Page 26 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Barbara Pfetsch and Frank Esser

and the opening up of media markets. In the case of the United States
there has been a further wave of commercialization over the past decade
(Underwood 1998; Bogart 2000). While the long-term consequences are
still not foreseeable, it was already clear at the beginning of the transfor-
mation process that political communication would not go unaffected
by the technical development and the increase in competition and com-
mercialization. In view of the development of global communication
systems and processes, which no longer stop at national borders, it is
obvious that research also cannot be limited to examining particulari-
ties that concern one country only. The onus now was on discovering
transnational trends, similarities, and deviations from general patterns
that only become apparent when a broad – comparative – perspective
is taken.
The growth of comparative research has led to a cornucopia of studies.
In this situation it is appropriate and necessary to establish paradigmatic
paths in the knowledge jungle and to bundle results in order to be able
to develop new perspectives. This is the starting point of this volume. In
the appraisal of the current research, we follow an outline of three main
sections, discussing the fundamentals, applications, and perspectives of
comparative political communication research. The first part will access
comparative political communication by expounding the basic themes,
the problems, and overall developments and by providing an overview
of the spectrum of comparative studies. Furthermore, an introduction
would be incomplete if it did not address the problems of compara-
tive research designs and its methodological foundations. The essays in
the second part of the volume highlight concrete examples of compar-
ative studies in specific subareas of political communication. The focus
here is on comparative investigations into the structures, processes, ac-
tors, contents, and effects of political communication. These contribu-
tions are not just concerned with presenting tangible projects and their
results but also with discussing the specific added value of the compar-
ative approach. This added value takes the form on the one hand of a
substantial increase in insight regarding the respective research ques-
tions and on the other of experience gained regarding the implementa-
tion of comparative designs. The contributions in the third part of the
volume look to the future and discuss the theoretical and methodolog-
ical prospects of the comparative approach. The final chapter provides
a synthesis of the common theoretical and methodological issues of the
studies presented and attempts to integrate the manifold approaches,
questions, and concepts.

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