Political campaigning and media systems theory: Different strokes

This chapter addresses political campaigning in relation to media systems theory. The baseline is 2004 when Hallin and Mancini published their seminal work, and media systems theory became a widespread backdrop for comparative political communication research. A first wave of studies had a strong focus on comparing political campaigns in countries within the Democratic Corporatist Model to countries in the Liberal Model but found little evidence of convergence between systems. Newer studies have expanded aim and geographical scope to look at both campaigning and journalistic performance beyond a Western perspective. Recent studies of hybridization of media systems have suggested the demise of the Liberal Model and revised country clusters. Future comparative studies will have to choose between countries with stable legacy news media, like the Nordic countries, and countries with increased political polarization, where social media and hyperpartisan media compete with weaker legacy news media for user and voter attention.