Page 40 - Comparing Media Systems THREE MODELS OF MEDIA AND POLITICS

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Concepts and Models

we treat as related components of political parallelism; and their fourth
dimension essentially coincides with our professionalization dimension.
Whatwewilltrytodointhischapteristodefinethesefourdimensions,
along with a number of concepts related to them, to clarify some of
the more problematic concepts and to illustrate some of the kinds of
variation that can be found among media systems. In doing this we
will often give illustrations drawn from our analysis of particular media
systems. These illustrations, of course, cannot be fully developed here,
and will be explained at much greater length in Part II.

THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIA MARKETS: THE DEVELOPMENT
OF A MASS PRESS
One of the most obvious differences among media systems has to do
with the development of the mass circulation press. In some countries
mass circulation newspapers developed in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. In others they did not. That historical difference is
reflected today in sharply different rates of newspaper circulation, from
a high of 720 per thousand adult population in Norway to a low of 78 per
thousand in Greece. As can be seen in Table 2.1, high rates of newspaper
circulation are characteristic of Scandinavia and other parts of Northern
Europe, and low rates characteristic of Southern Europe.
The distinction here is not only one of quantity. It is also a distinction
in the nature of the newspaper, its relation to its audience and its role in
the wider process of social and political communication. The newspa-
pers of Southern Europe are addressed to a small elite – mainly urban,
well-educated, and politically active. They are both sophisticated and
politicized in their content, and can be said to be involved in a horizontal
process of debate and negotiation among elite factions. The newspapers
of Northern Europe and North America, by contrast, tend to be ad-
dressed to a mass public not necessarily engaged in the political world.
They are, in this sense, involved in a vertical process of communication,
mediating between political elites and the ordinary citizen, though they
may at the same time play a role in the horizontal process of interelite
communication.
The newspapers of Southern Europe, with their relatively low circu-
lations, have not historically been profitable business enterprises, and
have often been subsidized by political actors, a fact that has important
implications for the degree of political parallelism and of journalistic
professionalism discussed in the following text. The high-circulation

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