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Democracy and the press: A comparative analysis of pluralism in the international print media
Abstract
The relationship between democracy and press pluralism is assessed in seven countries: China, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, India, Lithuania, and Russia. The term “pluralism” is defined as the extent to which diverse and competing views appear in the content of the mainstream press on a given news topic. Content analysis of 2,172 articles from the 10 largest newspapers in each country, published in the first months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is used to evaluate the level of press pluralism. The main indicator of democracy is based on data from the Freedom House organization, though other democracy indexes are considered. Previous studies have offered conflicting views on the relationship between democracy and press pluralism. Although this study finds mixed results, the general tendency, which is based on 10 major news issues surrounding the events of 9/11, supports the perspective that democracy is not always positively associated with press pluralism. Much of the debate over 9/11 in countries ranked as highly democratic was less pluralistic than in countries with weaker democratic institutions.
... Contrary to Voltmer (2000), Aalberg et al. (2010) and Woods (2007) focus on the content level. They can therefore be cited as examples of micro-level media studies, although in the latter case the data is eventually aggregated to the macro level. ...
... The same applies to Woods (2007), who is not interested in the amount of news but rather the degree of diversity in newspaper coverage within a quite heterogeneous set of seven countries: China, Colombia, Egypt, Germany, India, Lithuania and Russia. The author actually speaks of press pluralism, which he defines as "newspaper content that contains an array of opposing viewpoints" and which he considers important for democracy (Woods 2007: 214). ...
... It might have been more reasonable to either study comparable domestic issues or a politically and ideologically less sensitive event like for example a major natural disaster and the world community's reaction to it. Nevertheless, I think that Woods' (2007) article is noteworthy because it makes an attempt to quantify by means of a large-N content analysis (7 countries x 10 newspapers) how well media fulfill a key requirement of democracy: reflecting various points of view in their news output. Moreover, his methodological approach is original although there is a lot of room for improvement. ...
The notion that mass media are essential for modern democracies is widely accepted, but there is a great deal of controversy regarding how well media play their democratic role. However, neither of the positions within this debate rests on solid empirical and especially comparative evidence. Thus, this thesis aims to contribute to the cross-national research on democratic media performance and its effects on the quality of democracy. Part I develops a theoretical model of media performance, arguing that mass media have two democratic functions: vertically, they need to disseminate information about politics; and horizontally, they need to provide a public forum that reflects the diversity of the society. The degree to which these two functions are fulfilled is analyzed on the level of media structures and media content, comparing up to 47 countries. The results reveal that media performance on both levels varies considerably across countries. While the media in the younger democracies within the sample generally lag behind, different patterns of media performance can be observed with respect to the more mature democracies. In short, the vertical function seems to be better guaranteed in Anglo-Saxon countries, whereas central Western and Northern European states are found to perform better with regard to the horizontal function. Part II of the book explores and reveals important links between media performance and various aspects of a well-functioning democratic regime. Dass moderne Demokratien ohne Massenmedien undenkbar wären, ist weithin unbestritten. Sehr kontrovers wird hingegen diskutiert, wie gut Medien ihre demokratische Rolle erfüllen. Dabei mangelt es dieser Debatte jedoch an einer soliden und v.a. vergleichenden empirischen Grundlage. Diese Dissertation möchte deshalb zur ländervergleichenden Forschung über demokratische Medienperformanz und deren Effekte auf die Qualität von Demokratien beitragen. Teil I entwickelt ein theoretisches Medienperformanz-Modell, demzufolge Massenmedien zwei demokratische Funktionen haben: in vertikalem Sinne müssen sie politische Informationen verbreiten; in horizontalem Sinne ein öffentliches Forum bereitstellen, das die Vielfalt der Gesellschaft widerspiegelt. Inwieweit diese Funktionen erfüllt sind, wird auf der Ebene von Medienstrukturen und -inhalten analysiert, wobei bis zu 47 Länder verglichen werden. Die Resultate zeigen, dass Medien in den jüngeren Demokratien im Sample generell schlechter abschneiden, während bei den reiferen Demokratien verschiedene Medienperformanz-Muster zu beobachten sind. Grob gesagt scheint die vertikale Funktion in angelsächsischen Ländern besser garantiert zu sein, während sich die horizontale Funktion in Nord- und in Zentral-Westeuropa als stärker ausgeprägt erweist. Teil II der Studie untersucht das Zusammenspiel zwischen Medienperformanz und verschiedenen Aspekten eines demokratischen Systems. Es werden mehrheitlich positive Beziehungen festgestellt.
... Por ejemplo, Gunther y Mughan (2000), señalan una paradoja en la relación entre la democracia y los medios de comunicación: pese a que éstos han sido actores relevantes (en ocasiones cruciales) en los procesos de transición democrática en muchos países, los medios no parecen cumplir con su parte para contribuir a la calidad de las democracias establecidas. Las razones de lo anterior son, por un lado, la tendencia hacia la convergencia y la concentración en la estructura de propiedad de los sistemas de medios, lo cual a menudo reduce significativamente el pluralismo mediático, el debate en la esfera pública, así como la independencia de los medios con respecto a otros actores políticos o económicos (Champlin y Knoedler, 2006;Meier, 2002;Doyle, 2002;Woods, 2007). Y por el otro, la tendencia a adoptar criterios orientados a la maximización del rating en los procesos de producción de noticias, especialmente en la cobertura informativa de la política y los asuntos públicos, lo cual lleva a los hacedores de noticias a presentar noticias y marcos interpretativos que priorizan la personalización, la espectacularización y la fragmentación en detrimento de las noticias sobre temas sustantivos. ...
Existe un intenso debate teórico sobre los efectos de los mensajes de los medios y de las campañas mediatizadas en las actitudes y en la participación cívica de los ciudadanos. Desde la perspectiva de las teorías del malestar mediático se sostiene que existe una influencia negativa, mientras que en las teorías de la movilización se habla de un resultado positivo. En este libro se analiza el impacto de los mensajes de los medios y las campañas sobre el compromiso cívico de los mexicanos durante la elección presidencial de 2012, a la luz de las teorías de la movilización y del malestar mediático.
... Zo bleek het sterk gecentraliseerde en concurrerende Franse journalistieke veld in de laatste drie decennia van de vorige eeuw aanmerkelijk meer schandaalberichtgeving over immigratie te genereren dan het sterk marktgerichte, maar meer gefragmenteerde Amerikaanse journalistieke veld (Benson & Saguy, 2005). De invloed van veldkenmerken wordt bevestigd door studies naar de diversiteit van de berichtgeving over controversiële onderwerpen (Benson, 2009;Woods, 2007) en de journalistieke aandacht voor populaire cultuur in Amerikaanse en Europese kwaliteitskranten (Janssen, Verboord & Kuipers, 2011). ...
The institutional logics of journalism: studying the journalistic field in the wake of Bourdieu This article considers several key concepts from Bourdieu's theory of the cultural field and their significance for the study of journalism, including the tension between 'heteronomy' and 'autonomy', and the struggle between 'established' and 'newcomers'. It is argued that the field approach can bridge the gap between macro-level analyses that view journalism as the product of wider societal, economic and political structures and microanalyses that tend to focus on individual news organizations and journalists without paying much attention to the wider institutional setting in which journalistic actors operate. In addition, it is argued that the field approach provides a useful framework for international comparative research into the workings of journalism.
... In this quote, the two core normative functions of the media for democracy become obvious. First, media should guarantee a public forum or a "marketplace of ideas" (Napoli 1999) where all social groups can express and exchange their interests and demands (Beierwaltes 2000;Graber 2003;Norris 2000;Rautenfeld 2005;Woods 2007). Second, media should provide all citizens with information about politics, public affairs and the activities of the political elites (Beierwaltes 2000;Graber 2003;Lippman 1923;Norris 2000). ...
In modern democracies, elections are considered the central mechanism for people to control their elected representatives. They allow voters who are dissatisfied with those in power to periodically punish and replace them. However, this requires that political decision-making is transparent and that alternative party options are actually evident in the electoral contest. Accordingly, in line with mobilization theory, we assume that well-balanced and critical media coverage leads to a higher turnout. So far, only few studies exist which test these assumptions in a large comparative setting. To provide more empirical evidence on the relationship between media coverage and political participation, we combine data about press systems and from newspaper content analyses with opinion surveys and perform multi-level analyses. Contrary to our assumptions, we find that an ideological balance within the press system does not motivate citizens to take part in elections. In addition, newspapers reports about official misconduct tend to keep voters away from the ballot boxes. These findings rather lend support to media malaise theory.
... Voters need to be able to choose from a range of alternatives those candidates or parties which best endorse their preferences. Hence, media should provide a fair and balanced platform where political contesters can present their positions and programs (Beierwaltes, 2000;Graber, 2003;von Rautenfeld, 2005;Woods, 2007). In the following we will discuss this claim in more detail. ...
In modern democracies elections are considered the central mechanism for people to control their political representatives. Yet, an effective control requires both knowledge of the incumbents’ performance and visibility of alternative party options in electoral contests. This paper evaluates how the press system contributes to these premises. By means of cross-national multilevel analysis, we test whether well-balanced and critical media coverage mobilizes voters to go to the polls and countervails the impact of individual prerequisites for political participation. Contrary to normative ex-pectations, our results indicate that ideologically biased press systems lead to higher turnout and reduce the importance of personal resources and characteristics.
... Ellman and Germano, 2009) or more general studies including multiple variables (e.g. Valcke et al., 2009;Woods, 2007). Moreover, notwithstanding the large amount of empirical critical diversity-studies, results on the effects of structural characteristics on media content are often contradictory and ambiguous (Horwitz, 2005). ...
Media pluralism has become a buzzword in both public, political and
academic discourse. However, it is generally unclear what is meant by
referring to pluralistic media content or how pluralistic media should
operate within democratic societies. The goal of this paper is to distinguish
between different conceptual and normative assumptions about media,
pluralism and democracy, that demarcate the limits of analysis on media
pluralism. Based on a discussion of three different schools of democracy
with their corresponding media roles (the liberal, deliberative and agonistic
democracy schools), we derive two fault lines which allow us to distinguish
four approaches to media pluralism. These approaches imply a different
interpretation of its meaning and the standards by which it should be
researched.
... In this view, ideological monopoly is a product of concentrated media ownership and a similar concentration of ideas and values among owners and advertisers (Sunkel and Geoffroy, 2001;Del Valle, 2004). 7 Olivia Mönckeberg (2009) echoes 6 A number of additional authors were reviewed, such as Horwitz (2005), Woods (2007) and Rennhoff and Wilbur (2011). 7 Additional relevant research has been done by investigators such as Portales (1999), Dermota (2002), Krohne (2002Krohne ( , 2005, Mönckeberg (2009) and Corrales y Sandoval (2004). ...
The focus of this study is on empirical research to determine whether concentrated newspaper ownership in Chile reflects a homogenization of the topics covered in newspaper editorials. The subject areas addressed in the editorials of three national dailies (El Mercurio, La Tercera and La Segunda) and two regional newspapers (El Sur de Concepción and La Discusión de Chillán) during 2005, 2009 and 2011 are examined to arrive at a quantitative measurement of the similarities in editorial topics within and among the newspapers selected as a reference. The study concludes with a correlation analysis to determine the homogeneity - heterogeneity of the topics on the editorial agenda.
... A partir de los años ochenta del siglo pasado, y con la progresiva democratización de los regímenes de la región, estos mecanismos han dado paso a otras estrategias que suelen apoyarse en marcos normativos vigentes para perseguir el mismo objetivo: silenciar voces disidentes. Este tipo de limitaciones son mucho más sutiles y difíciles de observar (Portales, 1981;Woods, 2007;ADC, 2010;CIDH, 2003). Es lo que la Relatoría Especial para la Libertad de Expresión de la Organización de Estados Americanos ha denominado restricciones indirectas a la libertad de expresión, entre las que se cuenta la concentración de la propiedad de los medios de comunicación y la asignación arbitraria de concesiones radioeléctricas y de publicidad oficial. ...
Using survey data, this study proposes a series of indexes of restriction on freedom of expression as perceived by journalists from the principal Chilean media outlets. It finds that restriction levels are high, particularly in the subindex ‘restrictions coming from superiors in the workplace’. The study also shows that journalists with higher levels of education tend to perceive that there are more restrictions to their work.
... Most pervious cross-national comparisons of news tend to focus on specific frames in the news of specific countries. Among these are the availability of hard and soft news in the United Kingdom and Finland (Curran et al., 2009); the cultural differences reflected in television news in the United States and Sweden (Dimitrova and Strömbäck, 2010); the European Union politics in British, Danish, Dutch, French, and German television news (Peter and de Vreese, 2004); or the relationship between democracy and press pluralism found in the news of seven countries (Woods, 2007). ...
Prominent communication theories find a strong association between the news and our perception of the world. In this article, we compare the country names mentioned in the news with those recalled from the memory of individuals from four different nationalities: the United States, Israel, China, and Switzerland. Our findings suggest a more nuanced relationship between the news and memory. Larger and stronger countries are prominent in both news and memory. Countries engaged in conflicts or major events are more prominent in the news but less so in memory, while countries with social and geographical proximities are more prominent in our memory but less so in the news. These findings call for revision of the theory accordingly.
... For the collection of textual data, I started by seeking permission to examine excerpts of actual scripts from Reflections in this study from JAKIM and then I accessed all of the episodes that have gone through post-production so far (currently 20 episodes have been produced although not all have been aired by RTM, the national broadcaster). The textual data collected was then analysed using three discourse analysis methods namely study of textual surface features, study of thematic organisation and measure of word use and frequency that could be employed to study facets of the mass media (see Talbot 2007;Woods, 2007). ...
Religion and mass media have always had an uneasy relationship as both spheres seem to have contradictory aims and objectives. Employing a discourse driven textual analysis of script excerpts from a contemporary religious program in Malaysia and in-depth personal interview data from key production personnel of the said television program, this research effort analyzes how modern electronic media concept, content and language medium were used to try to present a contemporary, forward looking, ‘popular’ view of Islam in a moderate, modern Muslim majority country. The results of this research effort point to the possibility of using electronic media not merely as a vehicle for blunt religious indoctrination, but as a means to disseminate positive universal human values across linguistic, racial, religious and social differences that in turn will help in strengthening multicultural, multi-religious nations – as in the case of Malaysia.
There are many descriptions of media realities in China and India. Few of them, however, look at these countries from the theoretical classification framework, and those who do often do not pay proper attention to the Western orientation of existing classifications. Denis McQuail’s models of dominance and pluralism are not frequently mentioned in global media studies, and this article adds to the scholarly discussion about their use to explain media environments in the countries like India, which uses Western standards of media system, although having a cultural and historical background that is different from the West, and China, which despite implementation of one part of the Western approach, such as commercialization, ignores or rejects the others.
How to study media diversity has become a major concern in today’s media landscape. Many expect that algorithmic filtering and a shift of audiences from legacy media to new intermediaries decrease the diversity of news diets, leading to fragmented societies, polarization and spread of misinformation. Different fields, from journalism research to law and computer science, are involved in the study of media diversity. They operate, however, with vastly different vocabularies, frameworks, and measurements. To overcome this fragmentation, this study provides an extensive overview of conceptualizations and operationalizations of media diversity in different fields using a systematic literature review (1999–2018). This showed a lack of theorizing and linking of conceptual with empirical work in media diversity research. Based on this, we develop a framework on how to move forward: Regarding conceptualization, we call for focusing on different places in the journalistic information chain instead of the classical exposure-supply distinction. Methodologically, automated approaches (e.g., analyzing digital traces) and qualitative approaches (e.g., capturing perceptions of diversity) should receive more attention. For analysis, matters of balance and disparity need to be stressed more, especially discussing possible limits to diversity. Overall, research into media diversity thus needs to be addressed in interdisciplinary collaboration.
The variety of media systems globally allows us to compare their outcomes, further testing the causal link between the media and political ideas. This chapter examines the ways different countries have designed and regulated their media systems. It traces differences between levels of political knowledge across countries to differences in how their respective media systems have been structured, particularly regarding the degree of commercialization and level of investment in public service media. These comparisons suggest best practices to make media systems better live up to the ideal role they should play in a democracy: providing a free, fair, and open marketplace of ideas.
To understand demand biases, we need to understand the human mind, how it evolved and how its evolutionary history affects political cognition. To understand our psychology, the second chapter begins with the emergence of hominids, through the point when our species branched from our hominid cousins, to our development of sedentary agriculture and large civilizations ten thousand years ago and beyond. This chapter describes the marks evolutionary history left on our psychology, including our capacity for morality and political cognition. Distinct but interlinked evolutionary systems—the biological and the informational or ideational—have produced everything that makes us human. This includes political ideologies: Gene-culture coevolution has produced predispositions—weak though they may be alone—that make some inclined toward left-wing ideas and others to right-wing ideas.
This chapter confirms that, although resourceful actors dominate discourse in all countries, the accessibility and functionality of discourse decisively varies according to the institutional contexts. As a result, conflict intensity, measured as the polarization of policy positions and patterns of valence attributions, varies closely according to the different capitalist regime types and arenas. This leads to the conclusion that the relationship between conflict intensity and institutional contexts is systematic: open and coordinative discourses, such as, for example, in Germany, are very contentious, while closed and communicative discourses, such as, for example, in the UK, are particularly quiescent.
This chapter discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the work, which would inform the rest of the monograph. Previous attempts at comparative studies in the field of media and communications are assessed. In particular, the seminal work by Hallin and Mancini; their four dimensions of state role, political parallelism, professionalization and media market; and their three models—the Polarized Pluralist, the Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models—are critically assessed. In the second part of this chapter, El-Richani explains the social, political and historical context of Lebanon, as this has a direct impact on its media system. Relevant political concepts such as weak states and small states are also discussed.
This investigation2 analyzes whether the concentrated ownership of Chilean mainstream newspapers implies a homogenization of topics and issues addressed in their editorials. The research tests the thesis that several media hold by few owners become ideological monopolies which impoverish the public debate and make socially relevant content invisible. The study empirically examines editorials, published in nine months over three years, from El Mercurio, La Segunda, La Tercera, El Sur de Concepción and La Discusión de Chillán. Overall, a thematic concentration was observed, but also a greater dispersion when considering the discussion on specific issues.
This chapter operationalizes “post-Soviet” as a concept referring to the societies that once were part of the Soviet Union. It shows how the post-Soviet press is theorized against the background of a Soviet media framework, and identifies a number of changes in post-Soviet press. Special attention is paid to how Four Theories of the Press by F.S. Siebert and colleagues sets the tone for theorizing about the post-Soviet press. The chapter demonstrates how conceptualizations of the post-Soviet press can be presented as structures of signification within the framework of the semiotic square. It is argued that both the approach to press theories as structures of signification, and the transitological framework, are grounded in the same paradigm, the normative nature of which is identified and criticized. It discusses how and why the post-Soviet press must be theorized as reflexive praxis, aimed at studying emergent press practices.
Este trabajo analiza si la concentracion de la propiedad de los diarios de referencia en Chile conlleva una homogeneidad de temas y sucesos editorializados. La investigacion desafia la tesis de que varios medios en manos de pocos duenos derivan en monopolios ideologicos que empobrecen el debate publico y hacen invisibles contenidos de relevancia social. El estudio examina empiricamente editoriales, publicados en nueve meses dentro de tres anos, de El Mercurio, La Tercera, La Segunda, El Sur de Concepcion y La Discusion de Chillan. En terminos generales, se observa en esos editoriales una concentracion de las areas tematicas, pero tambien una mayor dispersion de los sucesos especificos editorializados.
Societies around the world have experienced a flood of information from diverse channels originating beyond local communities and even national borders, transmitted through the rapid expansion of cosmopolitan communications. For more than half a century, conventional interpretations, Norris and Inglehart argue, have commonly exaggerated the potential threats arising from this process. A series of fire-walls protect national cultures. This book develops a new theoretical framework for understanding cosmopolitan communications and uses it to identify the conditions under which global communications are most likely to endanger cultural diversity. The authors analyze empirical evidence from both the societal level and the individual level, examining the outlook and beliefs of people in a wide range of societies. The study draws on evidence from the World Values Survey, covering 90 societies in all major regions worldwide from 1981 to 2007. The conclusion considers the implications of their findings for cultural policies.
An important dimension of agenda setting is the way in which the media frame the issues and events they present to the public. This article focuses on one of the most important dimensions of framing: choice of information source—the selections journalists make from among the many possible and potential holders of information of those sources whose information and viewpoints will actually be included in the news. In particular, this content analysis often years of three southern newspapers focuses on the inclusion of female sources in newspaper stories and analyzes whether the gender of the reporter affects that inclusion.
The scope of this article is methodological, focusing on the measurement of programme diversity on television. In recent research literature programme diversity has been understood too narrowly. In order to avoid typical pitfalls of diversity studies, the article discusses the concept and dimensions of diversity and, then, develops four parallel measures of breadth of programming and difference between channels, applicable for the analysis of both individual channels and the channel system as a whole. These measures (channel diversity, system diversity, deviation and choice options) are tested in a longitudinal analysis of Finnish television schedules. The article demonstrates that since shifts in the different dimensions of diversity are not necessarily unilinear, the multi-measure method tends to provide a more versatile picture of the developments in programme schedules than the traditional diversity analysis can do.
This article introduces the Polity IIId ("d" is for dates) data set. The Polity IIId project codes the precise dates of changes in political structure identified by Polity III for all independent countries in the international system from 1800 to 1994. By moving from annual measurements of authority and polity characteristics, the Polity IIId data are more appropriate for event-based analysis. The authors discuss the implications of the new data set for event count and event history models of democracy and war, democratization and war, regime type and civil war, and causes of change in political structure.
This chapter reviews the literature concerned with explaining recent political change in Africa. After recounting some of the political transformations on the continent, it explores the economic and political factors most often invoked by scholars to account for these changes. The chapter concludes with a call for more comparative work, as well as more precise measures, models, and tests.
Ideally, a media system suitable for a democracy ought to provide its readers with some coherent sense of the broader social forces that affect the conditions of their everyday lives. It is difficult to find anyone who would claim that media discourse in the United States even remotely approaches this ideal. The overwhelming conclusion is that the media generally operate in ways that promote apathy, cynicism, and quiescence, rather than active citizenship and participation. Furthermore, all the trends seem to be in the wrong direction—toward more and more messages, from fewer and bigger producers, saying less and less. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the messages provide a many-voiced, open text that can and often is read oppositionally, at least in part. Television imagery is a site of struggle where the powers that be are often forced to compete and defend what they would prefer to have taken for granted. The underdetermined nature of media discourse allows plenty of room for challengers such as social movements to offer competing constructions of reality and to find support for them from readers whose daily lives may lead them to construct meaning in ways that go beyond media imagery
Prominent scholars engaged in comparative research on democratic regimes are in sharp disagreement over the choice between a dichotomous or graded approach to the distinction between democracy and nondemocracy. This choice is substantively important because it affects the findings of empirical research. It is methodologically important because it raises basic issues, faced by both qualitative and quantitative analysts, concerning appropriate standards for justifying choices about concepts. In our view, generic claims that the concept of democracy should inherently be treated as dichotomous or graded are incomplete. The burden of demonstration should instead reston more specific arguments linked to the goals of research. We thus take the pragmatic position that how scholars understand and operationalize a concept can and should depend in part on what they are going to do with it. We consider justifications focused on the conceptualization of democratization as an event, the conceptual requirements for analyzing subtypes of democracy, the empirical distribution of cases, normative evaluation, the idea of regimes as bounded wholes, and the goal of achieving sharper analytic differentiation.
In 1960, Cohen introduced the kappa coefficient to measure chance-corrected nominal scale agreement between two raters. Since then, numerous extensions and generalizations of this interrater agreement measure have been proposed in the literature. This paper reviews and critiques various approaches to the study of interrater agreement, for which the relevant data comprise either nominal or ordinal categorical ratings from multiple raters. It presents a comprehensive compilation of the main statistical approaches to this problem, descriptions and characterizations of the underlying models, and discussions of related statistical methodologies for estimation and confidence-interval construction. The emphasis is on various practical scenarios and designs that underlie the development of these measures, and the interrelationships between them.C'est en 1960 que Cohen a proposé l'emploi du coefficient kappa comme outil de mesure de l'accord entre deux eévaluateurs exprimant leur jugement au moyen d'une échelle nominale. De nombreuses généralisations de cette mesure d'accord ont été proposées depuis lors. Les auteurs jettent ici un regard critique sur nombre de ces travaux traitant du cas où l'échelle de réponse est soit nominale, soil ordinale. Les principales approches statistiques sont passées en revue, les modéles sous-jacents sont décrits et caractérisés, et les problémes liés à l'estimation ponctuelle ou par intervalle sont abordés. L'accent est mis sur différents scénarios concrets et sur des schémas expérimentaux qui sous-tendent l'emploi de ces mesures et les relations existant entre elles.
This article uses a cross-national data set on the performance of government investment projects financed by the World Bank
to examine the link between government efficacy and governance. It demonstrates a strong empirical link between civil liberties
and the performance of government of projects. Even after controlling for other determinants of performance, countries with
the strongest civil liberties have projects with an economic rate of return 8–22 percentage points higher than countries with
the weakest civil liberties. The strong effect of civil liberties holds true even when controlling for the level of democracy.
The interrelationship among civil liberties, civil strife, and project performance suggests that the possible mechanism of
causation is from more civil liberties to increased citizen voice to better projects. This result adds to the evidence for
the view that increasing citizen voice and public accountability—through both participation and better governance—can lead
to greater efficacy in government action.
This book presents a systematic overview and assessment of the impacts of politics on the media, and of the media on politics, in authoritarian, transitional and democratic regimes in Russia, Spain, Hungary, Chile, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. Its analysis of the interactions between macro- and micro-level factors incorporates the disciplinary perspectives of political science, mass communications, sociology and social psychology. These essays show that media's effects on politics are the product of often complex and contingent interactions among various causal factors, including media technologies, the structure of the media market, the legal and regulatory framework, the nature of basic political institutions, and the characteristics of individual citizens. The authors' conclusions challenge a number of conventional wisdoms concerning the political roles and effects of the mass media on regime support and change, on the political behavior of citizens, and on the quality of democracy.
Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.
Media Diversity: Economics, Ownership, and the FCC provides a detailed analysis of the regulation of diversity and its impact on the structure and practices within the broadcast television industry. As deregulation is quickly changing the media landscape, this volume puts the changing structure of the industry into perspective through the use of an insider's point of view to examine how policy and programming get made. Author Mara Einstein blends her industry experience and academic expertise to examine diversity as a media policy, suggesting that it has been ineffective and is potentially outdated, as study after study has found diversity regulations to be wanting. In addition to reviewing diversity research on the impact of minority ownership, regulation of cable and DBS, duopolies, ownership of multiple networks and cross ownership of media on program content, Einstein considers the financial interest and syndication rules as a case study, due to their profound effects on the structure of the television industry. She also poses questions from an economic perspective on why the FCC regulates structure rather than content. Through the presentation of her research results, she argues persuasively that the consolidation of the media industry does not affect the diversity of entertainment programming, a conclusion with broad ramifications for all media and for future research about media monopolies. This volume serves as a defining work in its examination of the intersection of regulation and economics with media content. It is appropriate as a supplemental text in courses on communication policy, broadcast economic and media management, broadcast programming, political economy of the mass media, and media criticism at the advanced and graduate level. It is also likely to interest broadcast professionals, media policymakers, communication lawyers, and academics. It is a must-read for all who are interested in the media monopoly debate. © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cohen's Kappa is a measure of the over-all agreement between two raters classifying items into a given set of categories. This communication describes a simple computational method of determining the agreement on specific categories without the need to collapse the original data table as required by the previous Kappa-based method. It is also pointed out that Kappa may be formulated in terms of certain distance metrics. The computational procedure for the specific agreement measure is exemplified using hypothetical data from psychological diagnoses.
Democratization of public communication not only requires the institutional reorganization of the mass media, but also the adoption of new journalistic practices in political reporting. These practices include a new conception of the role of journalists in society and new standards of the quality of news reporting. This article takes the Izvestiya, one of Russia's quality papers, as an example to discuss the specific problems Russian print media are confronted with when struggling for independence. A quantitative content analysis of the political coverage of the Izvestiya, which compares front-page news in 1988 and 1996, elucidates how the paper informs its readers about political matters today and how the structure of news has changed over the last decade. The findings show the coexistence of old and new journalistic norms. There are clear signs of growing professionalization with the news becoming more factual, more timely and broader in the selection of topics. At the same time, we still find a high degree of subjective evaluations indicating the persistence of the historical legacy of Russian journalism.
Television broadcasting started slowly in Romania and for decades languished under strict state control. However, since it helped break the shackles of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's unique blend of Communist dogma and censorship, it has been leading Romania's march toward a more open, democratic society. At first, broadcast improvements were slow to develop as the first democratically elected regime in post‐revolutionary Romania maintained its Communist‐era monopoly overstate television. More recently Romania has seen a dramatic increase in broadcast competition and freedom. Four factors have played particularly significant roles in spurring improvements: the development of alternative networks, access to Western‐style programming and production techniques, the rise of private, independent broadcasters, and the international exchange of broadcast content.
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Journalism in Russia is being shaped by new forms of regulation, ownership and economic organization as well as new conceptions of the role of the journalist in relation to authorities and audiences. While centralized broadcasting and communications in the Russian Federation continue to have a dominant role, the centrifugal tendencies of the post-Soviet period have enhanced the autonomy and importance of the provincial media. Using data from research interviews, supported by documentary and statistical sources on the media in Tatarstan, this article examines journalists' perceptions of their role and how it is changing. Key issues include the distinction between `information' and `presentation', the search for a new ethos among the younger generation of journalists, and orientations towards the audience. In a republic with an ethnically and religiously mixed population, often taken to be a model of stable political evolution, journalists are finding ways to accommodate to, rather than challenge, new structures.
Democracy has been defined and measured in various ways. This article argues that combining two basic dimensions of democracy - competition and participation - can yield a theoretically satisfactory measurement of democracy that employs three measures: degree of electoral competition, degree of electoral participation and a combined index of democratization. These variables have been used in the author's previous comparative studies of democracy. The new dataset combines previous data and extends these to cover the period 1810-1998. That dataset includes 187 contemporary and former independent states from the year 1810 or from the year of independence. In the dataset, original electoral and other political data needed to calculate the values of Competition and Participation variables are given and documented separately for each country. The values of the three variables are calculated and given for each year over the period of comparison. Finally, the new dataset is compared with the Polity98 measures of democracy and the combined Freedom House ratings of political rights and civil liberties.
The decline of both media diversity and social mobilization during the Chilean transition are interrelated manifestations of the limitations of neoliberal democracy. Although the Chilean media no longer face the overt repression that killed or disappeared 40 journalists and communication workers, sent another 300 into exile, and left approximately 1,000 more unable to find work, the dramatic decline of media diversity since 1990 highlights the Concertación's failure to treat the media as a crucial democratic site whose openness to all sectors of civil society should be actively supported by public policy. Instead, the Concertación's embrace of the neoliberal conception of media democratization has facilitated national and transnational corporate control of the principal means of public expression and consolidated a consumerist, entertainment model incompatible with the democratic need for a diverse and vigorous public sphere. This article will compare the Concertación's market-based conception of media democratization with the public-sphere model proposed by democratic media theorists and will examine the Chilean case of what Robert McChesney has termed the "rich media, poor democracy paradox" characteristic of neoliberal media systems in which "the corporate media explosion" is intimately linked to "a corresponding implosion of public life". Based on research conducted in Chile in 1998, 2000, and 2002, including extensive interviews with media professionals, grassroots activists, and policy makers, it will consider the changing legal framework for the Chilean media, trends in media ownership, and the evolution of specific media sectors, including grassroots, community-based media.
Using democracy in empirical work requires accurate measurement. Yet, most policy and academic research presupposes the accuracy of available measures. This article explores judge-specific measurement errors in cross-national indicators of liberal democracy. The authors evaluate the magnitude of these errors in widely used measures of democracy and determine whether their results replicate during a 17-year period (1972 to 1988). Then, they examine the nature of these systematic errors, hypothesizing that three different processes—(a) the information available for rating, (b) the judges' processing of this information, and (c) the method by which a judge's processing decisions are translated into a rating—could create error. The authors find that for the 17-year period from 1972 to 1988, there is unambiguous evidence of judge-specific measurement errors, which are related to traits of the countries. In the conclusion, the authors discuss the implications for democracy research and for other subjective measures.
I. Criteria for the appraisal of workability, 195. — II. The one period model, 197. — III. The model over time, 207. — IV.
Relevance of the model to the market structure of the industry, 217. — V. Some suggestions for further analysis, 222.
By suspending belief that an objective world exists to be reported, we develop a conception of news as a constructed reality. Public events are held to exist because of the practical purposes they serve, rather than because of their inherent objective importance. The news content of mass media is seen as the result of practical, purposive, and creative activities on the part of news promoters, news assemblers and news consumers. At each stage in the process of generating an event, a given happening is attended to and its features assembled in the context of what has gone before and anticipated in the future. The result is a process of news creation, a kind of accounting procedure, accomplished according to the occasioned event needs of those with access to media. The manner in which access is accomplished can vary and these variations lead to a typology of event types: routines, accidents, scandals and serendipitous events. Each type of event tends to reveal different kinds of information about the ways society is organized, and each type holds different challenges to those who have or lack power. The general implications of this schema for the study of media and power are discussed.
The concept of power remains elusive despite the recent and prolific outpourings of case studies on community power. Its elusiveness is dramatically demonstrated by the regularity of disagreement as to the locus of community power between the sociologists and the political scientists. Sociologically oriented researchers have consistently found that power is highly centralized, while scholars trained in political science have just as regularly concluded that in “their” communities power is widely diffused. Presumably, this explains why the latter group styles itself “pluralist,” its counterpart “elitist.”
There seems no room for doubt that the sharply divergent findings of the two groups are the product, not of sheer coincidence, but of fundamental differences in both their underlying assumptions and research methodology. The political scientists have contended that these differences in findings can be explained by the faulty approach and presuppositions of the sociologists. We contend in this paper that the pluralists themselves have not grasped the whole truth of the matter; that while their criticisms of the elitists are sound, they, like the elitists, utilize an approach and assumptions which predetermine their conclusions. Our argument is cast within the frame of our central thesis: that there are two faces of power, neither of which the sociologists see and only one of which the political scientists see.
With the advent of multi‐partyism, the West African state of Mali has seen the liberalization of the airwaves and a dramatic expansion in the numbers of privately owned radio stations. A background to the development of both urban and rural stations is given and a discussion follows as to radio's actual and potential role in defining and defending a democratic culture. The overt political stance of the urban stations is compared and contrasted with the more subtle forms of democratic education used by rural studios. Problems relating to funding, sustainability, bias, regulation and popular access are discussed. The examination concludes that despite facing many problems radio is an important force for the promotion of civil society and a democratic culture in Mali.
A group of influential scholars has argued emphatically that democracy should be measured dichotomously. This position challenges-on both theoretical and methodological grounds-the widespread practice of measuring democracy with graded scales, a practice which has been endorsed by leading methodologists who study democracy. This article proposes several empirical tests that evaluate the competing strategies. The evidence suggests that, on the whole, graded measures have superior validity and reliability. Hence, we should understand that specific cases correspond to the concept of democracy to varying degrees-degrees that can and should be measured.
This paper presents a general statistical methodology for the analysis of multivariate categorical data arising from observer reliability studies. The procedure essentially involves the construction of functions of the observed proportions which are directed at the extent to which the observers agree among themselves and the construction of test statistics for hypotheses involving these functions. Tests for interobserver bias are presented in terms of first-order marginal homogeneity and measures of interobserver agreement are developed as generalized kappa-type statistics. These procedures are illustrated with a clinical diagnosis example from the epidemiological literature.
Television claims to report reality but largely creates its own reality. There is very little autonomy, largely because the competition for market share is so intense. The pressure to fill the space is strong; hence, it must be something for everyone. Everyone is looking over their shoulder to see what their rivals are saying; to know what to say, you need to know what everyone else is saying. This leads to homogenization and political conformity. Politics and economics lead to an internal censorship. News is selective, favouring the extremes, blood, sex, crime, riots, not what ordinary people experience. Television calls for dramatization and the exaggeration of the importance of events. In debate, the fast, superficial thinker is favoured over the original and profound. Can you refuse to talk on television? There is a desire to be seen that is exploited.
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