Page 241 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Political Campaign Communication

phenomena, which can then be used for the development of theoretical
concepts, the pretheoretical strategy seems to be particularly suited to in-
ternational research. This strategy has proved effective, for example, in a
study by R¨ udiger Schmitt-Beck (2000) on the influence of political com-
munication on electoral behavior in four countries. Esser, Reinemann,
and Fan (2000) followed a similar approach in an analysis of the reac-
tions of the British and the German press to spin doctoring during the
electoral campaigns in 1997 in Great Britain and in 1998 in Germany.
The third method of dealing with theoretical diversity in international
research teams is the metatheoretical approach. According to Swanson
(1992), this was the approach of the French-American election project.
Due to their divergent theoretical positions the project team could only
agree on a vague common objective, which was to study what kind of
political reality the campaign constructed for the electorate. A broad
research question such as this allows for integration of the interests
of “rhetorical and narrative critics, social-scientific media effects re-
searchers, semioticians, linguists, quantitative media content analysts,
and others” (Swanson 1992, 23). The original idea, however, to com-
pare specific elements and processes of the campaigns in two countries
thus could only be realized to a very limited extent. These problems are
mirrored in several chapters of the book that resulted from the project
where individual authors wrote about aspects of the campaign in one
country.
These difficulties of international cooperation are avoided by studies
that do not aim for direct cooperation. One way of doing this is that
researchers from one country conduct a study in several other coun-
tries and analyze the results. The comparison in this case is achieved
by applying a common design in all countries. This approach has sev-
eral shortcomings and uncertainties that lie in the applicability of the
same instrument, particularly the adequate translation of questionnaires
and code books and the comparable application of the instrument
in all countries. Foreign researchers therefore have to rely on the co-
operation of local colleagues who also help with the interpretation
of findings because these require knowledge of the national political
culture.
Another possibility is an approach that usually leads to antholo-
gies containing chapters on countries where specific phenomena are
described for individual countries. Usually the editors provide the au-
thors of the individual chapters with a more or less detailed structure
based on variables whose influence on the matter is assumed or already

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