Page 96 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Hans J. Kleinsteuber

by the party organization; the candidate is of secondary importance
(Kamps 2000). The term Americanization proves to be primarily used by
the media as a catchword to avoid complicated comparisons. Despite all
the differences in the concrete campaign procedures, similarities are also
observed, especially in visual strategies or the intentional influencing of
reporting.
It is indisputable that European politicians observe U.S. election cam-
paigns closely. A leading politician of the German Liberal Party, Guido
Westerwelle, when questioned as an observer at an American National
Convention in 2000, said: “Don’t copy, just understand.” All in all, the
Americanization hypothesis falls into the temperance and the perfor-
mance categories, because the situation in an “advanced” country is
being examined and evaluated with a concrete aim.

Political Reporting
While media structures clearly differ from a global perspective, media
contents are frequently relatively similar – not least because they often
originate from a limited number of news agencies. This makes a com-
parison easier – even more so when similar kinds of media (e.g., the
“quality” press) or similar subjects (e.g., events of global significance)
are compared. The comparative analysis of contents looks back on a
considerable history: Back in the early fifties, “political symbols” were
sought for in the quality press (de Sola Pool 1970). In this context, the
analyses of world news trends prepared in the 1970s, which reveal a great
amount of one-way movement and are interpreted as “one-way streets,”
are also important: The United States and also Western Europe are major
producers, while regions of the Third World are merely recipients and
have no chance of making their issues heard. They have been the sub-
ject of many lengthy and difficult controversies in the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In international cooperation, reporting on the Gulf War has been
studied in depth (Nohrstedt and Ottosen 2000). Based on a pattern of
double framework of comparison, using multiple forms of media (tele-
vision news, tabloids, quality press) and various countries (the United
States, Denmark, Norway, and others), in the final analysis the U.S. re-
porting during the events of the war was found to have been very hege-
monic, while the United Nation’s (UN’s) role was almost negligible.
Among the national media of Europe common features could be dis-
covered, for example that militaristic logic played only a small part, as

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