In globalized and digitalized economies, how could we compare the role of media in politics in different countries? The growth of transnational social media platforms; the new borderless patterns of media distribution and consumption, and the consequential need for transnational and harmonized digital media policies have caused challenges for scholars in the field of comparative studies (Siebert & Schram 1956; Hallin & Mancini 2004). A problem is that traditional conceptualizations of media systems still dominate (cf. Humprecht et al. 2022; Marques & Vos 2023). Therefore, the purpose is to theorize emerging media systems constituted by combinations of domestic/cross-border institutionalized/de-institutionalized relations. Through a literature review and results from the EU-funded project Mediadelcom, we argue as follows:
(1) The power of de-institutionalizing digital communication (Mancini 2020), and its challenging of legacy media organizations, requires that the polarized pluralist/corporatist/liberal classifications of Hallin & Mancini (2004) become more changeable and dynamically combined dimensions within and across nation-states, and updated with theory about global politics and communication (Hellmueller & Berglez 2022). For example, this enables understandings of the, often transnationally interconnected, expansion of polarized politics across countries’ digital public spheres.
(2) Nation-states should be grouped along categories of domestic-cross-border conditions and relations (prel. the multipolar media system, global pluralist media system, and de-globalizing media system). Here, different types and levels of institutionalized/de-institutionalized movement across borders thus becomes an important unit of comparison.
(3) Thereby we propose a framework for comparative studies of cross-border dynamic (CBD) media systems; their role within political systems, and vice versa.
References
Hallin, D., Mancini, P. (2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hellmueller, L., Berglez, P. (2022) “Future Conceptual Challenges of Cross-Border Journalism”, Journalism, 1-22.
Humprecht, E. et al. (2022) “Media Systems in the Digital Age: An Empirical Comparison of 30 Countries”, Journal of Communication 72: 145-164.
Mancini, P. (2020) “Comparing Media Systems and the Digital Age”, International Journal of Communication 14: 5761-5774.
2023.
ANZCA Conference, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, November 21-24, 2023