Page 97 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Comparing Mass Communication Systems

opposed to in the United States. While in Germany the war events were
simultaneously sold with controversial positions as well as propaganda
in favor of military intervention, the coverage in Norway was much more
distanced (Kempf 2000). It is part of the nature of these kind of analyses
that it can only be used for meaningful topics of common interest, as
only then does the material basis needed for comparison exist.

EXEMPLARY COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES IN THE AREA
OF MEDIA SYSTEMS AND MEDIA POLITICS
Media Systems and Media Politics
Afield that has recently become popular is the complete presentation
ofmediasystems.Thereisawiderangeofhandbooksinwhichsinglesys-
tems are described according to a fixed scheme. In the German-speaking
world, the most reliable source is the Hans-Bredow-Yearbook pub-
lished every other year (Hans-Bredow-Institute 2002). Many, above all
Anglo-Americantextbooks,eitherpresentsinglenationalmediasystems,
which are supposed to be representative of certain world regions (Head
1985), or else analyze the situation in world regions, for example Latin
America, where a considerable level of comparability is assumed (Fox
1997). A different perspective emerges when the author does not come
from the country examined, and his or her angle is more or less detached
from the research object. The British writer Peter J. Humphreys has writ-
tenanoverview of the German media system that unmistakably focuses
on the interests of the British observer, for instance on German feder-
alism or the powerful assertiveness of parties in media politics (which
are both unknown in the United Kingdom) (Humphreys 1994, 315–20).
In turn, Germans occupy themselves with the situation abroad, above
all in the United States, in which the question of Americanization is al-
most always involved and transposed into questions such as: “What will
happen to us in the future?” or “What can we copy?” (Bachem 1995;
Kleinsteuber 2001a).
The founding of the EU provided comparative research with far-
reaching impulses. Processes of political integration, in which units that
were previously separate have now gained in similarity, show an elective
affinity to the process of generation of comparative theory previously
outlined. The gathering of data and consequent comparison of condi-
tions within member states constitutes a fixed repertoire of the formu-
lation phase of EU politics. For example, this is what happened in the

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