Bourdieu, politics and the media: Visibility as capital in the field of institutionalized elite politics

Abstract

Employing Bourdieusian media studies this study sets out to study institutionalized elite politics as a social field, and how positions in this field relate to mass media visibility and reach on social media platforms. Using multiple correspondence analysis and logistic regression on data covering the 349 members of the Swedish parliament and the 24 ministers in the government (n = 373) the study demonstrates that levels of mass media visibility closely mirror levels of political capital. Although ideological differences emerge in the types of platforms from which politicians amass large social media followings, the tendency to attract followers primarily depends on political capital. The capital that mass media and social media can bestow upon politicians in terms of granting visibility is absorbed into existing inequalities in the distribution of field-specific capital. While focusing empirically on the political field the study evokes broader questions about the relationship between visibility capital and field-specific capital across different social fields.