Traditional political communication is constituted by three main actors:
politicians, journalists and citizens, and the communication takes place between
these three. Since the breakthrough of printed press and the first newspapers,
and later also radio and television, the three groups of actors have always had
shifting relations towards each other404. The areas between them have altered in
form and symbiotic approaches, but the triad of actors have yet remained. What
we have experienced in the last decade or so is a shift of power balance within
this chain of political communication. For a long time, political institutions have
set the agenda for the others - political parties have controlled media outlets
(especially in Sweden with a strong historical bond between newspapers and
political parties). The process of mediatisation of politics has contributed to a
re-formation of this power balance405. Adjustment from political institutions to
media logic, to values norms and routines - conditions stated by the media - has
been taking place through several phases during the last four decades. A central
part in this process must be ascribed to television. It has been through television
that political communication
