"All this is a boon to Britain's crumbling democracy": meta-reporting about the TV-debates in the British General Election 2015

This contribution deals with meta-reporting in the 2015 British election campaign. First, the concept of mediatisation and the consequences of mediatisation for political communication will be discussed more generally. Second, the concept of meta-reporting will be introduced as both symptom and consequence of an increased degree of mediatised political communication. Thirdly, based on previous findings, a qualitative analysis of newspaper reporting on the four TV debates during the 2015 election campaign exhibits various elements of meta-reporting. Meta-reporting about these media-initiated and mediatised communicative events includes (a) reporting about spin doctoring, image work and strategies for self-representation of political actors, (b) discussing the media format itself and the media actors involved in them, and (c) the effect of the TV debates on the audience and on voting behaviour. The analysis of meta-reporting about the TV debates indicates both a de-politicisation of political agency and a politicisation of media agency