Open Access

Hallin and Mancini’s seminal work Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics has generated great interest and enthusiasm among media scholars to advance comparative studies by applying the four dimensions to analyze media performance in different countries. Media scholars agree that the four variables suggested by the two authors, i.e. the structure of media markets, political parallelism, role of the state, and professionalization of journalism, provide a good theoretical framework for the analysis of relationship between political and media system. Their models for comparing media systems are based on a ‘most similar’ strategy, analysing media and journalism only in stable Western democracies (i.e. Western European and North American nations), and the purpose of the research presented in this paper was to develop the model to include other parts of the world as well. The most recent attempts to integrate East Central European media systems into the Hallin and Mancini model, the conclusion being that the East Central European media share most similarities with the Polarized Pluralist model. This conclusion follows not only Hallin and Mancini, but also Splichal. The researcher in his earlier works argued that the changes in post- Soviet media systems could be best explained by referring to the concept of Italianization - the media are under strong state control, the degree of mass media partisanship is strong, low level of journalistic professionalism, commercialization. In fact, out of the three models only two (the Liberal and the Democratic Corporatist model) are models in any strict sense, whereas the third - Polarized Pluralism - is better defined as the lack of a model: the Liberal and Democratic Corporatist model are both built on a consensus around core values, whereas the key feature of the Polarized Pluralism model is that there is no consensus and no core values. De Albuquerque introduced other variables that also would be highly relevant to the comparative analysis of media systems, but that have no place in the Hallin & Mancini framework, the most important one being whether the political system is presidential or parliamentary. For example, it has been demonstrated that media in presidential systems are more likely to focus on individual politicians and the administrative aspects of government, as well as acting as an intermediary between different branches of government, than are media in parliamentary systems. Scholars dealing with the East Central Europe (and elsewhere) are too interested in fitting their respective nations to one of the three models, rather than focusing on the variables and on the comparative dimension. The scholars focus on the variables and on the comparative dimension: it is strucking that their conclusions are precisely that a strict modeling approach (i.e. trying to fit any given nation into the three-system model) is not enough if we want to understand media system differences properly. Hallin and Mancini (2004: 305) write that “The Democratic Corporatist Model, we suspect, will have particularly strong relevance for the analysis of those parts of Eastern and Central Europe that share much of the same historical development, like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic States”. At the same time, however, they suspect that scholars working on the East Central European media will find much that is relevant in their analysis of the Mediterranean region. The recent attempts integrate East Central European media systems into the Hallin and Mancini model, the conclusion being that the East Central European media share most similarities with the Polarized Pluralist model. This conclusion follows not only Hallin and Mancini, but also Splichal. The researcher in his earlier works argued that the changes in post-Soviet media systems could be best explaind by referring to the concept of Italianization - including the role of clientelism, the strong role of the state, the role of the media as an instrument of political struggle, and a low level of journalistic professionalism. The Polarized Pluralist model all too often seems to be the default model – what is really gained, analytically, by saying that post-Communist countries are all basically Polarized Pluralist media system when they are different in many ways. This question needs further elaboration. Instead of fitting the Italianization model into East Central Europe, scholars should start working on their own model, introducing other variables, that would allow them to investigate the media in the region adequately.