The argument developed in this paper is that relationships between the media and policy are not uni-directional, but reflect quite complex sets of strategies of, and interactions between, agents situated in different social fields. Likewise, the effects of media-policy interactions are not always “bad news” for educational institutions, and require a range of methodological tools suited to tease apart the complexity of these interactions. This argument is based on research concerned with the mediatization of policy, which investigated media reporting over the course of a policy review (Batterham’s Review of Australia’s Science Capability), and its influence on the policy themes presented in the final report produced by the Review (Batterham, 2000)(Rawolle, 2007). One result of this Review was Australia’s adoption of a knowledge economy policy. Is it possible to demonstrate the effect of journalists and the media on educational policy-making and vice-versa? This paper develops one possible way to account for the effects of media-policy interaction, built on an expanded version of Bourdieu’s theory of fields and work on the field of journalism (Benson & Neveu 2005; Bourdieu, 1998), which also includes cross-field effects and temporary social fields (Lingard & Rawolle, 2004; Rawolle, 2005; Rawolle, 2007), and a version of practice suitable to study media-policy interactions. Journalists and the media and have become an emerging focal point for educational researchers (Blackmore & Thomson, 2004; Gewirtz, Dickson & Power 2004; Lingard & Rawolle, 2004; Rawolle, 2005; Stack, 2006). Underlying this research focus is an intuition that the practices of journalists and the media matter to the lives of students, parents, teachers, administrators, researchers and policy makers. Some researchers have argued that there is a growing influence of the media on politics, resulting in deliberate strategising of politicians in framing (Altheide, 1997) and spinning the media (Fairclough, 2000; Gewirtz, Dickson & Power 2004). Through this media-politics link, the media has been represented as increasingly shaping the educational field. One way to understand the changing influence that the media holds on education is through the concept of mediatization. While there have been different versions of mediatization offered in the literature (Fairclough, 2000; Mazzonini & Schulz, 1999; Thrift, 2004), an overall theme of studies of mediatization is that it is a process whereby the logic of the media is systematically changing the functioning of other social fields over time. In the research reported in this paper, mediatization was conceptualised in two different, but interconnected ways. First, the mediatization of policy was conceptualised as the cross-field effects resulting from links between the field of information and communication technology production and the fields of policy, and second as cross-field effects resulting from the strategic interlinking between the fields of journalism and the fields of policy. There were two sites identified for collecting data on the practices of policy agents and media agents to develop an understanding of the mediatization of policy (Rawolle, 2007). First, as the majority of public discussion about Batterham’s Review was conducted in Australia’s newspapers, all articles published over the course of the Review were collected and coded according to different emerging and policy themes they introduced. Second, all policy documents produced over the course of Batterham’s Review were analysed (terms of reference and three policy texts) into different policy themes covered.

Adaptation of Bourdieu's theory of fields to study the mediatization of policy, when conceptualised as forms of interactions between the field of policy and jouranlistic fields. Two sites were identified for study. First, newspaper articles published over the course of a policy review were collected and coded according to different themes that they introduced. Second, different policy texts produced over the course ot the review were collected and coded according to the themes that they introduced.

The findings of the research reported were that the mediatization of policy involves different strategies by policy makers and journalists to shape the policy agenda. In short the mediatization of policy is complemented by a politicization of the media. In part, these strategies stemmed from a need to resolve pressures and tensions between the field of politics and higher education over government funding for research. Policy agents appeared to use media releases about the review as a political instrument, both to target particular specialist journalists and to “hijack events”, in the sense of redirecting public attention away from controversial events to promote government policy. Journalists used the review in a range of different ways, related to the degree of relevance to their specialisation. The degree of specialisation of journalists influenced the relevance they saw in Batterham’s Review, and the investment they placed in media coverage of the progress of the Review.