Pressure or power resource? The mediated public in political and economic bargaining

在民主社会中，重要问题是通过集体行动者之间的政治和经济谈判来解决的。根据媒体化范式，媒体塑造了政治和经济行动者如何公开提出主张和决策。然而，我们仍然缺乏理论概念和经验证据来解释媒体是否以及如何影响决策本身的讨价还价过程。有人认为，媒体对谈判过程没有多大影响，因为谈判是闭门进行的。因此，谈判应该主要由有关各方的政治或经济考虑来推动。然而，我们假设政治和经济谈判不能被恰当地概念化为脱离（潜在的）公众关注。我们提出，公众关注的可能性构成了一个框架，为谈判代理人提供战术选择，例如，当上市被用作威胁，激励对手更顺从时。与此同时，公众的关注可能会迫使谈判代理人采取行动，以满足报道谈判过程的记者的要求。因此，我们试图调查媒体如何影响谈判代理人的公开声明，以及他或她在直接谈判情况下的策略，非公开行为。最终，我们的目标是回答媒体在多大程度上对谈判参与者施加压力以适应媒体逻辑以及谈判代理人如何试图在战术上利用（潜在的）媒体报道来实现其目标的问题。因此，在我们的研究项目中，我们将提出一个中介议价的理论模型，我们将在混合方法方法中对其进行实证验证。在项目过程中，我们将从以下几个方面扩展现有的研究主体：首先，我们将关注行动者的公共和媒体驱动行为（因为它们是媒介化研究的主要焦点），以及他们在谈判的直接情况下的非公共行为。此外，我们的目标是通过纳入谈判参与者对（潜在的）媒体报道的认知和情感反应，扩大我们对媒体对政治和经济讨价还价的影响的理解。这允许在下一步将媒体影响分类为与谈判代理人的目标相关的功能或功能失调。最后，我们的目标是在分析媒体对个体讨价还价代理人的影响时纳入集体行动者的组织背景。为了回答我们的研究问题，我们专注于典型的谈判星座，即作为劳资关系一部分的集体谈判。由于劳资关系受到政治考虑和经济理性（即政治/经济逻辑）的影响，其结果可能会转移到一般的政治和经济谈判中。

In democratic societies, important issues are resolved via political and economic bargaining between collective actors. According to the mediatization paradigm, the media shapes how political and economic actors publicly present claims and decisions. However, we still lack theoretical concepts and empirical evidence explaining if and how the media also influences the bargaining process of decision making itself. It has been argued that the media has no considerable impact on the process of bargaining, since it takes place behind closed doors. Hence, negotiations are supposed to be mainly driven by the political or economic considerations of the actors involved. We, however, assume that political and economic bargaining cannot be properly conceptualized as isolated from (potential) public attention. We propose that (the possibility of) public attention constitutes a framework providing bargaining agents with tactical options, e.g., when going public is utilized as a threat motivating opponents to be more compliant. At the same time, public attention may pressure bargaining agents to perform acts that satisfy the demands of journalists covering the bargaining process. Consequently, we seek to investigate how the media influences both the bargaining agents´ public statements as well as his or her tactical, non-public acting in the immediate bargaining situation. Ultimately, we aim at answering the questions in how far the media imposes pressure on the bargaining actors to adapt to the media logic and how the bargaining agents try to tactically exploit (potential) media coverage to achieve their objectives.In our research project, we will hence propose a theoretical model of mediatized bargaining, which we will empirically validate in a mixed-methods approach. In the course of the project, we will extent the existing body of research by the following aspects: First, we will focus on both the actors´ public and media driven actions (as they are the main focus of mediatization research) as well as on their non-public actions in the immediate situation of bargaining. Additionally, we aim at broadening our understanding of media-induced effects on political and economic bargaining by incorporating the bargaining actors´ cognitive and affective reactions to (potential) media coverage. This allows in a next step to classify the media impact as functional or dysfunctional with respect to the objectives of the bargaining agents. Finally, we aim at incorporating the organizational context of collective actors when analyzing media effects on individual bargaining agents. In order to answer our research questions, we focus on prototypical bargaining constellations, namely the collective bargaining as part of industrial relations. Since industrial relations are shaped by political considerations as well as economic rationalities (i.e., political/economic logic), the results will likely be transferable to political and economic bargaining in general.