Page 36 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

P1: kic
0521828317agg.xml CY425/Esser 0521828317 May 22, 2004 10:19

Barbara Pfetsch and Frank Esser

designs and asks how Internet communication influences political rep-
resentation within the given structures of political institutions. Against
this background, Thomas Zittel (Chapter 10, this volume) poses the
question whether electronic democracy needs to be understood as an
American concept that only enables democracy to be transformed in
association with the specific contextual conditions of the American sys-
tem of government. Thomas Zittel refers in his study to the actor’s level
of analysis and investigates the extent to which the Internet is used by
parliamentarians in the United States, Germany, and Sweden as a de-
centralized and interactive means of communication with citizens. His
findings point out that technically induced electronic democracy needs
to be considered as an American exception. In European party democ-
racies, however, the electronic communication of parliamentarians is
secondary to the communication activities between party elites. Thomas
Zittel gives the institutional contexts of the political process as the reason
for the differences in the use of electronic network communication.
Just as the constitutional conditions of the political process influ-
ence the behavior of political actors so do the structural conditions of
the media system with respect to the behavior of journalists. Wolfgang
DonsbachandThomasPatterson(Chapter11,thisvolume)argueintheir
chapter that the specific conditions of the environment of journalism –
aspects relating to occupational socialization, professional norms, and
forms of editorial control – shape the behavior of media actors. Wolfgang
Donsbach and Thomas Patterson compare the similarities and differ-
ences in the professional behavior of journalists in Western European
countries and the United States on the basis of data from the comparative
“Media and Democracy” project. Their findings suggest that the essen-
tial differences with respect to political attitudes and the understanding
of professional and political roles are rooted in different media cultures
between the United States and Western Europe. The authors assert in
particular that there are significantly more similarities than differences
across Western European news systems. Finally, the study refers to the
existence of an international consensus with respect to the fundamental
duties of journalists.
POLITICAL MEDIA CONTENTS AND THEIR EFFECTS. Journalists create a me-
dia reality, which, especially in the format of television news, has become
aprominent subject of political communication research. National stud-
ies concentrate above all (perhaps against the background of the video
malaisehypothesisoragenda-settingresearch)ontheeffectsoftelevision

16