Page 93 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Comparing Mass Communication Systems

EXAMPLES OF COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
IN AREAS OF COMMUNICATIONS THEORY AND
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
Theories of Communication
It has already been described how theories can stand at the end
of a process of comparative research. This leads to the question of
whether theories can be compared, in particular concerning trans-
cultural differences. Although they receive little attention from the
Western academic community, new culture-bound schools of thought
do emerge, which, time and again, include a reaction to regional expe-
rience. The relatively well-equipped Latin American science of commu-
nications, for example, has concerned itself with the potential for po-
litical reform in the media for many years (Fox 1997). In Asia, Western
perspectives had been accepted rather uncritically for decades before
attempts were made to combine local traditions in thinking with these
imports. By now, characteristic perspectives on communications the-
ory have been developed in Asia, in which, for example, peculiari-
ties of the Indian language, the symbolic system of I Ching in China,
or impulses of Islam or Taoism have been incorporated (Dissanayake
1993).
This example underscores that theories wander over cultural bound-
aries in the form of ideas and make productive suggestions, thereby
changing and expanding their content. This is illustrated in the famous
approach “Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” (Habermas
1962; 1989). The study, which dates from 1962 – based, at the time of
its publication, on a comparison between France, the United Kingdom,
and Germany – was not translated into English until over a quarter of
¨
acentury later. The German key term Offentlichkeit was translated into
the artificial term public sphere.This was necessary as there is no equiv-
¨
alent to the word Offentlichkeit in many languages (which throws some
¨
light on German particularities). Obviously, Offentlichkeit stems from a
different context than public sphere,illustrated by the fact that this the-
ory has meanwhile often been used to defend the public broadcasting
service, as it is closely related to the term public service (see previous).
In processes involving the transcultural passing on of theories, certain
ideas embedded in these theories are lost and others are newly created.
Acomparison of Habermas’s original (1962) with today’s non-German
Habermas adaptations shows how this kind of transcultural diffusion
works(Kleinsteuber 2001b).

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