Egos, elites and social capital: Analyzing media-government relations from a network perspective

In this paper, we analyze the relations between government communication and the media from a perspective of social network analysis, focusing especially on aspects of social capital. So far, media-government relations have predominantly been considered elite phenomena. Government communicators preferably pursue their communicative and political interests through connecting with high ranking journalists from established (offline-) media outlets. Such connections guarantee the accumulation of high amounts of social capital and lead to the formation of dense and relatively closed networks (Author, 2015). Technologically induced changes are however often attributed with the potential to erode established patterns and structures of political communication (Chadwick, 2011; Wright, 2012). In an age of digitization and media abundance, it becomes questionable if established communicative patterns still persist. Which connections define networks of media-government relations in the digital age, and in how far are structures of social capital altered under such conditions? In our paper, we seek to enquire into these questions focusing on the communicative (ego-) networks of the most senior government communicators from the federal government in Germany. Our data stems from 14 telephone interviews conducted between 09/2015 and 01/2016. Our sampling focuses on federal ministries and the central communication office. We managed to collect data from 11 organizations. At an organizational level, our total response rate lies at 73%. Interviewees were first asked to name recent partners of (professional) communicative exchange; grounding the basic structures of our analyzed networks. Subsequently, they were asked to indicate the regularity of their contact with them and to rate their (perceived) connectedness within their specific political field and their agenda-setting capabilities. We focus on individual ego-networks and on the (aggregated) network of our entire sample. We seek to identify contacts and to evaluate their centrality in the overall network. We then incorporate additional dimensions of (perceived) influence and set these in relation to the degrees of analyzed centrality. In a third step, we set the identified contacts of the interviewees in relation to our complete set of (theoretically defined and established) dimensions of social capital. Here we seek to find out in how far such dimensions still hold their importance, and function as predictors for network integration and centrality. Our findings indicate networks that are still coined by structural conservatism. Central positions are occupied by established offline-media outlets – actors that would always have been considered promising for the accumulation of social capital in such networks. Integrated online media outlets mostly constitute the online-variants of leading offline outlets. The integration of new actors (e.g. bloggers) is a scarce phenomenon. Networks in media-government relations are still largely coined by a ‘classic’ set of actors; highly predictable through reflections on theoretically defined and established dimensions of social capital. For that matter, they remain an elite phenomenon. Literature: Author. (2015). - anonymized for peer review - Chadwick, A. (2011). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power: Oxford University Press. Wright, S. (2012). Politics as usual? Revolution, normalization and a new agenda for online deliberation. New Media & Society, 14(2). doi:10.1177/1461444811410679