Page 16 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Preface

For methodological and practical reasons that we explain in the fol-
lowing text, we chose to confine this study to a limited set of countries
that have much in common in terms of their history, culture, and insti-
tutions, those of Western Europe and North America. We do believe that
much of the analysis will be of interest to those studying other regions,
and we will say a little about how we see our models in relation to the rest
of the world; we will also stress that we don’t intend any of this analysis
simply to be applied to other systems without modification.
Our experience carrying out this project was genuinely exciting: We
discovered interesting peculiarities we didn’t expect, and similarities
appeared where we had expected differences. We enjoyed stimulating
discussions with colleagues in different parts of the world. We chal-
lenged our linguistic abilities, and spent many hours trying to interpret
one another’s drafts and forge our separate ideas into a single, coher-
ent argument. (We know that university review committees sometimes
believe that co-authoring a book is only half as much work as writ-
ing a single-authored one, but we can assure them that this is not the
case!) This book was written partially in San Diego and partially in
Perugia. Jet lag was a common challenge, and long transoceanic flights
were often the occasion for new ideas and improvements. In the end
we don’t claim to have presented a fully finished analysis; the state of
comparative study in communication is too primitive for that, both
conceptually and in terms of available data and case studies. We believe
we can offer important results, but more than anything else we think
we have been able to point to possible areas and strategies for future
research.
The “official” beginning of the project was a conference organized
in Berkeley in 1998; during and since that seminar we have taken ad-
vantage of the suggestions of many colleagues and the help of several
institutions. We would like to acknowledge their help here. The Univer-
sity of California, San Diego, has supported both of us with travel grants
and teaching opportunities that were important occasions for discussing
and writing this book. The Center for German and European Studies of
the University of California, Berkeley, made possible the organization of
the 1998 conference, as well as funding some of our content analysis and
a graduate seminar we taught jointly at the University of California, San
Diego. Grants from Universit` a di Perugia, progetti d’Ateneo, provided
additional resources for traveling. A grant from RAI, Radiotelevisione
Italiana, made possible the collection of much of the documentary data.
A seminar organized by the Institut f¨ ur Journalistik at the University of

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