Media Systems in Comparative Perspective – Exam Review
Week 1
Topics: Media systems Theory, The four dimensions, Pluralism in media systems, Public
Broadcasting
Systems theory: society is a cohesive stable system consisting of interconnected parts
A system is a whole, made up of interconnecting parts (irreducibility)
There are necessary and dependent relationship between the parts that make up a system
(stability)
It can still change as the parts are in motion. If one part changes, so do the others (variety
& flexibility)
Systems are open, they relate to their environment
Media system (Hallin and Mancini): a country’s complex structure of media institutions and
practices that interact with and shape one another and which is structurally and historically
linked to the political and economic system.
Subject to change
Not homogeneous, not the results of a single ideology
Path dependency – resulting from meaningful patterns of historical development
Four dimensions of media systems:
1. Media markets
Ownership, concentration, market shares
Audience behavior, media access, media use
Newspaper circulation. Readership distribution. Gender differences
Vertical vs horizontal communication – Does media promote communication between the
government and citizens or between elites?
2. Political parallelism: the degree and nature of the links between the media and political
parties or more broadly the extent to which the media system reflects the major political
divisions in society.
Five components of political parallelism as indicators of how present pp is in a media system:
Media content (distinct political orientations in the media news, etc)
Organizational connections (connections between media and political parties, churches
etc.)
Political activism (media staff being active in political life. Not very common anymore
but political opinions of journalists can still shape careers in important ways.)
, Partisanship of media audiences (political parallelism in terms of audience consumption
of media)
Journalistic role orientations and practices (writing style and journalistic culture can be
linked to political systems when there is high pp. The difference between reporting vs
commenting)
3. Professionalization: objectivity, political neutrality.
Three dimensions of professionalization:
1. Autonomy
2. Distinct professional norms (ethical principles, practical routines, criteria for judging
excellence, etc.)
3. Public service orientation – professions are oriented toward an ethic of public service.
Guided by public interest rather than personal interest of any single actor.
Instrumentalization: Inversely correlated with professionalization. Control of media by outside
actors who use them to intervene in the world of politics.
** high professionalization means that journalism is differentiated as an institution from other
institutions.
4. The role of state
The degree of state intervention present in media
The most important form of state intervention is public service broadcasting
(broadcasting service owned by the state)
Effectiveness and the nature of the media regulation. (Why and how it is done)
Pluralism in media systems:
External pluralism: each media outlet is linked to different groups or tendencies. High
level of political parallelism. Every news outlet has a specific clear political ideology.
When all of these outlets combine, there is pluralism in the media system.
Internal pluralism: each media outlet/organization includes different views, no ties to
political parties, attempted neutrality and balance, low levels of political parallelism.
Pluralism is found within each platform.
Public broadcasting (PSB): a system that is set up by law and generally financed by public
funds and given a large degree of editorial and operating independence. A mid-way between the
state/authoritarian model and market model. Supposed to function independently of both the
market and the state and therefore differs from the alternative systems of commercial
broadcasting on the one hand and authoritarian or state-operated broadcasting on the other
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