Media system

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Media system is a term from journalism and communication studies . The production of mass media statements takes place within certain political, economic and social framework conditions that are currently mostly shaped by nation states. The configuration of the mass media can ideally be summarized as a media system .

term

The basis for the concept of media system is the media . If these are defined and perceived as social organizations - instead of mere technical artefacts -, they form a media system as a whole.

Following system theory , media systems are made up of various subsystems - such as print, radio or online media - which in turn can be broken down into subsystems with further subsystems. The individual television stations and their respective editorial offices are an example of this.

Due to the high level of integration of the media, there is always an interplay between the media and the economic, political, social and cultural realities of a society. In addition to these factors, media systems are also influenced by “the law, geography, linguistic cultures, the political system, the economic constitution and the current state of media technology and its distribution”.

Media systems in nation states

Even under the condition of media-economic globalization, the nation state criterion is predominantly used to determine the scope of a media system. For example, a German, British or French media system could be considered. But the idea of ​​a European media system can also be treated and, assuming a Europeanization of the media society (for example within the EU ), is becoming increasingly important.

Comparative media systems research

Siebert, Peterson and Schramm: Four Theories of the Press

Overview of the four media system models according to Siebert, Peterson and Schramm:

  Communism model Authoritarianism model Liberalism model Social responsibility model
Task of the media Stabilization and expansion of the system Servant of the state Government control Forum for social conflicts
Media control Communist Party License required Marketplace of Truth Standards through professional ethics
Media ownership Communist Party Media ownership private or public Media ownership private Media ownership privately with public service

A pioneering work by the American authors Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson and Wilbur Schramm in 1956 established comparative media system research. Under the title “Four Theories of the Press”, the authors developed a typology that allows the division of media systems into authoritarian , liberal , socially responsible and communist types. This publication, which was later also referred to as the “ normative divergence approach”, was criticized for its ideological component and the lack of empirical evidence.

Wiio: Contingency Model of Communication

In 1983 Osmo Wiio developed the much more complex Contingency Model of Communication , which at least partially overcame the ethnocentric perspective of the Four Theories of the Press model. "With the help of this typology, possible manifestations of mass communication can be analyzed and then categorized: conditions, circumstances, situations for the occurrence and combinations of specific external influences on the media and internal influences in the media."

In this typology, which is also known as the "analytical contingency approach", a distinction is made between the following dimensions:

  • open and closed communication systems
  • public and private media ownership
  • centralized and decentralized media control
  • the right to send and receive, which either rests with society or with the individual.

Altschull: The Empirical Convergence Approach

In 1989 J. Herbert Altschull published another approach. In the later debate, this approach was called the “empirical convergence approach”. He summarized the media systems in three models:

  • the western market model
  • the eastern plan model and
  • the southern development model

The media systems that could be divided into these models were compared with each other in terms of tasks, goals, values ​​and freedom of the press . He came to the conclusion that there are only minor differences and that the media are subject to the interests of those who finance them or whose political power they are subject to. The intensity of the freedom of the press is understood and applied differently. In all models, ideology and values ​​are part of journalistic training. In the further debate, the result with regard to the freedom of the press was criticized by Roger Blum , who found deficiencies in the argumentation.

Blum: The (extended) pragmatic difference approach

In 2001, the Institute for Communication and Media Studies at the University of Bern , headed by Roger Blum, developed the pragmatic difference approach, which, however, hardly receives any attention in the literature. This approach is characterized by its international comparability, since it is not restricted to certain regions, but shows clear weaknesses in the operationalization of the dimensions.

The approach differentiates between the following six dimensions: system of government, media freedom, media ownership, media financing, media culture and media orientation.

These dimensions can each take the form of liberal line , middle line or regulated line and thus form seven different models:

  • the liberal-investigative commercial model (e.g. USA)
  • the liberal-ambivalent mixed model (e.g. Italy)
  • the liberal-ambivalent public service model (e.g. Germany)
  • the liberal concordant public service model (e.g. Switzerland)
  • the controlled-ambivalent mixed model (e.g. Russia)
  • the controlled concordant public service model (e.g. Egypt)
  • the conductor-concordant public service model (e.g. China).

Blum himself is critical: “The publication of the book by Hallin and Mancini has shown that the pragmatic difference approach also has weaknesses. He does not include enough dimensions. And on balance it leads to many models. ”That is why he developed the approach further by adding three dimensions: political culture, political parallelism and state control over the media. All dimensions can still take the forms liberal (A) , medium (B) or regulated (C) . The result is now six instead of seven models that can be used worldwide.

dimension Atlantic-Pacific Liberalism Model Southern European clientele model Northern European public service model Eastern European shock model Arab-Asian patriot model Asian-Caribbean command model
Government system A - Democratic A - Democratic A - Democratic A - Democratic B - Authoritarian C - totalitarian
Political culture A - polarized B - ambivalent B - ambivalent B - ambivalent C - concordant C - concordant
Media freedom A - No censorship A - No censorship A - No censorship B - Censorship on a case-by-case basis B - Censorship on a case-by-case basis C - permanent

censorship

Media ownership A - private B - Private and Public B - Private and Public B - Private and Public B - Private and Public B - Private and Public
Media financing A - By market B - By market and state B - By market and state B - By market and state B - By market and state B - By market and state
Political parallelism A - weak B - medium A - weak B - medium C - Strong C - Strong
State control over the media A - weak B - medium A - weak C - Strong C - Strong C - Strong
Media culture A - Investigative B - ambivalent B - ambivalent B - ambivalent C - concordant C - concordant
Media orientation A - Commercial B - Divergent C - public service B - Divergent C - public service C - public service

Ostini and Fung: Extension of the "Four Theories of the Press"

Jennifer Ostini and Anthony YH Fung supplemented the model of the “Four Theories of the Press” in 2002 and not only looked at the political system, but also focused on the journalists themselves with their core values ​​and self-image and combined both aspects. The division of the political systems into authoritarian and democratic was taken from the original approach of Siebert, Peterson and Schramm. In addition, journalists were divided into two groups: conservative and liberal. The first group was assigned the status quo-oriented characteristic, the second group the reform-oriented characteristic. Another characteristic for classification in the conservative category was that the values ​​were rather subordinated to the interests of the company and the state . As a result of the combination, there were four possibilities for classification:

  • democratic-conservative
  • democratic-liberal
  • authoritarian-conservative
  • authoritarian-liberal

The further development was criticized in the debate for orienting itself too strongly on the already criticized theory "Four Theories of the Press".

Hallin and Mancini: Comparing Media Systems

Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini published the book Comparing Media Systems in 2004 , in which they divided media systems into northern and central European or democratic - corporatist (e.g. Sweden), North Atlantic or liberal (e.g. . USA) and Mediterranean or polarized- pluralistic (e.g. Greece) media system types. This systematization was then published in an abridged version in a textbook in 2005. The problem with an international comparison of media systems is that the model can only be applied to western, industrialized democracies.

Relationship of the countries to the three models (Hallin & Mancini, 2004)

Hallin and Mancini distinguish between the four medial dimensions in their model

  • Position of the press
  • Political parallelism
  • Degree of professionalism
  • State control

as well as the four political dimensions

  • Conflict pattern
  • Government pattern
  • Level of organization
  • State role.

Using this matrix of two by four dimensions, you determine the affiliation of the 18 examined countries to the respective system. The resulting models surprisingly go hand in hand with clearly delimited geographical areas: Northern and Central European, North Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Yin: Modeling for the East Asian region

The work published by Yin in 2008 compared the media systems of East Asia . The basic aspects were freedom and responsibility . The approach was criticized because the terms are not clearly defined and the results, despite being correctly classified, contradict the empirical findings.

literature

  • Blum, Roger (2005): Building Blocks for a Theory of Media Systems. In: Medienwissenschaften Schweiz 2, pp. 5–11. PDF
  • Hallin, Daniel C./Mancini, Paolo (2004): Comparing Media Systems. Three Models of Media and Politics. New York et al .: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521543088
  • Hallin, Daniel C./Mancini, Paolo (2005): Comparing Media Systems . In Curren, James / Gurevitch, Michael (Eds.): Mass Media and Society. London: Hodder Arnold. ISBN 978-0340884997
  • Siebert, Fred S./Peterson, Theodore / Schram, Wilbour (1963) [1956]: Four Theories of the Press. The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do. Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252724213
  • Thomaß, Barbara (2007): Media Systems in International Comparison . Constance: UTB. ISBN 978-3825228316
  • Weischenberg, Siegfried (2004): Journalism: media systems, media ethics, media institutions. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2004, ISBN 9783531331119
  • Wiio, Osmo A. (1983). The Mass Media Role in the Western World . In: Comparative Mass Media Systems. Edited by L. John Martin and Anju Grover Chaudhary. White Plains: Longman, pp. 85-94. ISBN 978-0582283275

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ See Tilly, Charles (2000): Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 900–1990 , Malden: Blackwell, p.
  2. ↑ Cf. Thomaß, Barbara (2007): Media systems in international comparison . Constance: UVK, p. 18
  3. ↑ Ibid. P. 23
  4. ↑ Cf. Blum, Roger (2005): Building blocks for a theory of media systems. In: Medienwissenschaften Schweiz 2, S. 5
  5. ↑ See Siebert, Fred S./Peterson, Theodore / Schram, Wilbour (1963) [1956]: Four Theories of the Press. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, p. 2
  6. ↑ Cf. Weischenberg, Siegfried (2004): Journalistik: Mediensysteme, Medienethik, Medieninstitutionen. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, p. 86.
  7. ↑ Ibid., Pp. 93f.
  8. ↑ Ibid.
  9. ↑ See Wiio, Osmo (1983): The Mass Media Role in the Western World. In: Martin, L. John (Ed.): Comparative Mass Media Systems. White Plains: Longman, pp. 85-94
  10. ^ Siegfried Weischenberg: Mediensysteme, Medienethik, Medieninstitutionen Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992, p. 97
  11. ^ J. Herbert Altschull: Agents of Power. The Role of the News Media in Human Affairs. Longman, 1984
  12. ↑ Roger Blum: Loudspeakers & Opponents. An approach to the comparison of the media systems Halem, 2014, p. 39
  13. ^ A b Florian Meißner: Cultures of disaster reporting 1st edition. Springer VS, pp. 17-18
  14. ↑ Cf. Blum, Roger (2005): Building blocks for a theory of media systems . In: Medienwissenschaften Schweiz 2, S. 9.
  15. ↑ Jennifer Ostini & Anthony YH Fung: Beyond the Four Theories of the Press. A New Model of National Media Systems Mass Communication & Society, 2002, pp. 41-56
  16. ↑ Afonso de Abuquerque: Media / politics connections: beyond political parallelism. Media, Culture & Society, 2013, pp. 742-758
  17. ↑ See Hallin, Daniel C./Mancini, Paolo (2005): Comparing Media Systems. In Curren, James / Gurevitch, Michael (Eds.): Mass Media and Society. London: Hodder Arnold, p. 220.
  18. ↑ See Hallin, Daniel C./Mancini, Paolo (2004): Comparing Media Systems: Three models of media and politics. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. P. 87.
  19. ↑ Cf. Blum, Roger (2005): Building blocks for a theory of media systems . In: Media Studies Switzerland 2, p. 7.
  20. ^ J. Yin: Beyond the Four Theories of the Press: A New Model for the Asian & the World Press. Journalism & Communication Monographs, 10 (spring edition), 2008, pp. 3–62
  21. ↑ Florian Meißner: Cultures of disaster reporting 1st edition. Springer VS, pp. 20-21