The dynamics of resistance and response to mediatization in government: perceptions of Whitehall press officers caught in the 'cross-field' since 1997.

This examination of mediatization in government asks how media change impacts on central bureaucracies, and specifically on power asymmetries between the party political and administrative arms of government. This chapter examines the dynamics of mediatization in the organization and operation of government media engagement, focusing on the period after the Labour victory of 1997, and looking at the everyday practices, norms and values of UK government press officers. Using data from interviews and documentary analysis, this chapter argues that the media and political responses to 24/7 news from the late 1980s onwards, led to an intensification of the relationship between media and political elites which excluded the public and presented serious challenges for the stated democratic purposes of government communications