Page 35 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Comparing Political Communication

The most frequent and most conventional form of mobilization of
public opinion in modern Western democracies is the election cam-
paign. During this phase, the modern political publicity process comes
toaclimax in an almost paradigmatic way. Against this background,
it is no wonder that comparative research in the field of election cam-
paigncommunicationsisataveryadvancedstage.ChristinaHoltz-Bacha
(Chapter 9, this volume) discusses the professionalization of election
campaign communications as an answer to the challenges of societal
change and the development of the media and asks for evidence that
speaks for a convergent development. In her summary of the current
research, Christina Holtz-Bacha draws a rather sobering conclusion: On
theonehand,thesearchfortransnationaldevelopmentsofelectioncam-
paign communications in Europe has hardly led to results that can be
generalized. Instead, the respective European projects can be cited as
prime examples of the theoretical, methodological, and practical diffi-
culties of comparative research. On the other hand, the studies that were
inspired by the Americanization-thesis show that the developments in
the United States must be considered as the exceptional case in election
campaign communications. Christina Holtz-Bacha thus shares the view
held by Dan Hallin and Paolo Mancini (Chapter 2, this volume), that we
are confronted with processes of modernization in election campaign
communications that are highly dependent on the political cultures of
the respective democracies.
ACTORS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION. The design of the modern po-
litical publicity process, as we can describe it in a comparative way, is
not least the result of adaptation processes owing to a sustained trans-
formation of the media environment. Comparative studies can make
a significant contribution here to describing and explaining how these
adaptations are pursued by political actors and journalists.
An important element of the change in the communication environ-
ment of political actors is the global expansion of network communi-
cations. The Internet brings with it a series of hopes with respect to the
opening up of new avenues for democratization, the focus of which is
the discussion of “electronic democracy.” This notion suggests that the
increasing potentials of network communication in modern societies
promote political participation and directrelations between citizens and
political actors. While the initial studies celebrated the “brave new world
of a direct internet democracy” (K¨ uchler 2000, 325), the conclusions in
the meantime have become rather sobering. More recent research deals
with the implementation of network communication in participatory

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