Never Say Never … Or the Value of Context in Political Communication Research

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Political Communication
ISSN: 1058-4609 (Print) 1091-7675 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upcp20
Never Say Never … Or the Value of Context in
Political Communication Research
Susana Salgado
To cite this article: Susana Salgado (2019): Never�Say�Never … Or the Value
of Context in Political Communication Research, Political Communication, DOI:
10.1080/10584609.2019.1670902
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1670902
Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). Published
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Published online: 11 Oct 2019.
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The Forum
Never Say Never …Or the Value of Context in
Political Communication Research
SUSANA SALGADO
The need for context is so obvious in everyday life that we could ask why is it so often
overlooked in political communication comparative research? The fact that political
communication deals with things as bound to circumstances and therefore as context-
dependent as communication and politics further substantiates the need to pay attention to
context and to its implications in theory-building. The examples put forward by Rojas and
Valenzuela (2019) show that without proper contextualization, research results can easily
be misinterpreted and consequently misguide the ensuing theorizing efforts. The relation
between social media news exposure and political polarization is a prime example of how
context mediates effects and any attempt at generalization would result in flawed con-
clusions if the conditions under which occur the proposed relationships among variables
are not examined thoroughly.
Most comparative research in political communication has been guided by an over-
arching objective of generalization that entails high levels of conceptual abstraction and is
often accompanied by a resistance in acknowledging local specific contextual factors that
if included would introduce a qualitative component in the research design. Such an
approach could be perceived by some quantitavists as a fundamental weakness, but is
central to qualitative approaches that perceive all meaning as a local construction, and
thus grounded in a specific context. Hallin and Mancini (2017) consider that there is
a methodological imbalance in political communication comparative research, that is,
more quantitative than qualitative approaches. If we consider that qualitative and quanti-
tative approaches to study democracy, for example, often stress different elements, this is
not a minor detail. Powers and Vera-Zambrano (2018) refer instead to an epistemological
imbalance and to the need for ‘contextualism,’namely accounts that adequately explain
Susana Salgado is FCT Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of
Lisbon, Portugal.
Address correspondence to Susana Salgado, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de
Lisboa, Av. Prof. Aníbal Bettencourt, 9, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal. Email: susana.salgado@ics.
ulisboa.pt
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any
way.
Political Communication, 00:1–5, 2019
Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
ISSN: 1058-4609 print / 1091-7675 online
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1670902
1

the diversity of contexts and the mechanisms that determine the prevalence of differences
or similarities across cases.
Fifty years ago, Sartori (1970) was already warning against conceptual stretching.
According to him, the development of comparative studies meant “gains in extensional
coverage matched by losses in connotative precision”(1970, p. 1035). To borrow from
Sartori, often the option has been to cover more by saying less. There is a perceived gap
between political theory and empirical studies (Fung, 2007) and the debate between those
arguing for the need of concepts that can be applied across borders and those advocating
the idea that “concepts do not travel”(e.g., Hantrais, 2009; Jenson, 1978) continues, but
the role of context has been increasingly emphasized.
Such debates are particularly meaningful for comparative research that includes
countries beyond the western world or when cross-national approaches include samples
composed of a wider variety of countries. It could be claimed that when concepts travel
they should always travel with company (i.e., contextualization). Context is key in
different stages: to test the analytical framework, to select the sample, to operationalize
concepts, and to interpret the analysis results. Theoretical concepts may have different
meanings and gradations across countries, or in some instances reality may be subject to
specific temporary circumstances that need to be acknowledged and explained, otherwise
the research results might not be accurate. The long-standing goal of working with
abstract concepts that are empirical testing-proof needs to be dealt with great caution,
as a primary commitment to abstraction might result in overlooking other important
aspects in comparative research.
Different Methodological Approaches, Geographical Areas, and Media
Environments: Similar Conclusion?
Numerous examples of empirical research developed with both qualitative and quantita-
tive approaches support the importance of further knowledge production about the
mediating role of context. Recent research has been drawing further attention to the
several layers of complexity that, for example, social media have added to media and
political environments. In addition to structural factors, several contextual factors do
influence the type and level of media impact on politics and on audiences (for recent
accounts, see e.g., Park et al., 2018; Rossini, Hemsley, Tanupabrungsun, Zhang, &
Stromer-Galley, 2018; Vu et al., 2018). Contextualization thus became even more rele-
vant with the Internet and in increasingly complex media environments. There are not
only new forms of media production, distribution, and reception, but there are also new
types of political participation, new participants, and new forms of political expression,
arguments and debates. The effects of these new communication environments are still
largely undetermined, but they are influenced by context.
Lusophone Africa
Research on the role of the media in the democratization processes of the Lusophone
African countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe) has
explicitly drawn attention to the importance of contextual knowledge (Salgado, 2014,
2018). Drawing on interviews, fieldwork and media analysis, my research revealed that,
although the Internet has made possible the access to information from other countries (at
least for citizens with access and skills), which could potentially suggest a trend toward
2 Susana Salgado

homogenization, the Lusophone African countries displayed considerable differences in
their understandings and adaptations of democracy, despite their common language area,
with shared patterns of cultural influence and where all kinds of interchanges were thus
facilitated.
The actual functions of online media were also dependent on context. Salgado (2014,
2018) developed a typology that enhances how different levels of freedom and demo-
cratic development cause differentiated media effects. Depending on the greater or lesser
levels of freedom and journalistic independence, the online media fulfilled different main
roles: as ‘alternative’to mainstream media, as ‘complement,’or as ‘reinforcement.’In the
environments with less freedom (Angola and Mozambique), the online media functioned
mainly as an ‘alternative.’There were several journalists and citizens publishing their
own means of expression (e.g., blogs, online papers), on which many people relied to get
information, as mainstream media were controlled by the State or by political elites.
‘Reinforcement’occurred predominantly in Sao Tome and Principe, where there are
higher levels of freedom, but very low journalistic professionalization and independence.
The few online media that were available reinforced the agenda and frames of main-
stream media, thus contributing to strengthening consonance. ‘Complementary’was
manifest in Cape Verde, where both freedom and journalistic independence were higher.
In this country, the development of the Internet allowed the emergence of the only daily
newspaper and because online media outlets have significant readership, they also had
some influence in setting the agenda, framing issues, and giving voice to different sources
of information and opinion. In terms of distribution and reach, the online media were
extremely important for diaspora communities and in parts of the country where news-
paper distribution was too expensive. Their main function was thus predominantly of
complementarity.
Placing the Internet in the wider media environments, we can see that the Lusophone
African countries’political settings did shape in a differentiated manner the media effects
and that context thus mediate these effects. The research has also demonstrated that
concepts as democracy, freedom, or citizenship were subject to different interpretations in
each of these countries and were often tailored to fit particular political settings. For
example, in Sao Tome and Principe, the word democracy was directly linked to the level
of economic development and measured by the construction of new buildings and roads.
Europe, Crisis and Elections
Based on a different methodological approach (quantitative content analysis), research on
European countries has reached similar conclusions. Examining the media coverage of
the first elections (in 2015 and 2016) after the Euro Crisis in the countries that were most
affected by it (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain), Salgado (2019) concluded that the
attempt to achieve high levels of generalization through the empirical testing of political
communication concepts, such as personalization, populism, negativity, or political news
framing, was often hampered by the singularity of these countries in many respects. It
was not possible to identify clear patterns of influence of the crisis. What stood out were
some country specificities in particular regarding populism and political news framing.
Although some transnational trends in the news media coverage of politics and
elections (as suggested in literature, e.g., Swanson, 2004; Swanson & Mancini, 1996)
have emerged in the analysis, there was always an outlier or exceptions that pointed to
the importance of the countries’specific political, social and cultural context. This
Never Say Never 3

was, for instance, the case of Greece and Portugal in the dominant news frame: their
2015 election news coverages were more focused on issues than on strategy. The
percentage of issue news frame was 57% in Portugal and 54% in Greece, while in
Spain and Ireland it was 38% and 27%, respectively. As Greece and Portugal were
severely affected by the Euro Crisis, it was not surprising the salience that the crisis as
an issue had in their elections and news coverage. What was puzzling was the fact that
the Euro Crisis issue was not important in Ireland and Spain. This is possibly
explained by the different framing (and management) that the crisis had in Spain
and to the fact that Ireland had exited the financial assistance program more than 3
years before the 2016 election, in 2013.
Although election news coverage has been increasingly framed as strategy rather
than as a discussion of issues and candidates’proposals (e.g., Patterson, 1993), crisis
situations may influence the election news framing, but the specific national context may
also hold some influence over the type of coverage, for example, due to journalistic
cultures and/or the special circumstances of the crisis in each country.
The manifestation of populism in election news corroborates the mediation of
context, which could help explain why, contrary to Spain and particularly Greece,
Ireland and Portugal had a negligible prevalence of populism. Additionally, the most
prevalent features of populist discourse in each country do not seem to be strictly
a consequence of the crisis situation. In Portugal, the most common feature was the
‘reference to the people’, in Ireland anti-elitism, while in Spain and Greece it was the
exclusionary discourse, substantiated in the ‘us and them’division.
These examples of research focused on different issues and carried out in different
places with different methodologies lend support to the idea that the relations between
media and politics are better grasped within the economic, political, and media
context. Context should ensure a better understanding of the possible variations that
occur in the relations between variables. And this holds true in qualitative and
quantitative empirical approaches, and in research that deals with western and non-
western settings.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal (IF/
01451/2014/CP1239/CT0004).
ORCID
Susana Salgado http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7967-3763
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