UNDERSTANDING

WORLD MEDIA SYSTEM

 HISTORY
 Political advocacy was seen as an important
function of the print media emerging in the
late 18th to early 19th century.
 Political parties or other political actors
established newspapers and supported them.
 Journalism norms moved towards the ideal
of neutrality in reporting.
 Commercialization: Objectivity
 First World War: political conflict was
reflected in the news
 Strong political polarization
 HISTORY

 A concept introduced by Seymour-Ure, and

Blumler and Gurevitch in the 1970s
 Political parallelism became widespread
after Hallin and Mancini made it one of the
four basic analytical categories of their
masterpiece Comparing Media Systems
Beyond the Western World in 2004
 POLITICAL PARALLELISM
 Political parallelism is a feature of media
systems.
 Political parallelism has been often taken as a
category with a potentially universal
applicability.
 political parallelism provides a universal
variable for comparing political
communication systems around the world
 Political parallelism refers to a pattern or
relationship where the structure of the
political parties is somewhat reflected by the
media organizations
 POLITICAL PARALLELISM

 It refers to the character of links between

political actors and the media
 Hallin and Mancini used the term to analyze
links between media organizations and
political tendencies
 MEDIA DIMENSIONS

 The authors analyzed media systems

according to four dimensions:

 the development of a mass press

 Political parallelism
 Professionalization of journalists
 state intervention
 MEDIA CATEGORY

 According to these four dimensions, media

systems were then categorized into three
ideal models:

 The Polarized Pluralist Model

 The Liberal Model
 The Democratic Corporatist media system.
FIVE FACTORS
political parallelism
 FACTOR:1
 The extent to which media reflects distinct
political orientations and allegiances, and
the orientation and professional practice
of journalists
 Example: Chris Smith is a journalist and
works for the newspaper The Timeline. In his
spare time, he visits meetings of the National
Workers’ Party. He likes their stance, so he
writes favorable articles on their election
manifesto.
 FACTOR:2

 Organizational links between media

and political parties or organizations
 Example: Tanya Smith is a local politician. As
a second job, she writes articles for a local
newspaper.
 FACTOR:3

 The involvement of media personnel as

former political actors.
 Example: After his retirement as town major,
Elias Smith decides to write articles for the
local newspaper, explaining current political
developments from his point of view.
 FACTOR: 4

 Whether the career advancement of media

personnel is dependent on political
affiliations.
 Example: Jennifer Smith is a young
journalist. She knows that it will be difficult
for her to further her career without meeting
"the right people", so she joins the
government’s party.
 FACTOR:5

 The media audiences partisanship

 Example: Andrew Smith is a grocer. He buys
the Daily Newspaper every day, because he
almost always agrees with how they interpret
current events.
 MEDIA SYSTEM
 In Democratic Corporatist media systems
strong ties between the media and political
institutions continued until the 1970s.
 In Polarized Pluralist systems, political
parallelism in the press played a key role in
the national development, for example in
Spain and Italy
 Political parallelism is expressed in
the partisanship of media audiences, too,
when supporters of different parties buy
different newspapers catering for their
opinions and political preferences.
 CRITICISM
 "Polarized Pluralist", in which party lines are
clear, and the media politically active
 "Media as Political Agent", with a moderating
role, in which party lines are relatively
unclear, but the media politically active
 "Public Service Media", where party lines are
clear but the media relatively passive in
political reporting
 "Objective Media", which is politically passive
and transports unclear party lines