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MonographDOI

Comparing Media Systems: three models of media and politics

TL;DR: Hallin and Mancini as discussed by the authors proposed a framework for comparative analysis of the relation between the media and the political system, based on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies.
Abstract: This book proposes a framework for comparative analysis of the relation between the media and the political system Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables that have shaped their evolution They go on to identify three major models of media system development, the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist, and Liberal models; to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems; and to explore the force of change that are currently transforming them It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication, and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context
Citations
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Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a set of grounded hypotheses on the relationship between communication and power relationships in the technological context that characterizes the network society, and argue that the media have become the social space where power is decided.
Abstract: This article presents a set of grounded hypotheses on the relationship between communication and power relationships in the technological context that characterizes the network society. Based on a selected body of communication literature, and of a number of case studies and examples, it argues that the media have become the social space where power is decided. It shows the direct link between politics, media politics, the politics of scandal, and the crisis of political legitimacy in a global perspective. It also puts forward the notion that the development of interactive, horizontal networks of communication has induced the rise of a new form of communication, mass self-communication, over the Internet and wireless communication networks. Under these conditions, insurgent politics and social movements are able to intervene more decisively in the new communication space. However, corporate media and mainstream politics have also invested in this new communication space. As a result of these processes, mass media and horizontal communication networks are converging. The net outcome of this evolution is a historical shift of the public sphere from the institutional realm to the new communication space.

1,340 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper integrated the insights generated by framing, priming, and agenda-setting research through a systematic effort to conceptualize and understand their larger implications for political power and democracy, and proposed improved measures of slant and bias.
Abstract: This article proposes integrating the insights generated by framing, priming, and agenda-setting research through a systematic effort to conceptualize and understand their larger implications for political power and democracy. The organizing concept is bias, that curiously undertheorized staple of public discourse about the media. After showing how agenda setting, framing and priming fit together as tools of power, the article connects them to explicit definitions of news slant and the related but distinct phenomenon of bias. The article suggests improved measures of slant and bias. Properly defined and measured, slant and bias provide insight into how the media influence the distribution of power: who gets what, when, and how. Content analysis should be informed by explicit theory linking patterns of framing in the media text to predictable priming and agenda-setting effects on audiences. When unmoored by such underlying theory, measures and conclusions of media bias are suspect. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00336.x This article proposes integrating the insights generated by framing, priming, and agenda-setting research through a new, systematic effort to conceptualize and understand their implications for political power. The organizing concept is bias, that curiously undertheorized staple of public discourse about the media. With all the heat and attention it incites among activists and ordinary citizens, bias is yet to be defined clearly, let alone received much serious empirical attention (Niven, 2002). The term seems to take on three major meanings. Sometimes, it is applied to news that purportedly distorts or falsifies reality (distortion bias), sometimes to news that favors one side rather than providing equivalent treatment to both sides in a political conflict (content bias), and sometimes to the motivations and mindsets of journalists who allegedly produce the biased content (decision-making bias). This essay argues that we can make bias a robust, rigorous, theory-driven, and productive research concept by abandoning the first use while deploying new, more precisely delineated variants of the second and third. Depending on specific research objectives, the distinctions among these three concepts can be crucial (Scheufele, 2000). The present article suggests that parsimonious

1,311 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, this article pointed out that people have become increasingly detached from overarching institutions such as public schools, political parties, and civic groups, which at one time provided a shared context for receiving and interpreting messages.
Abstract: The great thinkers who influenced the contemporary field of political communication were preoccupied with understanding the political, social, psychological, and economic transformations in modern industrial society. But societies have changed so dramatically since the time of these landmark contributions that one must question the continuing relevance of paradigms drawn from them. To cite but a few examples, people have become increasingly detached from overarching institutions such as public schools, political parties, and civic groups, which at one time provided a shared context for receiving and interpreting messages. What are the implications of this detachment on how people respond to media messages? Information channels have proliferated and simultaneously become more individualized. Is it still relevant to conceive of ‘‘mass media’’ or has that concept been made obsolete by audience fragmentation and isolation from the public sphere? Does this new environment foreshadow a return to a time of minimal effects? If we are looking at a new minimal effects era, how can we distinguish it from the last such period? Retracing some of the intellectual origins of the field may help us identify the fundamental changes in society and communication technologies that are affecting the composition of audiences, the delivery of information, and the experience of politics itself. In particular, we are concerned with the growing disjuncture between the prevailing research strategies and the sociotechnological context of political communication, which may give rise to unproductive battles over findings (Donsbach, 2006). To the extent that research paradigms fail to reflect prevailing social and technological patterns, the validity of results will be in serious question. Consider just one case in point: the famous earlier era of ‘‘minimal effects’’ that emerged from studies done in the 1940s and early 1950s (Klapper, 1960). The underlying context for this scholarship consisted of a premass communication media system and relatively dense memberships in a group-based society networked through political parties, churches, unions, and service organizations (Putnam, 2000). At this time, scholars concluded that media messages were filtered through social reference processes as described in the two-step flow model proposed by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955; Bennett & Manheim, 2006). Although the classic study by Lang

1,209 citations


Cites background from "Comparing Media Systems: three mode..."

  • ..., Hovland, Janis, & Kelly, 1953). The classic voting studies in sociology can also be traced to earlier interdisciplinary influences. For example, Tarde’s (1903) theories of diffusion, imitation, and interpersonal influence clearly shaped the work of Lazarsfeld et al. These pioneers promoted the notion that ordinary citizens had little capacity to reason or decide independently about politics (or other matters, such as fashion). Instead, their views were shaped by their group memberships and experiences and were thus less susceptible to direct influence from the media. Media influence was understood as contingent on social filters and interpersonal cues, as exemplified by the aforementioned ‘‘two-step flow’’ model of Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) and the accompanying minimal effects school of media sociology (Klapper, 1960)....

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  • ..., Hovland, Janis, & Kelly, 1953). The classic voting studies in sociology can also be traced to earlier interdisciplinary influences. For example, Tarde’s (1903) theories of diffusion, imitation, and interpersonal influence clearly shaped the work of Lazarsfeld et al....

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  • ...These foundations have made it possible to begin important cross-national work on comparative analysis of the interface between media regimes and political systems (Curran et al., in press; Esser & Pfetsch, 2004; Hallin & Mancini, 2004)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that mediation is a multidimensional and inherently process-oriented concept and that it is possible to make a distinction between four phases of mediatization.
Abstract: Two concepts that have been used to describe the changes with regards to media and politics during the last fifty years are the concepts of mediationand mediatiza- tion. However, both these concepts are used more often than they are properly defined.Moreover,there is a lack of analysis of the processof mediatization,although the concept as such denotes a process.Thus the purpose of this article is to ana- lyze the concepts of mediated and mediatized politics from a process-oriented per- spective.The article argues that mediatization is a multidimensional and inherently process-oriented concept and that it is possible to make a distinction between four phases of mediatization. Each of these phases is analyzed.The conclusion is that as politics becomes increasingly mediatized, the important question no longer is related to the independence of the media from politics and society.The important question becomes the independence of politics and society from the media.

950 citations


Cites background from "Comparing Media Systems: three mode..."

  • ...…and interdependencies of media systems, institutions and actors, political systems, culture, and sense making (Cook 2005; Dahlgren 2004; Hallin and Mancini 2004) as well as reciprocal effects of the media (Kepplinger 2007), beyond content-based media effects at the individual level and…...

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  • ...At a general level, it can be argued that the media in democratic countries are always positioned somewhere between the political system and the economic system (Croteau and Hoynes 2001; Hallin and Mancini 2004)....

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  • ...As shown by Hallin and Mancini (2004), the media in countries belonging to the polarized pluralist model, such as Italy, are more a part of the political system than the media in countries that form part of the democratic corporatist model, such as Sweden, and the liberal model, such as the United…...

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  • ...While this is not the place to develop these arguments, it is still worth mentioning as it points toward the fact that the degree to which politics is mediatized in a particular society partly depends on the institutional setting (Cook 2005; Hallin and Mancini 2004)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a conceptualization of journalism culture that consists of three essential constituents (institutional roles, epistemologies, and ethical ideologies), further divided into 7 principal dimensions: interventionism, power distance, market orientation, objectivism, empiricism, relativism, and idealism.
Abstract: Despite a large array of work broadly concerned with the cultures of news production, studies rarely attempt to tackle journalism culture and its dimensional structure at the conceptual level The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to propose a theoretical foundation on the basis of which systematic and comparative research of journalism cultures is feasible and meaningful By using a deductive and etic approach, the concept of journalism culture is deconstructed in terms of its constituents and principal dimensions Based on a review of the relevant literature, the article proposes a conceptualization of journalism culture that consists of 3 essential constituents (institutional roles, epistemologies, and ethical ideologies), further divided into 7 principal dimensions: interventionism, power distance, market orientation, objectivism, empiricism, relativism, and idealism

674 citations

References
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Book
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: Douglass C. North as discussed by the authors developed an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time.
Abstract: Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time. Institutions exist, he argues, due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their consequences for economic performance; some economies develop institutions that produce growth and development, while others develop institutions that produce stagnation. North first explores the nature of institutions and explains the role of transaction and production costs in their development. The second part of the book deals with institutional change. Institutions create the incentive structure in an economy, and organisations will be created to take advantage of the opportunities provided within a given institutional framework. North argues that the kinds of skills and knowledge fostered by the structure of an economy will shape the direction of change and gradually alter the institutional framework. He then explains how institutional development may lead to a path-dependent pattern of development. In the final part of the book, North explains the implications of this analysis for economic theory and economic history. He indicates how institutional analysis must be incorporated into neo-classical theory and explores the potential for the construction of a dynamic theory of long-term economic change. Douglass C. North is Director of the Center of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and History at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a past president of the Economic History Association and Western Economics Association and a Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written over sixty articles for a variety of journals and is the author of The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (CUP, 1973, with R.P. Thomas) and Structure and Change in Economic History (Norton, 1981). Professor North is included in Great Economists Since Keynes edited by M. Blaug (CUP, 1988 paperback ed.)

27,080 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the role that institutions, defined as the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, play in economic performance and how those institutions change and how a model of dynamic institutions explains the differential performance of economies through time.
Abstract: Examines the role that institutions, defined as the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, play in economic performance and how those institutions change and how a model of dynamic institutions explains the differential performance of economies through time. Institutions are separate from organizations, which are assemblages of people directed to strategically operating within institutional constraints. Institutions affect the economy by influencing, together with technology, transaction and production costs. They do this by reducing uncertainty in human interaction, albeit not always efficiently. Entrepreneurs accomplish incremental changes in institutions by perceiving opportunities to do better through altering the institutional framework of political and economic organizations. Importantly, the ability to perceive these opportunities depends on both the completeness of information and the mental constructs used to process that information. Thus, institutions and entrepreneurs stand in a symbiotic relationship where each gives feedback to the other. Neoclassical economics suggests that inefficient institutions ought to be rapidly replaced. This symbiotic relationship helps explain why this theoretical consequence is often not observed: while this relationship allows growth, it also allows inefficient institutions to persist. The author identifies changes in relative prices and prevailing ideas as the source of institutional alterations. Transaction costs, however, may keep relative price changes from being fully exploited. Transaction costs are influenced by institutions and institutional development is accordingly path-dependent. (CAR)

26,011 citations

Book
01 Jan 1993

14,679 citations

Book
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a Phenomonology of modernity and post-modernity in the context of trust in abstract systems and the transformation of intimacy in the modern world.
Abstract: Part I:. Introduction. The Discontinuities of Modernity. Security and Danger, Trust and Risk. Sociology and Modernity. Modernity, Time and Space. Disembedding. Trust. The Reflexivity of Modernity. Modernity and Post-- Modernity?. Summary. Part II:. The Institutional Dimensions of Modernity. The Globalizing of Modernity. Two Theoretical Perspectives. Dimensions of Globalization. Part III:. Trust and Modernity. Trust in Abstract Systems. Trust and Expertise. Trust and Ontological Security. The Pre--Modern and Modern. Part IV:. Abstract Systems and the Transformation of Intimacy. Trust and Personal Relations. Trust and Personal Identity. Risk and Danger in the Modern World. Risk and Ontological Security. Adaptive Reactions. A Phenomonology of Modernity. Deskilling and Reskilling in Everyday Life. Objections to Post--Modernity. Part V:. Riding the Juggernaut. Utopian Realism. Future Orientations. The Role of Social Movements. Post--Modernity. Part VI: . Is Modernity and Western Project?. Concluding Observations. Notes.

14,544 citations

BookDOI
TL;DR: Putnam et al. as discussed by the authors analyzed the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, revealing patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity.
Abstract: Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail? In a book that has received attention from policymakers and civic activists in America and around the world, Robert Putnam and his collaborators offer empirical evidence for the importance of "civic community" in developing successful institutions Their focus is on a unique experiment begun in 1970 when Italy created new governments for each of its regions After spending two decades analyzing the efficacy of these governments in such fields as agriculture, housing, and health services, they reveal patterns of associationism, trust, and cooperation that facilitate good governance and economic prosperity

13,915 citations