The Media Practice of Parliamentary Discourses: Ethnographic Comparisons of Fabrications and Utilizations of Political Positions

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The project investigates the practical conditions of taking part in political discourse in times of mediatization. We examine representatives offices within two national parliaments, ethnographically study various ways of fabricating and utilizing political contents (political positions), and compare them with regard to the more or less mediatized arenas of democratic competition. In so doing, the project is the continuation of ongoing and finished field studies (SCHEFFER 2014) and case studies (SCHEFFER et al 2014) of mediatized fabrications/utilizations of political positions in the German Bundestag. These studies suggest that the ways of fabricating/utilizing positions are mediatized to different degrees and in various ways. Systematically comparing the methods of fabricating/utilizing positions now enables us to extend our analysis to a second parliament, thereby investigating the specificities and qualities of mediatization in different areas of parliamentary work. Thus, the project studies the work of doing political discourse on several levels:We investigate the fabrication of political positions with regard to local sets of media infrastructures and their uses in parliamentary offices. Here, our ethnographic studies of work (GARFINKEL 1986) focus on how mediatization changes the divisions of labor between and across offices. Our working hypothesis suggests that the ways of fabricating political positions are preliminary and unstable methods of doing political discourse work that are constantly adapted in relation to the ongoing mediatization of democratic competition.We analyze the utilization of political positions by comparing their extra-parliamentary discourse careers. As an extended case-study (BURAWOY 1998), the projects focuses on the performance of competing positions addressing the same res publica. In doing so, we further explore conditions of (successfully) taking part in political discourse, starting with the hypothesis that the (successful) utilization of political positions is also subject to media change.We analyze the implications of our case studies theories of democracy by thick comparisons (SCHEFFER/NIEWÖHNER 2010) of the practical demands of political discourses. Here, we investigate how democratic competition processes and privileges certain political matter (vgl. LATOUR 2008). In sum, the project addresses the role of media in politics not only in relation to the discourse work of parliamentary offices, but also in relation to the political issues themselves being addressed by different and competing political positions.