Page 237 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge
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                                             Political Campaign Communication

                              emergence of the international perspective may lie in the development
                              of campaigns and campaign research as described here. It is certainly
                              also due to the particular difficulties research in this area has to deal with
                              because of a multitude of context variables that have to be considered.
                              Compared to the impressive number of national campaign studies in
                              some countries, the body of internationally comparative research is still
                              meager.
                                If research builds on the method of international comparison, which
                              means comparing phenomena in at least two countries, it takes on the
                              systemic perspective: Several of the variables that influence the design
                              of a campaign and therefore have to be taken into account in the study
                              of campaign communication, do not vary within a country, often not
                              even over periods of time, but only between countries. Among these
                              systemic variables are the political system, the electoral system, party
                              structure, regulation of election campaigns, political culture, and the
                              mediasystem(BowlerandFarrell1992,7–8;ManciniandSwanson1996,
                              17–20).


                                         COMPARATIVE RESEARCH ON CAMPAIGN
                                                    COMMUNICATION

                              One of the earliest European studies that compared various countries,
                              was a study initiated by Jay Blumler on the occasion of the first direct
                              election of the European Parliament in 1979. Fifteen researchers from
                              all nine countries that were members of the European Community at
                              that time took the opportunity of a common event for a multimethod
                              study on the role of television during the European election campaign
                              (Blumler 1983a). It included interviews with representatives of the par-
                              ties and of the broadcasting corporations, content analyses of television
                              campaign reporting, and finally surveys of the electorate. In the interest
                              of an international comparison across countries the national research
                              instruments were kept as identical as possible.
                                Although high symbolic relevance for the integration process was
                              attributed to the direct election of the European Parliament and even
                              though this was regarded as a further step in the development of
                              European identity, the campaigns in the individual countries proved
                              to be surprisingly different and concentrated more on national than
                              Europeanaspects.Itwasnotsomuchthecommoneventthatdetermined
                              how campaigns were led. Instead, the new situation was dealt with ac-
                              cording to the traditional patterns of existing national campaign models,


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