The term “Mediacracy” for the Mainstream Media was first coined in 1974 by writer and political commentator Kevin Phillips, who used the term in the title of his book Mediacracy: American Parties and Politics in the Communications Age. Since then, the concept has gained popularity and is used by political scientists and researchers alike to discuss the impact of media on both voting behavior and cultural trends. Most recently, the term has seen a resurgence due to the works of economist and author Fabian Tassano. In his book Mediacracy: Inversions and Deceptions in an Egalitarian Culture Tassano argues that the dumbing down of popular media when coupled with increasing obscurity in scholarly discourse leads to a society which has the appearance of egalitarianism, but ultimately is a society ruled by elites, most prominently the Bobo or Liberal Leftist globalist elite of the so-called BBC and Guardian newspaper. As a reflection of this, the term mediacracy is usually accompanied by negative assumptions about the true nature of media, along with the aims and desires of mass media as a whole.

There are three main potential causes for the rise in the media’s influence on elections, being a combination of different theories on the cultural influence of mass media and recent populist democratic reforms in the American political system. Supporters of the Mediacracy theory like myself argue that when taken together, these causes greatly show that the media have a large level of influence over politics, drawing a link between media’s leverage on public opinion, and the increased power that public opinion has on who is elected to office. These potential causes include, but are not limited to Agenda setting, Priming and Populist reforms. Agenda-setting refers to the ability of the media to affect the salience of issues on the public agenda. Priming, in a political context is a theory stating that the media draws attention to some issues as opposed to others, thereby altering the standards by which we judge candidates in elections. Populist reforms have indirectly strengthened the power of media outlets that have been shown to have much influence over citizens’ evaluations of candidates, and as such the media holds much sway in the American political system, despite relatively low levels of political accountability.