The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research

Frank Esser, Thomas Hanitzsch, Frank Esser, Thomas Hanitzsch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415802710
• eBook ISBN: 9781136514234
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of comparative communication research. It fills an obvious gap in the literature and offers an extensive and interdisciplinary discussion of the general approach of comparative research, its prospect and problems as well as its applications in crucial sub-fields of communications. The first part of the volume charts the state of the art in the field; the second section introduces relevant areas of communication studies where the comparative approach has been successfully applied in recent years; the third part offers an analytical review of conceptual and methodological issues; and the last section proposes a roadmap for future research.

Part I

INTRODUCTION

1

On the Why and How of Comparative Inquiry in Communication Studies

Frank Esser and Thomas Hanitzsch

Two decades ago, Blumler, McLeod, and Rosengren (1992) characterized comparative research as the communication field’s “extended and extendable frontier” (p. 3). Comparative communication research was found to be “increasingly active, wide-ranging, and productive but also rather probing and preliminary” (p. 4).

Today, 20 years later, comparative research has made remarkable progress. For one thing, it seems no longer necessary to urge communication scholars to work comparatively (Gurevitch & Blumler, 2004). The rapidly increasing number of comparative research projects and a constantly growing body of literature clearly attests to this fact. Several changes, especially in the political and technological environment, have supported such developments: Due to the end of the Cold War and the onward march of globalization it is now easier than ever before to meet with colleagues from afar and exchange ideas. New communication technologies have proved to be a useful resource in establishing, maintaining, and managing even large international networks of researchers. In some areas, such as political communication or media policy, comparative work has almost become fashionable (Gurevitch & Blumler, 2004). There is growing consensus, as Livingstone notes in Chapter 26 of this volume, that it is no longer plausible to study a phenomenon in one country without asking whether it is common across the globe or distinctive to that specific context.

In more and more sub-fields of the communication discipline, comparative research is moving from description to explanation, from simplification to theoretical sophistication, from accidental choice of cases to their systematic selection, and from often anecdotal evidence to methodological rigor. These advancements clearly speak to the rich potential of the comparative approach to inaugurating new lines in communication research. As the chapters of this Handbook demonstrate, however, the development of comparative research in the field is a fairly uneven one. This makes it quite difficult to evaluate the state of the art in comparative communication research as a whole. In some subject areas, comparative research has made more progress than in others. In the domains of political communication or intercultural communication, for example, the comparative approach has already progressed to “late adolescence” whereas in other subfields it is still in its “infancy,” to take up Blumler and Gurevitch’s (2004, pp. 325–326) famous metaphor of maturation.

This Introduction serves to describe the differential state of comparative research across the communication discipline. We will argue that the comparative approach provides a valuable tool for advancing our understanding of communication processes, and that it opens up new avenues of systematic research. We will discuss conventional and new definitions of comparative research, trace major historical developments, and describe relevant designs in the comparative study of communication phenomena.

WHY WE NEED COMPARATIVE RESEARCH

The uneven progress in comparative communication research is not surprising if we consider that the need for international comparison is more evident in areas where we find a strong relationship between communication phenomena, on the one hand, and political systems and cultural value systems, on the other. This is certainly the case in political communication, media policy and regulation, and development communication, as well as in interpersonal and intercultural communication. In other areas, such as organizational communication, public relations, and health communication, the urge for comparative research long seemed less obvious. But beyond the specific advantages that comparative research has in particular domains of communication and media studies, we see six generic areas in which comparative research can clearly prove its superiority.

First, comparative research is “valuable, even indispensable, for establishing the generality of findings and the validity of interpretations” derived from single contexts (Kohn, 1989, p. 77). It forces us to revise our interpretations against cross-cultural differences and inconsistencies. Only comparative research allows us to test theories across diverse settings and evaluate the scope and significance of certain phenomena, which itself is an important strategy for concept clarification and verification (Gurevitch & Blumler, 1990). Since the real world cannot be subjected to experimental control, comparison can act as a substitute for experimentation (Peters, 1998).

Second, comparative research can prevent us from overgeneralizing from our own, often idiosyncratic, experience. It helps us realize that Western conceptual thinking and normative assumptions underpin much of the work in our field and that imposing them on other cultures may be dangerous. In this regard, comparative research can clearly contribute to the development of universally applicable theory, while at the same time, it challenges claims to ethnocentrism or naïve universalism (Livingstone, 2003; Esser & Pfetsch, 2004a).

Third, and in part related to the previous area, the default assumption that one’s own country could be taken for granted as “normal” went surprisingly unquestioned in our field for a fairly long time, writes Livingstone (Chapter 26) in this Handbook. Here, comparative research can act as a “corrective” in that one of its primary function is to “calibrate the scope” of our conclusions (see Chapter 8 by Boromisza-Habashi & Martínez-Guillem, in this volume). Comparative analysis provides exceptional opportunities for challenging existing paradigms in our field, as Tsetsura and Klyueva (Chapter 17) argue in this book.

Fourth, comparative research helps us develop and contextualize the understanding of our own societies (Gurevitch & Blumler, 1990). Comparison makes us aware of other systems, cultures, and patterns of thinking and acting, casting a fresh light on our own communication arrangements and enabling us to contrast them critically with those prevalent in other societies. Without comparison, national phenomena may become “naturalized” even to the extent that they remain invisible to the domestic-bound researcher (Blumler, McLeod, & Rosengren, 1992; Esser & Pfetsch, 2004a).

Fifth, engaging in comparative work helps us foster global scholarship and sustain networks of researchers across continents. It facilitates international exchange of knowledge between scholars and institutions, including those operating in regions not yet adequately represented in our field. In treating the world as a “global research laboratory,” comparative research enables scholars to learn from the experiences of others. In so doing, it makes an important contribution to a global knowledge society. Moreover, this line of research can nurture the discipline’s global identity and contribute to its intellectual and theoretical foundation worldwide (see Tsetsura & Klyueva, Chapter 17, in this volume).

Sixth and lastly, another advantage of comparative analysis lies in the wealth of practical knowledge and experience it offers. As we gain access to a wide range of alternative options, problem solutions, and trajectories, comparative research can show us a way out of similar dilemmas or predicaments—as long as these solutions can be adapted to our own national contexts (Gurevitch & Blumler, 1990; Esser & Pfetsch, 2004a).

DEFINING COMPARATIVE RESEARCH

There is still considerable uncertainty about the kinds of research that the term “comparative” refers to, or should refer to. Comparative research in communication and media studies is conventionally understood as contrasting different macro-level units (like world regions, countries, sub-national regions, social milieus, language areas, cultural thickenings) at one point or more points in time. A classic yet simple definition had been proposed by Edelstein (1982, p. 14): “It is a study that compares two or more nations with respect to some common activity.” Blumler, McLeod, and Rosengren (1992, p. 7) expanded this first definitional attempt and characterize a study as comparative “when the comparisons are made across two or more geographically or historically (spatially or temporally) defined systems.” Situated within these systems are “the phenomena of scholarly interests which are embedded in a set of interrelations that are relatively coherent, patterned, comprehensive, distinct, and bounded.”

In light of the insights provided by the contributors to this Handbook we can develop this further. As a first step toward an encompassing definition we shall maintain that comparative communication research involves comparisons between a minimum of two macro-level units (systems, cultures, markets, or their sub-elements) with respect to at least one object of investigation relevant to communication research. This is illustrated by Figure 1.1; it also indicates our use of terminology in this chapter. Comparative research differs from non-comparative work in that it attempts to reach conclusions beyond single systems or cultures and explains differences and similarities between objects of analysis against the backdrop of their contextual conditions. Spatial (cross-territorial) comparisons ought to be supplemented wherever possible by a longitudinal (cross-temporal) dimension in order to account for the fact that systems and cultures are not frozen in time but are constantly changing under the influence of transformation processes, such as Americanization, Europeanization, globalization, liberalization, or commercialization. It seems useful to highlight a third dimension of comparison which Caramani (2011) calls the functional (cross-organizational or cross-institutional) comparison. Consider, for instance, the comparison between public service and commercial broadcasters, between sacerdotal and pragmatic news cultures, or between the workflows in offline and online newsrooms (for examples, see Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995; Gurevitch, Coleman, & Blumler, 2009). The relevance of “functional” distinctions for cross-territorial and cross-temporal comparisons is also discussed in this volume by Pfetsch and Esser (Chapter 2) and Hanitzsch and Donsbach (Chapter 16), as well as Esser and Strömbäck (Chapter 19).

Figure 1.1 Terminology for basic comparison.

Not everyone does agree to such a view. Several scholars have forcefully argued that essentially all social research is comparative by its very nature (Beniger, 1992). The latter is certainly true to the extent that all new evidence needs to be tested against, and thus compared with, an existing stock of knowledge. Comparative studies, however, entail specific conceptual and methodological challenges that clearly set them apart from mono-cultural research. These challenges relate to the function of comparison within a study’s conceptual framework, the selection of cases, as well as equivalence in terms of concepts and methods. It is therefore essential to maintain that the selection of cases (systems, cultures, or markets) should be informed by theoretical considerations and that the objects to be compared must be functionally equivalent in nature. The cases, or macro-level units, are assumed to have defined boundaries—be they structural, cultural, political, territorial, or temporal. Furthermore, these macro-level units are assumed to contain characteristic factors that have interrelations with the object of analysis and help explain differences (and similarities) in objects embedded in different contexts.

This last aspect is crucial. Comparative research guides our attention to the explanatory relevance of the contextual environment for communication outcomes. It aims to understand how differences in the macro-level context shape communication phenomena differentially. For the field of journalism research, for instance, Benson (2010) calls upon scholars to focus more on testing hypotheses on the effects of contextual variables on news people, practices, and products. Any attempt to systematically link macro-level system characteristics and micro-level news-making activities, Benson (2010) argues, would be a significant improvement toward explanatory research. From a comparative perspective it is thus important to recognize that mass communication processes are shaped by several layers of systemic context. In addition to people, practices, and products of communication (at the micro-level), factors deriving from the media system (and other institutional arrangement at the macro level) have to be taken into account. Hence, differences in the creation of messages and their effects across countries can be explained by the structural and cultural environment. Recognizing the (causal) significance of contextual conditions makes comparative research exceptionally valuable. In the words of Mancini and Hallin (2012), “theorizing the role of context is precisely what comparative analysis is about.” This explanatory logic can be distinguished from mere descriptive logic that is considered less mature (Gurevitch & Blumler, 2004).

Overall, there are several conditions that should be fulfilled before labeling a comparative study as “mature.” First, the purpose of comparison needs to be explicated early in the project, and it should be a defining component of the research design. Second, the macro-level units of comparison need to be clearly delineated—irrespective of how the boundaries are defined. In the contextual environments specific factors need to be identified that are assumed to characteristically affect the objects of analysis—be the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Disciplinary Developments
• Part III Central Research Areas
• Part IV Conceptual and Methodological Issues
• Part V Conclusion
• Index