Political Elites and the Mass Media: Why Politicians Follow the Media

Scholars have increasingly devoted attention to the effect of mass media coverage on the behavior of political elites. The media-and-politics field remains fairly scattered though, and different research ‘substreams’ exist separated of one another. What is lacking, is a unifying theoretical framework. The core of such a framework should address a simple question: why? Why do political actors adopt media issues, why do they incorporate the media logic, why do they take over media frames…? This paper is a first attempt to offer such an integrative framework by directly addressing the motives political elites have to follow the media. We show that following the media is a matter of information (media provides information about society), that reacting on media increases access to the media (reactions have a higher chance of getting coverage), and that the media can be used to convince other actors (media are a forum for elites).