WORKING
PAPER
Comparative European Journalism:
e State of Current Research
Dr Henrik Örnebring
Funded by: Ax:son Johnson FoundationJanuary 2009
Comparative European journalism:
the state of current research
Dr Henrik Örnebring
Axess Research Fellow in Comparative European Journalism
Introduction
Research on different aspects of European journalism is a growth area. The
study of media and journalism from a particular ‘European’ angle (e.g.
studying EU reporting and news flows across Europe; comparing European
media policies; examining the nature and character of a ‘European public
sphere’) began to coalesce as a field in the 1990s (e.g. Machill, 1998; Morgan,
1995; Ostergaard, 1993; Schlesinger, 1999; Venturelli, 1993) – particularly the
study of media policy across Europe (e.g. Collins, 1994; Dyson and
Humphreys, 1990; Humphreys, 1996). Earlier studies of Europe and the
media exist (e.g. Blumler and Fox, 1983; Kuhn, 1985; McQuail and Siune,
1986), but in general academic interest seems to have begun in earnest in the
1990s and exploded in the 2000s (e.g. Baisnée, 2002, 2007; Chalaby, 2002, 2005;
Downey and Koenig, 2006; Gleissner and de Vreese, 2005; Groothues, 2004;
Hagen, 2004; Koopmans and Pfetsch, 2004; Machill et al., 2006; Russ‐Mohl,
2003; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000; Trenz, 2004).
The 2000s has seen a particular surge of academic interest in European
journalism, reporting on Europe and the EU, the possible emergence of a
‘European’ public sphere and the role of news and journalism in that
emergence. This surge has been influenced both by a parallel increase in
interest in comparative studies of journalism in general (Deuze, 2002;
Hanitzsch, 2007, 2008; Weaver and Löffelholz, 2008) as well as increased
interest from the EU institutions themselves (the European Commission in
particular) in the role of mediated communication – an interest made manifest
in the 2006 White Paper on a European Communications Policy and related
publications (European Commission, 2006, 2007).
The proliferation of Europe‐wide comparative research projects on
various aspects of news and journalism represents tangible evidence of this
interest: in the short space since the beginning of the new millennium,
researchers working in large‐scale comparative projects have produced a
considerable body of work on journalism in Europe (e.g. AIM Research
Consortium, 2006, 2007a, 2007b; EURONAT, 2005; Heikkilä and Kunelius,
2006; Holtz‐Bacha et al., 2007; Kaye, 2008; Kopper et al., 2006; Krzyzanwoski
and Wodak, 2006; Pfetsch, 2004; Preston, 2006; Statham, 2004, 2007;
Triandafyllidou, 2007).
The Axess Programme in European Journalism is part of this emerging
field of research. The first stage of the programme has been to conduct a
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thorough review of existing research in the area of European journalism,
specifically based on the three main aims of the Axess Programme:
• to produce a comparative analysis of the main
journalistic cultures of Europe;
• to investigate the emergence of a ‘European’
journalism;
• to inquire into the existence of a dominant model of
journalism, and its effect on the development of
differing national cultures.
These aims are broad, and it is necessary to further define them in order to
arrive at workable, frutiful research questions. The research review is part of
this process of definition; in order to explain and then operationalise the aims,
we need to study previous research to see how key concepts fit and are used
within existing research on European journalism. The review is therefore
structured around identifying the state of relevant research related to each of
these aims.
Comparative analysis of the main journalistic cultures of Europe
So, first of all, which are the ‘main journalistic cultures’ of Europe? Indeed,
what is a ‘journalistic culture’ in this context? As Raymond Williams reminds
us, ‘Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English
language’ (Williams, 1983: 87).
Consider, for example, this statement from David Weaver, a scholar
with extensive experience of comparative studies of journalism and
journalists (the quote comes from a comparative study of how journalists in
different countries view their professional role, hence the references to
‘roles’):
political system similarities and differences are far more important
than cultural similarities and differences, organizational constraints
or individual characteristics in predicting the variance in
perceptions of three roles (timely information, interpretation, and
entertainment) by journalists in these countries. (Weaver, 1996: 87)
That is to say, culture does not have as much explanatory value as other
factors. There are differences between journalisms in different countries, but
to what extent are these differences down to ‘culture’? Similar points have
been raised by Deuze: can differences that are ascribed to ‘culture’ not be
equally well or better be explained by other, structural differences, for
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example the educational systems in the countries studied, newsroom hiring
practices, or differences in labour organization (Deuze, 2002: 144)?
For example, one of the most well‐known recent studies of national
differences between journalisms, Daniel C Hallin’s and Paolo Mancini’s 2004
book Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, does not
foreground culture at all. Their explanations of similarity and difference are
based on structure (political structure in particular) rather than culture. As
this book presents one of the most comprehensive accounts to date of the
different forms of journalism in Western Europe and North America, it is
appropriate to discuss their findings at some length, despite the fact that they
rarely use the word ‘culture’; as I hope to show, their results implicitly deal
with cultural factors anyway.
Cultural implications of the media systems model of Hallin and Mancini
Hallin and Mancini identify three different media systems, ideal‐type
categories that the nations of Western Europe and North America belong to:
the North/Central European or democratic corporatist model, the Mediterranean or
polarized pluralist model, and the North Atlantic or liberal model.
The North/Central, democratic corporatist media system is the
dominant one in the Scandinavian states, the Low Countries, and German‐
speaking Europe (i.e. Germany, Austria and Switzerland). Portugal, Spain,
Italy, Greece and France belong to the Mediterranean or polarized pluralist
media system, and the North Atlantic, liberal system holds sway in the US,
Britain, Ireland and Canada. As stated, the media systems are ideal types and
many nations have media system characteristics that overlap two or more
systems (France has extensive elements of a democractic corporatist media
system, for example, see Hallin and Mancini, 2004: 90).
How are these media systems different, then? Hallin and Mancini
identify four dimensions by which media systems in Western Europe and
North America can be compared:
(1) the development of media markets, with particular emphasis on
the strong or weak development of a mass circulation press; (2)
political parallelism; that is, the degree and nature of the links
between media and political parties or, more broadly, the extent to
which the media system reflects the major political divisions in
society; (3) the development of journalistic professionalism; and (4)
the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system.
(Hallin and Mancini, 2004: 21)
Two observations can immediately be made. First, Hallin and Mancini’s
model does not consider Eastern Europe, a point I will return to later. Second,
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while Hallin and Mancini’s objects of study are ‘media systems’ rather than
‘journalisms’, the four comparative dimensions show the central place of
journalism in their analysis. The first point highlights the link between the
broader media system in a nation and the development of news media –
which in turn is important for understanding the links beween the emergence
of a particular medium, i.e. newspapers, and the development of journalism
as a profession (for studies of these linkages, see e.g. Brake, 1988; Chalaby,
1998; Elliott, 1978; Høyer and Pöttker, 2005; Örnebring, 2007; Schudson, 1978).
The third dimension also explicitly points to the importance of journalism as a
profession to the media system. The second and fourth dimension also
incorporate journalism indirectly.
The differences in newspaper readership between Northern and
Southern Europe are well known, and Hallin and Mancini link these
differences to the emergence of a mass circulation press with a strong market
position. In countries that have had a strong mass press, newspaper
readership is much higher and not divided along gender lines, whereas in
countries that have not had a mass circulation press, newspaper readership is
significantly lower and very divided along gender lines (Hallin and Mancini,
2004: 22–3). These differences in history and market structure have also led to
differences in culture: if there is a history of a strong mass circulation press,
then this leads to a greater readiness of audiences to incorporate news and
journalism into their daily routines (also see Lee, 1976; Seymour‐Ure, 2000;
Stephens, 1996). Journalism is viewed as ‘something for everyone’, whereas in
Southern Europe news and journalism is something largely confined to (male)
societal elites (Hallin and Mancini, 2004: 95ff.; see also Mancini, 1991, 1992).
The second dimension is political parallelism, a concept developed
from the earlier, more specific notion of party–press parallelism (Blumler and
Gurevitch, 1975; Seymour‐Ure, 1974). This refers both to the level of
integration between the media and various political organizations, and to the
general way in which the media reflect existing political divisions within the
society. These differences also lead to differences in journalistic culture: in a
system with high political parallelism, journalists are more likely to view
spokesmanship and influencing public opinion as important professional
functions, as opposed to systems with low political parallelism, where a
professional outlook emphasising provision of neutral information is more
likely to be held as more important:
To most continental European journalists of this period analysis
and commentary were absolutely central to the function of the
journalist. These kinds of differences in journalistic culture are
associated with differences in writing style and other journalistic
practices, with a colorful or erudite commentary favored in some
systems while a telegraphic informational style is favored in others;
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commentary rigidly segregated from news in some countries, and
mixed more freely in others. . . . In systems where political
parallelism is strong, the culture and discursive style of journalism
is closely related to that of politics. (Hallin and Mancini, 2004: 29)
Political parallelism thus has substantial influence on dimensions of
journalistic culture such as values, practices and role perceptions – and is
visible in the artefacts of journalism (i.e. the journalistic texts themselves) as
well.
The third dimension, journalistic professionalism, has a close
relationship with journalistic culture. Many scholars have pointed out that
journalism is not really like the ‘traditional’ professions, i.e. medicine and law
– no less distinguished a social theorist than Max Weber claimed journalists
belong to a ‘pariah caste’ within professional society (Weber, 1948). However,
even more scholars agree that journalism in many ways can be characterised
as a profession, despite the lack of applicable criteria commonly associated
with the ‘traditional’ professions (Bagdikian, 1974; Elliott, 1978; Høyer and
Lorentzen, 1977; Kepplinger and Koecher, 1990; Kimball, 1965; King and
Plunkett, 2005; Tumber and Prentoulis, 2005; Tunstall, 1971, 1996). The three
dimensions of professionalism suggested by Hallin and Mancini – autonomy
(i.e. the degree to which the profession is autonomous from state, political
and market constraints), professional norms (i.e. the formal and informal
norms that guide journalistic practice) and public service orientation (i.e. the
degree to which journalists view themselves as public servants) (Hallin and
Mancini, 2004: 34ff.) – are clearly linked to cultural dimensions such as values,
norms and practices.
The fourth and final dimension of media systems is the role of the state
and the character of the relationship between the state and the media. Hallin
and Mancini identify the presence and nature of public service broadcasting
as the key influence here, but they consider other regulatory aspects as well,
such as libel laws, hate speech laws, professional secrecy laws for journalists,
laws regulating access to governmental information, ownership regulation,
laws on political communication, and licensing laws associated with
broadcasting (2004: 43–4). The legal framework of a nation will have an
impact on journalistic culture. For example, if the limits of what you can write
about are regulated by law, then mechanisms of self‐censorship and
justification will occur – as well as professional strategies for transgression.
These are all aspects of the practice dimension of culture. The overall nature
of the state–media relationship might affect journalistic culture as well. Where
state intervention in the media system is justified by safeguarding certain
cultural values (such as diversity, tolerance, etc), as in most welfare state
democracies in Europe, such intervention would be difficult to implement if
these values were not to some extent shared by the journalists in the nation in
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question. Note, for example, the difficulty in implementing formal press
regulation in the UK due to the exceptionally strong resistance of media and
professional organizations (Humphreys, 1996: 61–2).
We can thus see that, despite the fact that Hallin and Mancini do not
discuss ‘journalistic culture’ per se, the differentiating factors they discuss are
often directly related to facets one would normally associate with ‘culture’:
norms, values, practices and so on. Trying to separate ‘culture’ from other
aspects in the media systems model would be a task as Herculean as it would
be meaningless. The media systems model is comprehensive enough to
include culture; for the purposes of this project, it is more appropriate to
simply treat ‘media system’ as synonymous with ‘journalistic culture’: the
original question posed in this section was ‘Which are the main journalistic
cultures in Europe?’, and Hallin and Mancini provide a theoretically
motivated answer.
Journalistic cultures in Europe: the place of Eastern Europe
Hallin and Mancini thus provide a template for the main journalistic cultures
of Europe: a Nothern European culture, a Southern European culture, and an
Anglo‐Saxon culture. However, as mentioned earlier, Eastern Europe (by
which I primarily mean the post‐communist nations of Central and Eastern
Europe) is not included in the model.
An analysis of media systems and journalism culture in Central and
Eastern Europe using Hallin and Mancini’s four points of comparison initally
seems straightforward. The development of media markets followed patterns
similar to Southern Europe, i.e. a late development of the press and
newspapers for a political/literary elite rather than a mass‐circulation press.
The development of commercial media was then halted with the spread of
Communism – though a ‘mass circulation’ press did appear, after the post‐
war era: the press was central to the ideological project of communism and
thus made cheaply and easily available throughout the communist nations
(Wolfe, 2005). The issues of state intervention and political parallelism also
have obvious answers: news media were directly controlled by the state, and
they were party organs in the most obvious sense of the word. And with a
system based on direct state control (rather than merely state intervention), it
stands to reason that journalistic professionalism in the Western sense never
had much chance of developing.
However, some scholars point out that the media systems in the
communist nations of Eastern Europe never were as monolithic as they have
been made out. These authors do not deny that the media were part of an
authoritarian regime, but also point to the opportunities for criticism and
resistance within the media system, and that government control over
journalism was weaker in some periods and stronger in others (Curry, 1990;
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Downing, 1996; Høyer et al., 1993; Lauk, 1997; Löhmus, 2002; Wolfe, 2005).
Curry and Wolfe in particular argue that there was a clear sense of
professionalism among journalists in communist Eastern Europe, albeit based
on very different values than ‘Western’ professionalism. And as there was
never a single unified model of communism, the post‐communist experience
has been different in different Eastern European nations – the traditional
Stalinist media systems model persisted for quite some time in Romania
(Gross, 1996), while Poland’s media system was relatively heterogeneous
even before the fall of communism (Jakubowicz, 1989; Kowalski, 1988).
The most common metaphor to describe the media systems and
journalism cultures in Eastern Europe today is transition, i.e. transition from
an authoritarian, Communist system to an open, liberal, free‐market system
(e.g. Aumente et al., 1999; Gross, 1996; Malovic and Selnow, 2001; Splichal,
1994; Vihalemm, 2002). This transition has been far from smooth and many
scholars are critical of the sometimes optimistic and simplified picture of
transition from (communist) authoritarianism and (capitalist) democracy
(Boyle, 1994; Goban‐Klas, 1994; Sparks, 1995; Sparks and Reading, 1997).
More recent studies have shown the extent of political interference in the
media system that still exist: studies of electoral campaigns show the degree
of political manipulation of broadcast media (public service and commercial)
by various ruling parties either from the right or from the left (Cwalina et al.,
2004), and there are many other studies that clearly demonstrate the lack of
independence of public media in particular (Huber, 2006; Jakubowicz, 2004,
2007; Klvana, 2004; Milton, 2000; Mungiu‐Pippidi, 2003).
There are recent attempts to integrate Eastern European/post‐
communist media sys
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