Key Factors for Government Communication During Times of Crises Handling the representation gap

Isabelle Borucki, M.A. Research Assistant University of Trier Faculty III, Political Science

Working Paper*
Comments most welcome. Please cite only after the permission of the author. Prepared for the 7th General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Bordeaux, France, September 4-7, 2013 Section 48: Reviewing Social Order and Change: Field Concepts in Political Analysis Panel 287: Reshaping Democracy? Citizens and Politics in Times of Crisis

Address: Universitaetsring 15 Room A 121 54286 Trier Germany Tel.: +49 651 201 2184 Fax: +49 651 201 3917 Cell: +49 177 258 8393 Email: isabelle.borucki@uni-trier.de
*

The author wishes to thank Sarah Wagner for first comments and assistance by writing this paper.

Professionalised Government Communication and the representation gap

Media are nowadays everywhere and all-embracing. High modern societies are mediasaturated societies (Lundby 2009: 2). The importance of mass media for politics and the political process has been undisputed since. Thus, it is fruitful to examine the changing representative relationship between politics, media and the publics (Andeweg 2003b) concerning the increasing professionalisation (later in this paper defined as specialisation and displacement) and mediatisation of politics (widely understood as the increasing relevance of mass media for social construction; Krotz 2009: 24), especially of governments communication efforts. Given that mass media are necessary to keep up the linkage between the represented and the political representatives in advanced democracies, this paper focuses on the first phenomenon of professionalisation and intends to grasp the advance of political public relations in the field of government communication (Sanders, Canel 2013; Strmbck, Kiousis 2011). I will analyse the process of professionalisation by using the instruments of the French field theory, namely the notions of habitus and field (Bourdieu 1993; Benson, Neveu 2005b). Therefore, the central hypothesis of this research is: The more politics are professionalised, the more this leads to a communicative crisis, especially when the relationship between political representatives and the represented turns volatile, a worst-case scenario of political communication arises, a representation gap which indicates a transformation in terms of decreasing legitimacy of a governments communication. The premise for this hypothesis is: When political decisions of governments are professionally shaped and communicated by lobbyists and PR-experts in the government communication field, one should both question their legitimation and the accountability of political decisions because these professionals have no representative mandate (Hamelink 2007, Jun 2009). Besides, a lower level of legitimacy exists because political communication negotiations take place among restricted and in-closed communication circles consisting of politicians and selected journalists. In other words one could say that these circles are meritocratic. Consequently the so called arcane elite rounds of

the particular field of government communication are central spots to investigate the assumed transformation of government communication. Empirical examples include in particular the more professionalised media-oriented communication style as well as to a lesser extent the citizen-oriented communication style of the German government. Whether the mechanisms of these arcane information exchange spaces have changed or not and how they influence the interplay between politics and the mass media is a sparsely investigated research area (HoltzBacha 2013). Due to a lack of research focusing on the professionalisation of politics, exploring the political and media interrelation-field is highly relevant to trace the transformations of representation through communication. The central premise behind this notion is that political decisions must be legitimated by their communication and discussions in the public sphere. Resulting from these remarks, this paper addresses the following questions: How did the professionalisation of politics change the interrelated field of government communication? Which habitus of PR-professionals can be identified? How does the emerging representation gap influence the communication process and the linkage between a government, journalists and, via media, citizens? This paper seeks to give tentative answers to these questions and tries to point to several transformation marks in government communication in Germany. The paper proceeds in four steps. First I will discuss central conceptions of Bourdieus field theory in regards to the politico-media complex (Swanson 1992). Therefore I will rely on the concepts of field and habitus that link the meso (field) with the micro (habitus) level. Next I will present the empirical findings of the German case study, which were diachronically elicited. These findings will then serve as a basis to identify possible key factors of government communication and its relationship to citizens via the mass media as prefiguration for further examination in this research area. Due to the longitudinal orientation of this study from 1982 to 2010, I will less presume further developments in the field of government communication than analysing the current process. As a consequence, I will draw conclusions regarding the possible emerging representation gap outlined above. Finally I will postulate that this gap is deepened

or hollowed by a further professionalisation of the public relations staff as well as an additional deprofessionalisation of parts of the journalistic field as increasing heteronomy.

Bourdieus Field and Habitus as Fruitful Concepts

This paper argues that the relationships between politicians, their spokespersons and journalists can be best understood by Bourdieus concepts of habitus and field, their respective economy regulated via capitals, and the power relations between fields. To clarify this argument as a theoretical foundation this section first defines central terms such as field, habitus, and professionalisation. Next, the second part of this section thematises the mediapolitical complex (Swanson 1992) as a particularly interrelated field between government communication and journalism as adapted conceptualisation in the range of field theory. Bourdieu constructed the notion field as a spatial concept according to thinkers like Cassirer or Lewin. He intended to uncover the hidden mechanisms of social interactions and relations in social space, as Bourdieu names the overall social structure of a society. Thus, he seeks to analyse some particularly invisible structures, namely the relations and defines field as a field of forces within which the agents occupy positions that statistically determine the positions they take with respect to the field, these position-takings being aimed either at conserving or transforming the structure of relations of forces that is constitutive of the field (Bourdieu 2005 : 30). Fields as intra-relational spaces are regulated by nomos, they create their own laws and regulations and also constitute their own doxa (elaborated by Husserl) which amount to the universe of tacit presuppositions of the inhabitants or agents of one respective field (Bourdieu 2005: 33, 37). One is allowed to act in the fields spatial structure only in accord to the respective doxa of said field. The degree of relative autonomy of a field from the social space is the central differentiation within fields. Therefore, societies are separated in relative autonomous social spheres with own rules, legitimation and domination schemes: the fields. Fields are productive: They create different forms of capitals such as economic capital (e.g. money or assets that

could be monetised), cultural capital (e.g. academic titles, skills, and qualifications), symbolic capital (e.g. prestige, honour, and attention) and social capital (e.g. social contacts to friends, family, colleagues and other people supporting an individual, thus social network). The capital sorts are interchangeable with economic and cultural capital as the most important form. Furthermore fields have two poles: Heteronomy and autonomy. I will explain these two in the following because the relative degrees of autonomy and heteronomy determine the positioning of the individual within the respective field and the positioning of the field itself in social space. Basically, power and dominance struggles characterise fields: Every field is thus the site of an ongoing clash between those who defend autonomous principles of judgement proper to that field and those who seek to introduce heteronomous standards because they need the support of external forces to improve their dominated position in it (Wacquant 2007: 222). Therefore, the heteronomous pole of a particular field can be dominated by influences of another field in its environment. This is the case, for example, for the field of journalism in which the heteronomous pole is dominated by the economic field and commercialization with a concentration on audience ratings (Bourdieu 2005: 42). As a consequence, Bourdieu states that the journalistic field is increasingly heteronomous, increasingly dominated by its most heterono mous pole (Bourdieu 2005: 43). However, in the political field a struggle to impose the legitimate principle of vision and division, in other words the one that is dominant and recognized as deserving to dominate dominates (Bourdieu 2005: 39). According to this, the agents who are positioned in the political field aim to accumulate symbolic power. To do this and enforce power in the political field agents need a capital of belief people must trust them (ibid.). Apart from the power gaining play the political field is, contrasted with the journalistic field, mostly autonomous. It is, except for the electoral mechanisms, very strongly independent of that [electoral] demand and more and more inclined to close in on itself, on its own stakes (Bourdieu 2005: 34). This encompasses that the political field is governed by a highly selfreferred oligarchism which becomes obvious when e. g. analysing political parties and their cooptation and recruiting mechanisms as well as the party power concentration in the hands of the

party leaders, as Bourdieu states (ibid.). As a consequence of this concentration, a concentration of speech in the public sphere is the result: The persuasive potential of government communication could best be exemplified by chains of delegation in the political field, ranging from the electorate via politicians to their spokespersons (Bourdieu 2005: 35). Resulting from this, four or five spokespersons, permanently present on television, take on a kind of monopoly of access to the means of legitimate manipulation of the vision of the world (ibid.). Thus, these professionally skilled persons are able to form and construct political action and the frame or the vision of any political incident via their steering of the media agenda. In this regard one has to consider the process of the professionalisation of politics. This implies a process of change in the field of politics and communication that, either explicitly or implicitly, brings about a better and more efficient and more reflective organisation of resources and skills in order to achieve desired objectives (Negrine 2007: 29). On the one hand, professionalisation is, complementary to this, defined on the organisational level as a process of displacement of originally internal staff by professionally skilled external staff. On the other hand, this could organisationally be conceived of as externalisation i. e. outsourcing of communicative functions that is accompanied by a specialisation in respect of communication instruments and skills (Negrine 2007: 35). Regarding the abilities of individuals working in the political field as spokespersons, it is necessary to consider and exemplify what Bourdieu conceived of as habitus. This notion is the core of Bourdieus theory of fields on the individual level. The habitus consists of one or more schemes or frames each individual attains via its socialisation within the family plus the socialisation on the primary, secondary and professional educational level. Thus, habitus is a structuring structure, which organizes practices and the perception of practices. configurations of properties expressing the differences objectively inscribed in conditions of existence (Benson, Neveu 2005b: 3). According to this, habitus is the incorporated action frame or scheme of an individual which allows him or her to act and react in a particular situation. Plus, habitus is the notion that helps to differentiate between classes because it is socialized 4

subjectivity in other words habitus is class-dependent and therefore class-identifying (as Bourdieu states empirically rich in his study on Distinction from 1984). As Benson and Neveu (2005b: 3) state, habitus is formed by early experiences and practices, shaped by ones location in the social class structure, [which] shape those that follow. Thus, researchers must draw on an analysis of both structural position () and the particular historical trajectory by which an agent arrived at that position (habitus) (ibid.). According to this, it can be stated that the habitus is a positioning process relative to class and different accumulated capitals in social spaces, such as the political or the journalistic field. Relying on these deliberations I will now exemplify the two fields that are subject of this paper: The government communication is conceived of as a subfield of the political field in addition to the capital city journalism in Berlin, which is conceptualised as a subfield of the journalistic field. I will first describe the two fields. Second I will illustrate which capitals are relevant in which field and lastly I elucidate whether the respective subfield is rather heteronomous or autonomous. Thus, this research empirically analyses two subfields. According to the diagram of Bourdieu in Hesmondhalgh (2006: 213) the German journalistic field is also conceived of as a subfield of the field of cultural production which is mostly heteronomous because of its large-scale i. e. mass media entertainment production and the emergence of market-oriented media industries and at least the fact that newspapers themselves are enterprises (Champagne 2005: 52) and so must obey economic laws and domination. Therefore mass media mainstream journalism is dominated by commercialisation as an impact of the economic field on the journalistic field. The German journalistic field consists not only of mainstream popular media but also of national quality media, mostly national quality daily newspapers (such as the serious highbrow broadsheets Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Sddeutsche Zeitung) or weekly newspapers (e. g. Die Zeit or rather less Der Spiegel). This research focuses on quality newspapers as main channels for political communication because they function as opinion leaders within the journalistic field and attract pick-up media to take their quotations and stories on their particular agenda due to their

higher level of autonomy from economic and political influences (Champagne 2005: 59; cf. Brosius, Weimann 1996; Breed 1955). Most German newspapers are either national broadsheets or popular dailies (e.g. the muckraking Bild) but regional press with a decent amount of readers (like the difference between the Parisian and the provincial press there is a difference between Berlin and the rest) also exists. This difference results from recent concentration and commercialisation processes due to competitive constraints on the newspaper and media market (like in the US or France) with the outcome that e. g. one media-conglomerate like Bertelsmann or Springer owns several regional and national titles but has only, if any, one or two correspondents present in Berlin. Therefore, the capital city coverage of regionally based newspaper titles tends to display a high degree of similarity and uniformity because they too are parts of the pick-up media together with the public and private news broadcast programs. Consequently, especially the German newspaper market is now highly dominated by economic production logics, intense competition, communication speed, and therefore the journalistic field mostly tilts to the heteronomous pole (cf. Champagne 2005: 60). The position of the serious dailies is rather more autonomous than that of the regional press. This is because the national broadsheets are regarded as newspapers of record and therefore act as inter-media opinion leaders and agenda-setters. Furthermore the journalistic subfield of capital city newspapers in Germany can be differentiated into top journalists and their papers and regional newspapers and other journalists, like freelancers working for these publishers, and the TV and radio journalists as followers of the press circulation. These Top journalists appear in TV talk shows and are commenting on the political process and thus act as individual opinion leaders. Therefore they are equipped with a higher amount of symbolic and cultural capital because of their reputation and knowledge. Thus, according to Champagne (2005) the German journalistic field also has to be classified as double dependent, namely on politics (state regulations of public broadcasts; the ARD and ZDF) as well as on economics (because press and TV are companies).

The field of government communication on the German federal level is more autonomous from the economic field as the journalistic field but not absolutely. Thus, the government communication field is accordingly dependent more on media than on economics. I define government as the members of the German extended core executive (according to Andeweg 2003a), containing the chancellor, the ministers, state secretaries as well as permanent secretaries and the party leadership of the governing parties. This includes, for the herein analysed data case, the leaders of the Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democrats and the Green party.1 The top politicians and party leaders of the governing parties have for example more symbolic and economic capital then normal party staff or representatives in the German parliament. Therefore the top politicians represent the most heteronomous pole of the political field because they gain more money on their posts as chancellor or ministers as parliamentary backbenchers and must withstand the influence and pressure from other fields such as economics and its lobbying activities in parliament and other institutions. To sum up one can say that the journalistic field and its news production of the political decision process could be a causal structure and relying sequence for the presentation of the governments decisions and actions to the citizens. As a consequence, capital city journalism functions as an accumulator of symbolic capital for top politicians as well as for top journalists. Hence I state that symbolic capital and goods are exchanged and accumulated via e. g. the appearance of top ranked politicians and journalists in media products such as editorials, commentaries, or political TV talk shows. The conditions to enter both the capital city journalistic subfield as well as the government communication subfield are resulting from the conditions of media-derived capital (mass-market symbolic goods; Champagne 2005). Therefore media-oriented communication practices and styles of the government tend to be more effective than citizen-oriented communication because one can achieve a higher audience rate by addressing a TV audience or broadsheet than by a speech in parliament or in front of the
1

The German liberals were not part of the grand coalition and thus not interviewed as the interviews were conducted until 2009.

constituency. This has to be shown by analysing the hereto collected data in the next two paragraphs of the paper. Before doing this, I will sketch out the methodological orientation and construction of the study.

Methods and Analysed Data

The basis of this research consists of a German case-study which is based on the micro-mesolevel. This means that the study combines organisational data as well as individual data on the micro and the meso level. For the explorative disposition of this research a multi-methodological setting seemed to be the most productive. According to Strauss and Corbin (1998) the interviews were conducted and analysed guided by the paradigm of grounded theory and theoretical sampling. These two concepts suggest that interviewees and material ha ve to be collected without any theoretical assumptions to generate hypotheses, theories and motives out of the material. This methodological assumption is rejected for the herein conducted research because theoretical notions and hypothesis (like fields and habitus) are useful and necessary to frame, explain and interpret empirical outcomes. Thus, the methodological approach of this research to explore the two subfields consists of a multi-method design and combines different qualitative and quantitative instruments as a between-method triangulation according to Denzin (1970). The term of triangulation should, however, be reserved for research that tries to increase the validity of empirical findings by cross-checking them with other methods. The intention to increase validity between different overlapped data-sets also motivates the research of this paper. First the study consists of 45 expert interviews with government spokespersons, PR-experts and journalists. Therefore representatives of both fields in question were interviewed with a qualitative semi-structured interview manual in 2006 and 2009. Criteria to define experts in the respective fields were developed according to Meuser and Nagel (2009), identifying persons who have or had privileged access to information about the communication process of political

decisions on the one hand and about the process of news production and media coverage logics on the other hand. Meuser and Nagel describe this kind of knowledge as context knowledge whereas people or experts, who are responsible for political decision making processes or their communication, have knowledge for the sake of domination at their disposal (see the deliberations on knowledge in general: Meuser, Nagel 2009: 25). To vary the findings and outcomes of the study I tried to interview both kinds of experts and obtain their knowledge. According to that goal, the interviews in 2006 were conducted mostly with party spokespersons whereas the later realised additional interviews in 2009 addressed ministry officials as well as official state spokespersons and journalists located in the German capital. Second the interviews were accomplished by a semi-standardised online-survey (N=49; PR persons) that was conducted within six weeks in the fall and winter of 2008 and 2009. It was intended to include all persons who were working in communicatively relevant government agencies such as the federal chancellery or the ministries as well as the federal office of public information. As such the response rate of 47 per cent has to be considered as sufficient. Finally, parallel to the conduction of the expert interviews and the current online survey a tentative qualitative analysis of media coverage (N=153) was carried out. As a sample German daily national and weekly quality newspapers (Sddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, taz, Der Spiegel) were chosen. Articles from these newspapers were obtained by using the database lexisnexis containing newspaper articles. Although the qualitative material of the presented research, the interviews and the newspaper articles, build the core of the analysis the complementary quantitative study will be taken into account in this paper as well. To ensure that the presented findings are saturated according to the methodological frame of the qualitative research paradigm, the different stages of coding were conducted during the analysing process. Thus, the grounded theory functions as a methodological prefiguration that was modified and adapted to the research object. In the following section, which discusses the

central findings concerning the interrelated field of capital city journalism and government communication in the field of power, the citations of the interviewed experts are translated from German into English. The interviewees are denoted by their function they had when the interviews were conducted. To facilitate the presentation of the findings I will only cite the most impressive quotes in the data and paraphrase the central developments in the two sub fields that point to the identification of key factors of government communication on the one hand and on the other hand help explore the probably emerging representation gap resulting from the two corresponding processes of professionalisation and deprofessionalisation.

Key Features of a Professionalised Government Communication and Deprofessionalised Journalism

As mentioned above, data analysis regarding key factors of government communication shows two processes: First, an increase in political PR professionalisation and second a deprofessionalisation of parts of the journalistic field. In this section I will explain the main findings concerning these two processes of professionalisation and deprofessionalisation and incorporate them into the concepts of field and habitus to highlight the transformation of political communication relating to the emerging representation gap. The following thesis relies on this gap: Both fields, understood as spatial, are rather heteronomous. They are relatively dependent on each other and, in other words, economic capital or other capital sorts (e. g. cultural capital like certificates) that can be exchanged into economic capital are more influential in both fields. Thus, one can observe a restructuring of the former relatively autonomous sub fields of government communication and capital city journalism during the sample period of the study. The shift towards heteronomy clarifies the problem which I called the representation gap between the government and the governed as I will demonstrate at the end of this section. The professionalisation of government communication can be separated into an organisational and an individual perspective and into three sub-processes: Professionalisation then consists of 10

specialisation, displacement and externalisation and therefore contains an increase in cultural as well as economic capital relating to the economic field and hence possesses higher heteronomy of the field of government communication. Thus, professionalization (Negrine, 2007) appears on the micro- as well as on the meso-level because professionalized PR-experts are advising political actors (micro) and ministries have improved e. g. their public image by hiring external PR and advertising agencies or reinforced the organisation of their public and press relations directorates (meso). In the following I will briefly examine both: the two levels and the three processes. Given that professionalisation and deprofessionalisation are processes of increasing heteronomy in the analysed fields, and thus are situated on the meso level, one should take into account both the micro level consisting of the fields and the individual level which is built on habiti. Accordingly, each level and the respective concepts will be sketched out in this section when analysing the outlined transformation of the two sub fields and the underlying habiti of governmental public relations spokespersons and capital city journalists respectively. Organisationally there is a shift to engaging external professional staff in extra units that are concerned with communication duties which hints at the characteristics of externalisation and displacement. The external units (e. g. public affairs agencies) are highly oriented towards the time rhythms and production demands of the mass media e. g. to produce and spread sound bites of top politicians or ministers as well as the weekly video-podcast of the German chancellor. Therefore, the external instrumental and centred engagement of PR-agencies in government communication is highly professionalised in adapting persuasive (political) marketing tools such as rapid response or image-building. The respondents of the online survey for example value specific media-oriented instruments like rapid response to be very important (58.8 percent / 20 entries) and important (20.6 percent / 7 entries; three entries accounted for more important). The worthiness or impact of the process of externalisation and professional public relations specifically is assessed differently among the interviewees:

11

I don't think nonetheless that the political public relations are increasing in importance. The awareness of the need for increasing professionalisation has certainly grown in politics, but the political public relations work was just as important for the chancellors Helmut Kohl and Konrad Adenauer. Party spokesman. In other words, professionalisation is seen rather as a steady occurrence or recurrent phenomenon of political communication than an increasing process. Another description could be that the spokesman regards the autonomous principles of judgement of the government communication field as not necessary to develop. Thus, he, as position-holder of the autonomous pole, struggles with probable heteronomous standards such as an increasing permeation of the government communication administration with external professionals or spin doctors. A ministry official describes the cooperation of the government with such political consulting agencies as follows: We have always been working with agencies. The tuning of a communication activity can be done by them. This is vital because an agency has a throughput of its employees, thats why it has a different throughput of modernity, and is so much more sensitive as an Office. Federal Press and Information Office (FPIO) referent. In summary, professionalisation as externalisation has merely the characteristics of continuity than of change. The overall impression towards professionalisation from an institutional point of view is represented by the conducted online questionnaire outcomes. Thus, sixteen respondents assess the influence or importance of externally engaged public relations experts as meagre, rather slight or slight and therefore one could conclude that professionals are scarcely important for the daily political communicative business (see figure 1). Ten respondents consider the opposite however: They claim that the external PR staffs importance is large, rather larger or even huge. How can this ambivalence be explained? First, the samples of the questionnaire and the interviews differ. The interviewees were mostly spokespersons in leading positions and therefore experts with power relevant knowledge whereas the respondents of the

12

online survey were mostly referents in ministries or subdivisions of the Federal Press and Information Office (FPIO) which is a central institution responsible for the coordination of the German government communication.2 Therefore the organisational membership and function of the respondents determine their replies and represent where they are located in the field: more at the heteronomous or the autonomous pole. Second, resulting from the different workplaces of the respondents, there could be less daily contact with professional PR experts within the online survey sample, leading to the ambivalent estimation of the importance of the emerging consulting branch which represents heteronomous standards resulting from field-external forces such as the economic field. Figure 1: Importance of external PR-consultants for political communication.

How do you assess the importance of external public relations consultants for political communication in Berlin? (n=36, missing=13)
18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 meagre; rather slight; slight partly large; rather large; huge 10 10 Frequency 16

Source: Own elicited data. Furthermore I calculated a cross-tab with the item that indicates an increase of professionalisation with the functions of the respondents. The idea behind this was to test the
2

In Germany two central departments for the chancellors public relations work exist: The Federal chancellery and the Press and Information Office. The former is mostly responsible for the policy coordination within the government and the latter coordinates the communication of governmental decisions. In addition, each minister has his or her own public relations division or staff within the ministry to communicate the particular political projects of the minister. Therefore the institutional setting of German government communication could be characterized as fragmented and decentralised (cf. Holtz-Bacha 2013: 47-48).

13

assumption that the organisational provenance of the respondents is crucial for their estimation of professionalisation (see figure 2). The outcome is, first, that there is no measurable effect of an increase of professionalisation in general. Second, only the ministerial spokespersons and other incumbents of higher position tend to feel an increase in professionalisation whereas the referents on the more operative level see no such effect. That only the members of the ministries emphasise any development could be explained, third, by the increasing autonomy of the ministries from the federal press office and the chancellery in the last two decades. When administrating their own budgets regarding their ministerial communication, ministers are allowed to hire and fire external PR experts or not. Figure 2: Increase of professionalisation cross tab.

Do you agree with the following sentence: "There is an increasing professionalisation of politics" by function, cross tab (n=34, missing=15)
Total Coun t
8 15 11

Executive position in the FPO Head of division in the FPO Referent in the federal chancellery Ministerial press referent function Ministerial referent in public relations Referent at the FPO Communicative manager of FPO Deputy ministry spokesman Ministry spokesman Ministerial communicative manager 0

0 0 0 0 0

1 5 4 1 2 1 1 2

0 0

1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1

10

12

14

16

Disagree; strongly disagree

Agree rather less

Strongly agree; agree

Source: Own elicited data. Policy advice, understood as an aspect of outsourcing and externalisation, is first and foremost technically oriented work, because external service providers for operational tasks (such as 14

texts, layout, or internet services; cf. figure 3) are called upon. Professionalisation is thus reflected in varying degrees and can be - at least analytically - divided into internal and external professionalisation as specialisation on the micro level. This means that especially skilled individuals obtain communicative tasks from the government and work e. g. as freelancers or in external agencies or in a project as sketched out above theoretically. An own media division (such as the German publisher Helios media) for this public affairs industry garners a lot of attention in mainstream daily media, especially newspapers, and conveys a perceived impression of importance of this industry as voodoo business: I know that many consultants are, figuratively speaking, setting a cauldron like witches, let it damp, dance around it and say voodoo, voodoo. It has really little to do with real consulting but one should not say it because otherwise the fees for policy advice would decrease. Government spokesman of the black-yellow coalition (1982-1998). In the view of some of the surveyed government spokespersons, there is little substance behind this emerging voodoo PR-industry. This cynicism becomes evident in the online survey data which indicate that external PR professionals are mostly engaged in a counselling and advising position but not in the political decision preparing operative part as figure 3 shows. This means that policy advice seems to be secondary according to the data. This impression is supported by the following data in the following. Figure 3: Sort of engaging external PR staff in governmental communication institutions.

15

Position of PR staff (n=15, missing=34)

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 The have a counselling position They have an operative position 7 11

Source: Own elicited data. In the long run, the increasing differentiation of policy advice leads only partially to a growing professionalisation and institutionalisation regarding the perception of external advice. Ministry and government spokespersons state: Policy advice is merely supportive (former domestic ministry spokeswoman) or as the former deputy government spokesman of the red-green coalition (1998-2005) says: There are too many in this industry [of political consulting and public relations], which behave as if they could, but they can simply not. They don't even understand these processes, which proceed; as a result there happens a lot mischief. Deputy government spokesman of the red-green coalition. Therefore there is no full replacement of former communicative staff by external professionals but rather a supplementation to existing structures and procedures. Other barriers for the differentiation of a professionalised government communication which is totally externalised are mentioned by another former government spokesman: Germany has a completely different culture, a different system than e. g. the United States. And those who provide external advice occasionally get the chance in the field of agency activities for the Government, the ministries, but a systematic political strategy consulting, included in the field of communication is either not or very rarely held Government spokesman of the grand coalition. 16

Thus, the constraint to any expansion of government communication is the institutional setting of the political system. Research also includes other opinions, such as: I think that the political PR industry has a much greater impact on the parties and the party headquarters than on the Federal Government. Federal Press Office department leader. Another statement is: You must always consider whether the Government is quasi to speak as the strategic political instance or institution, or whether the parties in our system rather have the role to operate as a political strategy formation. State spokesman of the grand coalition. Therefore professionalisation in its form as externalisation on the organisational level, understood as outsourcing, takes place as well as a specialisation in instrumental and supportive terms on the individual level. Ideally, this leads to a higher amount of symbolic and cultural capital in the government communication field because specially trained and educated personnel has more cultural capital at hand, namely university degrees in communication management or practical knowledge from several election campaigns. Other forms of capital, especially economic capital, become more important in the government communication field because the amount of money for public relations in one ministerial budget determines how many communicative tasks can be externalised or not. This relies on the previously described increasing heteronomy in several areas of the government communication because of the increasing commercialisation of political communication in general. Next to the interesting outcome of the hereto analysed material: This consists of a corresponding increase in structural and financial decentralization of the government communication that indicates externalisation and specialisation in respect to communicative tasks can be observed. Hence, the analysed organisational charts and budgetary plans illustrate an increasing financial autonomy of ministerial communication since the federal constitutional court decision in the late 1970s which reinforced the principle of ministerial autonomy that has constitutional status (Article 65, 2, Basic Law; cf. Vogel 2010). This could be attested through analysing the budgetary resources of the pertained institutions (see figure 4; cf. Mertes 2007: 21; Schatz 17

2008: 150). As the figures show there was an increase in the budgets of the ministries and a decrease in the budget of the central government communication institution, the FPIO. This has to be qualified as decentralisation of financial and thus institutional equipment of the central government. Figure 4: Budget of the FPIO (in Euro).
Public relations budget of the FPIO
60000000

50000000

40000000

30000000

20000000

10000000

BPA Debit total

BPA Actual total

Linear (BPA Debit total)

Linear (BPA Actual total)

Source: Own elicited data. Figure 5: Budgets of the ministries in sum (in Euro).

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Public relations budgets of the ministries (n=392)

100.000.000,00 90.000.000,00 80.000.000,00 70.000.000,00 60.000.000,00 50.000.000,00 40.000.000,00 30.000.000,00 20.000.000,00 10.000.000,00 -

Sum Ministries Debit total Linear (Sum Ministries Debit total )

Sum Ministries Actual total Linear (Sum Ministries Actual total)

Source: Own elicited data. Thus, the government communication field is merely tilted towards medial rules on both the individual and the organisational level e. g. appealing website styles with rehashed content for journalists and citizens with graphics, video interviews with the minister, tables, interviews and speeches given at press conferences or other events. This could be explained by the increasing importance of media in general and the transformation of the media field as well as the penetration of other fields by media and its commercialised logics in particular. With the increase in various media products and formats, such as TV talk shows, the political sphere was pushed to use these platforms for presenting its issues and messages. This adapting of medial rules and ways of communication can be seen as an instrumental professionalisation of the organisation as the government institutions not only adapt medial logics but rather orientate their actions and organisation on these rules because politics has to be on screen to be seen by the audiences.3 Another effect of this media-orientation and correspondingly

Dependent on the respective policies it might be possible that media institutions take the information and context of the professionalised communication offered to them because the content is based on the respective logics of each media product. This is especially the case in political sub-fields where lobbying plays a role (such

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professionalisation is that the ministries are oriented towards presenting themselves and the minister as an image-transporting person in a mediagenic and therefore fast selling manner. This is where the observed monetary decentralization of government communication takes place, next to the individual level. In other words, there is not only the chancellor who represents the government via the media but other high ranking politicians like the ministers as well. Regarding this, it is not surprising that PR experts or so called spin doctors are engaged to stipulate the exchange of symbolic capitals between the fields of government communication and capital city journalism. Their task is to present their boss favourably in the media; that is the chancellor or a minister or the president. This media-orientation and incorporation of capitals that are valuable in the media field involves a higher degree of informality. For example, exclusive information is leaked to chosen journalists or information about political opponents is disclosed towards journalists in secret off-the-record meetings (the already mentioned arcane elite rounds). The herein communicating PR experts (mostly the spokespersons and other high officials such as state secretaries) are therefore dealing with informational incentives for journalists, such as exclusive information that serve as currency to exchange symbolic capital into economic capital which is the respective audience rating for journalists. These ratings and cross-quotations in other media products such as TV broadcasts or national daily newspapers are themselves an internal currency in the journalistic field because scoops imply more sells for the scooping newspaper, higher audience ratings for television and higher click rates for internet news portals. The same is valid concerning quotations of one medium in another e. g. a headline of a daily regional newspaper which is cited in a nationwide news broadcast. Concluding from this, the media-orientation has to be seen as an orientation in the government communication field towards capitals originating from the media field, such as a primetime TV appearance of politicians in talk shows which could advance the politicians personal prestige and therefore

as the domestic field) whereas the communication departments themselves are exposed to the expertise distributed by lobbyists in preparing a bill (e.g. the reform of the health insurance system).

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help to build a positive image. In the interrelation between the government and the capital city journalism as such is an exchange of different currencies that maintain the commercialisation of both fields and the incorporation of schemes that are congruent with these currencies. These reflections lead directly to the transformation or change within the journalistic field and its specific demands. The afore-mentioned exchange of currencies is explained by a journalist of a regional daily newspaper as kind of a double-edged sword: What I call structural double standard in the media is that in these 1000 calls, SMS, E-Mails and phone calls that occur every day between us is this feeling of one being inaugurated into politics actually or supposedly this is the most important currency. And we pay back with the currency called attention Journalist of a regional daily newspaper. In other words, particular arcane elite rounds exist for exchanging capitals in form of the mentioned currencies which are valid in both fields. These rounds are central to uphold the current informational exchange between the two fields. Arcane elite rounds with off-the record character therefore function as central spaces to exchange (mostly exclusive) information against publicity in the media or attention of the audiences. Berlin is, so the fear and anxiety of politicians outside these off-the-record-rounds, a big chinwag. [] And if you say something that is delicate or precarious it will be further and further hawked, as a party spokesman explains. This negatively affects the relationship of politics and the media, as politicians and speakers feel anxious as to what level of confidentiality in the relevant discussion takes effect, as three spokesmen noted: In my time as spokeswoman, I have regretted it a little to remember that in dialogue with one or the other colleagues, I have to be rather suspicious. When I tell such people too much, it will be publicised tomorrow in the same detailed and epic width. Former spokeswoman of the domestic ministry.

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This statement refers to the confidential rule of the arcane elite rounds that structure s the range of an information and whether it can be circulated or not. These rules are threefold: information under 1 can be used by journalists as they like. Under 2 means it can be used but without direct citation of the source of the information and information given under 3 is confidential (cf. Holtz-Bacha 2012: 52). Thus, adhering and sticking to these rules and other structures of the relationship between the two individual groups is change-sensitive. As a consequence, the cause for changes is the increasing differentiation of the two fields; the commercialization of the media field and the professionalization of the Government PR are more permeable against several influences from the media and the political system, as the descriptions of a daily newspaper journalist show: What has changed from Bonn is that first politics no longer believes this 'under three' as a rule. That means, that most politicians although under this protection talk only very rarely unprotected. They basically express themselves, as if the next camera were around Daily regional newspaper journalist. Resulting from this, the media-genic behaviour of politicians affects the arcane elite rounds too and complicates the relationship between the two fields. Professionalisation as displacement of original staff by professional and skilled staff complicates this process in respect of the citizenorientation of any communication because the production of sound-bites and other statements of politicians in the media is rather media- than citizen-oriented. Resulting from this, a crucial point for government communication especially in times of crises is the extent to which externalisation of communicative tasks is conducted and whether this is complemented by a displacement and specialisation of public relations staff. Key factors for government communications are then located in the middle between extreme or whole externalisation (which is in fact constrained by institutional arrangements) and internalisation as the counterprocess on the organisational level which means the professionalisation of already employed personnel in regard to the medias demands. The reason is that a government has to be on screen or broadcasted to be seen, heard, and noticed by citizens. This communicative linkage via 22

mass media is undisputable. The question lies rather underneath the presentation of politics and politicians via the mass media, the audience to which messages and images are targeted and how these are displayed: to the media or to the citizens. Thus, journalists and their media are in an important transporting position between politics and the citizenry. When it comes to economic or other existential crises in the journalistic branch, this linkage could probably be affected negatively because the media are no longer capable to accomplish their public duties e. g. controlling and criticising the government as watch-dogs or as a fourth estate (relying on Burke; Schultz 1998; for the US: Carter, Franklin, Wright 1988). As the introduction to this section mentioned, the process of deprofessionalisation that increasingly affects parts of the journalistic field which become deprofessionalised, constitutes a decrease in product-quality, economic-efficient work processes as well as increasing indiscretions between politics and media. Deprofessionalisation has one central reason in the commercialisation of the journalistic field (Benson, Neveu 2005b) that is caused by a more competitive working routine of journalists and therefore simply lesser time to produce news: Then [under competitive working circumstances] time to think about that what you just write is shrinking considerably. There is a mad, mad growth of economic pressure. That is a massive limitation of the possibilities of the colleagues on the quality to think about what they write just now Spokesman of the treasury. Interestingly, this spokesman describes the journalists as colleagues and not as competitors or rivals in the political communication area. Consequently there exists a communication elite (resulting among others from the arcane elite rounds) consisting of spokespersons as well as journalists who are interested in classifying and clarifying political decisions for the citizens. The consequence of a lower quality in journalistic products and therefore probably poor information for the people is one key feature of the deprofessionalisation process. Additionally it has become difficult for journalists to comply to certain requirements and resist to pressures, to preserve their journalistic ethos, and actually implement those very ethical standards in their field (former

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deputy government spokesman of the red-green coalition). As a consequence, the trend of deprofessionalisation affects the professional identity and ethics of the journalistic corporate group in their respective journalistic sub field. For example, journalists tend to ignore their ethical role as watch dogs of the system in exchange for the prize to have an exclusive story on politics. This is no one-way-trend: There are journalists who emphasize their watch dog-role and stress that it is highly important to control politics and politicians through critical media coverage such as op-ed articles. This emphasises the self-positioning of journalists in the political field by their role-taking as being one day a watch-dog and another a mirror. I think that there is a reverse reflection tendency re-emerging in the newspapers and magazines. We can feel a clear political positioning of specific media. It was already blurred. National daily newspaper journalist. Another consequence and a feature of deprofessionalisation is the development among journalists to become generalists, as two speakers criticize, since not enough time remains to focus on the diverse communicative tasks: Now there is this everyone must be capable of everything notion in the media. And this changed the balance. It makes a difference whether I'm talking as a politician with a journalist, of whom I know that he is as skilled as I am in the technical field or if I'm talking to a journalist. [...] Where I don't have these requirements to build a basis for communication, a dialogue is nearly impossible. And the result is often that what is covered in the newspaper or in broadcasting is not that what might have been expected. Resulting from this, there are interactions which are not always positive. FPIO department leader. All in all it has to be summarised that the process of deprofessionalisation both affects the organisational level of media organisations as well as the individual habit of working and acting as a journalist in the German capital. The two processes of professionalisation and deprofessionalisation are as opposed to as the sub field of government communication attended by a mode of engaging external spin doctors for government communication purposes. In the 24

following I will sketch out the habiti of both the journalists and the spokespersons that were interviewed for the study. Primarily, habiti are conceived of as ascriptions of role and the taking of positions mutual role attribution but as structures of action and perception too. Taking certain positions requires a high level of professionalism and confidence in each other in the capital city journalism field as well as in the government communication field. Ideally, spokespersons are the informational transmitters for the transport of information from the media to politicians and vice versa. Plus, the spokespersons are more and more serviceoriented via the media and to citizens and claim honesty and sincerity as central corresponding norms. The political orientation of spokespersons differs from their respective professional socialisation in the political sphere e. g. whether they studied law or economics or worked for a broadcast, a publisher or newspaper and how they were recruited for politics and became probably party members. The political partisanship of the ministry officials is also dependent on their socialisation and is part of their habitus. Admittedly, ministry officials have to be loyal to their department first, second to their boss and third to their party, yet several effects of partisanship in communicative situations were observed. Examples are the arcane backgroundchats (arcane elite rounds) that are politically oriented because they were originally founded by government spokespersons who wanted the proper and loyal journalists to retell their stories instead of a random journalist they do not trust. According to this, it depends on the governing party or coalition whether the government installs ministry officials of its own party colour. This process is called streamlining (Derlien 2003: 401, 423). Besides this, stable characteristics of the spokespersons role are reliability, loyalty to the chancellor or minister, expert knowledge and liability concerning the needs of journalists as well as a high degree of service orientation and a network of contacts to the media and in the government machine itself. The interviewees describe different changes in the roles and habitus of spokespersons. There has been a change from being a mouthpiece for the chancellor or minister to a mere mediating role as transmitter between the two fields. The change is attended by an increasing service orientation of the spokespersons to the media and a softened 25

confidential relation to journalists. This means that previously secretly communicated information could now sooner be leaked or uncovered by other journalists for the sake of personal success. Thus, the arcane elite rounds have become permeable due to the increasing importance of rational-utilised logics (e. g. Leaking of originally secret information pays). Most of the young and less politicised journalists do not comply with the original rules of the arcane rounds: They ignore information given under 3 and write about it because publishing information under 3 is often related to strategic, tactical or private information on politics and far less to simple sober political facts. As the other part of the game, journalists define themselves as watch dogs and therefore describe a professional habitus which consists of rigour investigations and sticking to the ethical conduct of the media field. Concerning partisanship as a part of the journalistic habitus, there is a change between generations (some speak of alpha-journalists who can steer the media agenda as well as their successors, the alpha 2.0 journalists who are very strong in new media coverage): Of course one sometimes has the impression that journalists [...] are not only objective observers [...], but resort their selves on the playing field and become quasi players, but other players, government spokesman. Especially former speakers are sceptically observing the selfperception of journalists as actors, 'better politicians', and policy advisers (Deppendorf 2013: 86), which could be seen as a journalistic defence strategy to somehow maintain parts of the professional journalistic autonomy. This is called meta-communication and causes a higher amount of coverage that focuses not on policies or programs but on tactics and strategies of top politicians self-positioning (cf. Esser, Reinemann, Fan 2001: 41). Although former journalists describe their own politicisation as the first step in their professional journalistic socialisation process, it is already reversed: Journalists are initiated into their professional milieu first and then into the political second. Nevertheless, a stable criterion for the quality of journalistic work results from the confidential relationship to the governmental spokespersons, politicians and other journalists in the German capital as is reliability. Though the professional journalistic socialisation has been reversed, there are other 26

stable criteria or characteristics of the journalistic habiti in Germany. First it consists of expert knowledge in the respective policy field (e.g. health or taxes) as well as a counter-check of facts presented to journalists by the actors of the political field. It thus remains consistent that journalists must have a stock of special knowledge of the actual relevant sub field of the government. Another stable criterion is that journalists maintain exchange deals ( the already mentioned currencies of information against publicity; exclusiveness against publicity) with politicians. To sum up, one can say that a kind of journalistic class exists in Berlin that shares an ethical conduct and several professional internal rules which structure their daily business. This class habitus is changing now because the growing commercialisation increases the pressure on the ethical conduct and has probably changed the politicisation of journalists already. Given that all these processes, described in the last passages, increase or advance in their particular direction one has to question what this implicates for the original audience of both political communication efforts and media coverage, and whether there could be a representation gap as stated at the beginning of this paper. This last point, the emergence of a representation gap will now be questioned. First, it has to be mentioned that both observed developments relating to professionalisation as well as deprofessionalisation widen the representation gap because professionalised communicative techniques of government communication are directly addressed to the media and the journalists as consumers of government communication products and simply not to citizens. Therefore, one could conclude in a second step that the political field on its heteronomous pole is oriented to the journalistic field concerning symbolic capitals and economic capital (which is power in the political field). On its autonomous pole, the political field is highly interrelated with the journalistic field too. The political and the journalistic field are highly interrelated in the field of power and thus in the social space. Accordingly this results a risk of less representation for the political field due to its higher orientation on media-genic presentations and communicative actions that are prepared for and directed to the mass media. It has to be further questioned whether the citizens use new

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media technologies to receive answers and content from politicians or if they remain in a mere passive role of consuming political content through mass media. The potential of new media, especially the social networks is uncontested (Elmer, Langlois, McKelvey 2012; van de Donk, Dahlgren 2010) but one has to question whether this potential can be fully used by the people or if there is rather another or anew elite-building process in progress. Besides the probable increase in the professionalisation of political presentation in the political field and the decrease of professionalism in the journalistic field, the gap between the real (actual) political processes and the transported and perceived information could deepen. Professionalisation as externalisation, specialisation and engagement of specialised public relations staff (with displacement of original staff) would hollow the representation gap not only in times of crises of the journalistic branch but also in the future with an increasing heteronomy of the elite journalism in the capital as well.

Conclusions
In this paper I tried to illuminate the assumption of a representation gap between the government and the governed that is caused by a transformation of the political communication in the German capital. This gap is (first) one that could predominantly be located between the political and the journalistic field (and second) as well as between the two fields and the citizens. Therefore it is chiefly a communicative crisis because the two outlined processes of professionalisation and deprofessionalisation could split the political communication in the elite and the rest. To conclude, one has to take into account not only a transformation of the representative relationship but a communicative crisis as well. In this last section I will sum up the analysis of this paper and draw some conclusions in respect to the mentioned communicative crisis. Regarding this, the leading hypothesis of this research located the communicative crisis between the represented and the representatives which indicates a transformation in terms of less legitimacy of the governments political decisions. Although the

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direct (input or output) legitimation process was not the focus, the elicited material within the sub fields of capital city journalism and government communication refers to a particular potential that could affect the representative relationship. Accordingly the gap could be hollowed by a further professionalisation of the public relations staff and a further deprofessionalisation of parts of the journalistic field. At the same time, heteronomy of both fields increases and a struggle for dominance between heteronomous and autonomous positions and actors occurs more frequently. Concerning the questions posed in the introduction, the professionalisation of the interrelated field of government communication is partly caused and influenced by the commercialisation and media orientation within the particular sub field. Thus, parts of the sub field of government communication tend to be heteronomous in the way they use economic capital or capital sorts that could be monetised. Nonetheless the field is autonomous as well by using symbolic capital like images or prestige-driven presentations of politics via politicians. Hence, media-oriented and not citizen-oriented communication styles dominate the picture as prefigurations of the government in the intended perceptions of the people. PR-professionals as well as journalists share a particular ethical code of conduct that is based fundamentally on confidence in each other. What is identified as habitus or habiti of both fields is the structured and structure-led position taking and self-positioning of both analysed actor groups: Journalists tend to be watchdogs whilst spokespersons act as transmitters between their bosses (top politicians) and the media. By playing these roles they use currencies to exchange capitals (symbolic or cultural) and fulfil regulations at the respective poles of the fields between heteronomy and autonomy. The representation gap is therefore rather expanded by the increasing deprofessionalisation and to a lesser degree by an increasing professionalisation since the latter phenomenon is observed as being stable. The increasing heteronomy of both fields is another factor that hollows out the gap not between politics and media but between the elite communication sphere consisting of journalists, politicians and PR-professionals, and the citizens. The tendency of both fields towards more heteronomy in terms of commercialisation and focus on what sells leads to an 29

orientation of the interrelated field on itself and on its own stakes instead of a sense for the communicative demands and needs of the people. Whether the citizens perceive these selfreferential meritocratic fields as such and what is resulting from this has to be further analysed in studies that also include the civil dimension empirically.

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