternative political practices,including voting for third parties, abstaining, engaging in referendumpolitics, or exploring political mobilization outside the traditional partysystem.There are, of course, many reasons for the crisis of legitimacy, as has beenanalyzed elsewhere (Castells, 2004), but the prevalence of media politics maybe counted among them because it makes the relationship between representativesand the represented even more indirect. Party structures were, and are,subjected to nepotism and bureaucracy, but there is a direct connectionbetween the institutions of power and the different forms of aggregation ofcivil society; for example, labor unions, party chapters, churches, neighborhoodassociations, groups of women voters, and the like. Media politics comesbetween this organic relationship, and establishes a quasi-market relationshipbetween the producers of political messages and their clients/citizens, whowatch/read the media and buy their political option with their votes in a fully