Page 324 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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TheFutureofthe ThreeModels

Even though the Liberal Model has dominated media studies and
has served as the principal normative model against which other media
systems have traditionally been measured, it is probably the Polarized
Pluralist Model, more than the other two we outline here, that is most
widely applicable to other systems as an empirical model of the relation
between media and political systems. We suspect that scholars working
on many parts of the world – Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, Latin America, the Middle East and all of the Mediterranean
region, Africa, and most of Asia will find much that is relevant in our
3
analysisofSouthernEurope,includingtheroleofclientelism, thestrong
role of the state, the role of media as an instrument of political struggle,
the limited development the mass circulation press, and the relative
weakness of common professional norms.
In all of these cases, however, we think it is likely that substantial
modifications would need to be made to our models to apply them, and
indeed that they would be useful primarily as inspiration for creating
new models based on detailed research into specific political and media
systems.

3
The comparison between Southern Europe and Latin America on this point is devel-
oped in Hallin and Papathanassopoulos (2002).

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