Page 24 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Comparing Media Systems

SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study covers the media systems of the United States, Canada, and
most of Western Europe, excluding only very small countries (e.g.,
Luxembourg, much of whose media system is actually directed toward
audiences in neighboring countries). Our study is thus based on a “most
similar systems” design. As Lijphart (1971) stresses, one of the greatest
problems in comparative analysis is the problem of “many variables, few
cases.” One of the principal means of solving that problem, he notes, is
to focus on a set of relatively comparable cases, in which the number of
relevant variables will be reduced. This approach will reduce the number
of cases; but in a field such as communication, where the existing liter-
ature and available data are limited, this is often a benefitaswellinthe
sense that it is impossible for analysts to handle competently more than
a limited number of cases. One of the problems of Four Theories of the
Press, as we noted, is that its scope is so grand that it is almost inevitably
superficial: like a photo with too much contrast, it obscures too much of
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the detail we need to see. By limiting ourselves to North America and
Western Europe we are dealing with systems that have relatively compa-
rable levels of economic development and much common culture and
political history. This is a limitation, obviously: the models developed
here will not apply without considerable adaptation to most other areas
of the world, though we hope they will be useful to scholars working
on other regions as points of reference against which other models can
be constructed. One advantage of this focus is the fact that the media
models that prevail in Western Europe and North America tend to be
the dominant models globally; understanding their logic and evolution
is therefore likely to be of some use to scholars of other regions not only
as an example of how to conduct comparative research but also because
these models have actually influenced the development of other systems.
Our study, as mentioned previously, is an exploratory one, and the
main purpose of the “most similar systems” design is not to hold certain
variables constant for purposes of demonstrating causality, but to permit
carefuldevelopmentofconceptsthatcanbeusedforfurthercomparative
analysis, as well as hypotheses about their interrelations. The fact that

3 Another example is Martin and Chaudhary (1983), which attempts a global analysis
of media systems, dividing the world into “three ideological systems,” the Western,
Communist,andThirdWorld–anobleattempttocoverthewholeworld,butobviously
one that involves huge generalizations within these groups. There are also collections
that impose little in the way of a common analytical framework, for example Nimmo
and Mansfield (1982).

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