Advancing Comparative Political Communication Research: New Frameworks, Designs and Data

For a long time comparative studies in the subfield of political communication have been rare. This is mainly due to a lack of interest in comparative methodology on the part of communication scholars and a lack of interest in mass communication on the part of comparative political scientists. Kindled by the recent works of Esser and Pfetsch (2004) and Hallin and Mancini (2004), however, comparative political communication studies are on the rise and are even becoming fashionable. A consensus is emerging that more cross-national comparative research is needed to fully understand the role of social, cultural and institutional differences in political communication. Just as the study of comparative politics has greatly enriched our understanding of politics in general, the growing ‘system sensitivity’ in political communication can enhance our understanding of communication flows in the political process. However, the growing interest in comparative political communication research has not been translated into real scientific progress as many theoretical and methodological problems have remained unresolved. This workshop plans to stimulate the scholarly debate about both theoretical and methodological aspects, and will discuss rigorous empirical research that will help advance this new subfield. Progress in newly emerging fields depends on identifying well-defined concepts that can serve as a foundation for widely-shared theoretical frameworks. As Pippa Norris (2009) said, without a theoretical map or conceptual compass comparativists remain stranded in Babel. Although various studies have proposed middle range concepts for the comparative study of political communication, few others have taken them up, developed them further, or integrated them into larger frameworks. An ambitious exception is the classification of three media/politics models by Hallin & Mancini (2004). Although immensely useful, problems remain. There is a tendency among some scholars to unreflectively “apply” their typology to any country sample and topic without questioning its applicability, whereas other scholars criticize it for being too descriptive, western-centered and nonempirical. There are also methodological uncertainties related to this need to advance the conceptual foundation of comparative political communication research. How do we analyze case studies and two-country studies adequately? Should we focus on small-N or large-N studies, on most similar or most different systems designs? Shall we continue to improve our typologies or concentrate on explanatory research? These and other methodological questions will be addressed during this workshop – by way of either conceptual papers or empirical papers presented by the participants.