Page 201 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

190 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Also in these areas, qualitative methodologies will be an important
complement and corrective to survey research in the attempt to explain
how themes of political understanding relate to the formation of
opinions and the exercise of political rights.
In conclusion, this comparative secondary analysis of political
conceptualization in two nations allows us to see more readily the
context in which individuals process political information. While several
similar themes were used by interviewees in the two studies, the themes
were articulated from different contextually bounded perspectives. The
themes included: powerful others, economics, human impact and center-
periphery relations. The perspectives of control/power, personalization,
social distance, money and the global roles of the two countries framed
the discourse on political issues differently in the US and Denmark.
More focused comparative research on these perspectives of political
conceptualization offers a promising avenue for a better understanding
of how people make sense of politics.

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