Page 167 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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The North/Central European Model

3
and the State. Some parts of Germany had compulsory education in
the seventeenth century. Figure 3.1 shows the literacy rates at the end
of nineteenth century: with the exceptions of Austria and Belgium, the
Democratic Corporatist countries had rates in excess of 90 percent by
that time and led the world in this respect. 4
The development of mass literacy was closely connected with the be-
ginning of industrialization and the growth of market institutions, both
of which contributed in a variety of ways to the growth of the mass-
circulation press. As we have seen they increased the demand for infor-
mation, as well as the political motivation for establishing newspapers
as a voice of the emerging bourgeoisie. They also provided the economic
and cultural context within which newspapers could be established as
business enterprises, funded by advertising and circulation revenue, and
motivated to innovate both in terms of technology and of content in an
effort to expand the newspaper market. The stages of growth of the press
in the Democratic Corporatist countries are closely parallel to those in
the Liberal countries or, up to a certain point, France, which also saw the
growthofamass-circulationpressbythelatenineteenthcentury(though
in the French case that development was partially reversed). Hadenius
andWeibull(1999)notethatSwedishmediaentrepreneursimitatedboth
British and French models. In the Swedish case, Aftonbladet was founded
by the liberal Stockholm industrialist Lars Johan Hierta in 1830 – just as
the penny papers were beginning in the United States. Like the latter it
innovated with a wider range of content than earlier papers –“political
commentary, columns, personal notices, news from Parliament and for-
eign affairs (132).” Dagens Nyheter further expanded circulations from
1864, and the first true mass-circulation paper, Stockholms-Tidningen,
was founded in 1889.
Søllinge (1999) points to “local patriotism” as another possible rea-
son for the high newspaper circulation of the Nordic countries: even in

3 The Swedish Church, for instance, conducted examinations to certify the ability of
parishioners to read, in some areas as early as the 1620s, and during the century
following the Church Law of 1686 a systematic reading campaign produced a massive
shift to mass literacy. Certification of literacy was necessary for confirmation in the
church, which in turn was necessary to obtain permission to marry (Johansson 1981).
This was important particularly in the countryside. As noted in the following text
Scandinaviancountriesarecharacterizedbyonlymodesthistoricaldifferencesinurban
and rural literacy rates.
4
Postal flows also tended to be high in the Democratic Corporatist system (Vincent
2000). Habermas stresses the creation initially by merchants of private postal systems
as an important early step in the origin of the public sphere.

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