Typologies and the Comparative Study of Media Systems in Europe, invited keynote speaker at seminar at Oxford College, Oxford

The presentation provides a critical perspective on the application of typological approaches to comparing media systems and specifically provides a critique of Hallin and Mancini’s Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (2004). The presentation argues that media systems are not easily fitted into identifiable types, arguing that they are often rather more ‘sui generis’ than Hallin and Mancini allow. The presentation argues that systematic comparison of the complex relationship between media systems and the political system can be usefully explored by reference to ‘congruence’ or ‘symmetry theory and that, in particular, historical institutionalist (HI) theory from political science might be more explicitly employed (Hallin and Mancini mention ‘path dependence’ in passing) for the study of the relationship between often highly idiosyncratic national media systems and the socio-cultural and political system in which they embedded. Notwithstanding the difficulties involved with typologies, the presentation considers how the Hallin and Mancin’s 2004 approach might be usefully adapted to take into account a wider range of salient political, legal and economic variables that bear on the media system.