Page 85 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Comparing Mass Communication Systems

From the first reporter who returned with tidings of foreign lands and
foreign peoples, impressions of things that are apparently completely
different have been emphasized, thus often reconstructing the world
with an exotic touch. Herodot, the Greek, returned from his long voy-
ages and “reported” back on what he had noticed out there and thought
worthreporting. The first essays that comprise a scientifically founded
comparison date back to antiquity: Aristotle sent his students out to de-
scribe Greece’s state systems. In his comparative evaluations he found
the “good” constitution of great interest. He was already working with
terms such as democracy and oligarchy,which could thus be regarded as
aresult of the creation of comparable types.
The comparison, as an instrument of systematic research, was first
developed by the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–73), who,
as could be expected, was also a utilitarian. He described two basically
different but at the same time complementary procedures. He designed
a“method of agreement,” which states the question about similarities,
separating it clearly from the “method of difference” (Mill 1872, 648–
50). Up to the present day, these are still the central aspects of every
comparison that leads to two central consequences:

Theobjectstobecomparedmustbeneitheridenticalnorcompletely
lacking common features.
Everycomparisonhastoaskthetwo-sidedquestionastothesimilar-

ities and differences. A focus on only one of these two components
is incomplete and can therefore lay no claim to science.
In most western languages, the term comparison is derived from the Latin
word comparatio (which actually means with same), which nowadays
is used for describing a neutral method (comparative media systems).
Indeed, a comparison must – from a methodological point of view –
incorporate more than the search for similarity.
The comparative method is closely intertwined with the procedures,
in which abstract and generalizing statements and ultimately theories
can be generated from single observations. When a typology is devel-
oped, groups with different characteristics are created as a result of the
comparison.Groupspossessingsimilarcharacteristicscanformthebasis
of a typology, which is concerned with the systematic order of phenom-
ena. Characteristic typologies emphasize, for example, the differences
between independent and state-controlled media structures, or between
public and commercial broadcasting systems. Theories involve a higher
degree of abstraction. They can be seen as a generalization generated

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