Politics and mass media: A response to John Street

This short article is a response to an overview of research on media-political relations written by John Street arid published in the Political Studies Review in 2005. The usefulness of the exercise is recognised but issue is taken both with the organising concepts of Street's account and the way he excludes a significant body of research from his assessment, raising questions about his characterisation of the field under scrutiny. A case is made for assessing the tensions and the varieties of work in this broad area by the use of other categories, including the play-off between media-centric and politics-centric accounts, the continuing strand of work informed by critical theory and the sheer variety of the topics upon which researchers have chosen to focus as a way into a broader agenda. The importance of work engaging with issues at an international level is emphasised together with the value of new comparative studies. In conclusion, the state of the area is judged more positively than in Street's assessment. Questions of power are argued to be the principal point at issue in comparing research approaches and the need for further explicitness and clarity here is noted. © 2006 Political Studies Association.