Potentials and Pitfalls of Comparative Research Kees Brants University of Milano Summer School Milano, July 18, 2012

Why comparative research?  Academic curiosity (country choice coincidental)  Favoured by (EU) research councils  Finding solutions for your own country’s issues  Learning about your own country  Learning and understanding cross-cultural similarities and differences  Allows for contextualised, explanatory inferences about systems and groups of countries

Pitfalls of comparative research - surveys: translating questions; single question -content analysis: sameness of media, concepts -system analysis: assuming your system is ‘better’ than others -comparing by juxtaposition -law in books and law in action -conceptual differences (functional equivalents) -anglo-american bias -ignoring the cultural context of country/system

Prerequisites for comparative research  Rid yourself of the notion that one system is ‘better’ than another (not being judgemental)  Have the competency to fully understand other system (cross-cultural research teams)  Take into account as many explanatory system characteristics and variables as possible  Base choice on theoretically funded explanatory variables  Define clearly what units should be compared  Choose ‘most similar’ or ‘most different’ strategy

Models of media systems (Hallin & Mancini ) Liberalmodel Democratic Polarized corporatist pluralist Media (news- paper) markets Medium mass circulation, commercial High, early Low circulation, mass elite oriented circulation Political parallelism Professional- ization Low Strong, non-inst self-regulation High High (plus clientelism) clientelism) Strong + inst. Weak self-regulation State intervention in media system Market dominated Strong state Strong state intervention intervention

Group assignments Topics  Professionalization of electoral campaign communication  Auditing media democracy  Personalization in political advertising  Controlling the political TV-interview  Politicians using social media  Americanization of political communication in country X  Negative campaigning

Group assignments Questions 1. What would you focus on (research question) 2. What countries would you choose and why 3. What are units of analysis and central concepts and how operationalised 4. What is surplus value of comparison 5. What pitfalls do you envisage 6. How could you overcome them

Other comparative taxonomies and typologies

Typology of broadcasting systems (McQuail & Brants) Ideal types Public Service Private/commercial Ideal types Public Service Private/commercial Characteristics Characteristics Historical structure Monopoly Competition Financing License fee Advertising Mission Cultural pedagogy Profit maximization Accountable to Public, government Shareholders Politicization Depend/autonomy Indep./disinterest Programs Quality & range Entertainment Audience concept Citizens Consumers Regulation High level Low level

Ideal typical logics in political communication (Brants & Van Praag) partisan logicpublic logic media logic Media identify withpartypublic good public Public addressed assubjectcitizen consumer Role journalismdependentindependent, dominant, enter- mouthpieceskeptical taining, cynical Kind of reportingbiased, descriptive, interpretative, substantivesubstantive less substantive Journalistic metaphorlapdogwatchdog Cerberus Agenda set bypartyparty media Democracy modelparty democr.party democr. audience democr. Period Netherlandspillarizationde-pillarization fragmentation