International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Media enterprises operating under various types of media systems globally all have incentives to perform well and compete with other media units and types for resources and a variety of rewards. The differences in how performance is determined and types of rewards provided vary among the systems, however. Media systems result from a variety of factors, including political ideology and structures, the nature and structure of the economy, and history and culture, which produce the environment that influences the structure of media, their financing, and the constraints they face in nations. Although these factors differ in individual nations, there are sufficient commonalities in approaches across nations to categorize systems. Although there are no universally agreed upon classifications of media systems, Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm's classic volume Four theories of the press (1956), Hachten and Hachten's World news prism (1981) , and the more contemporary Comparing media systems (2004) by Hallin and Mancini provide reasonable means for categorizing systems. The classic 1956 classification of “four theories” asserts that media systems can be classified by the relationships between states and media, and that libertarian, authoritarian, Soviet communist, and social responsibility theories explain four different types of systems. During the past half century, however, critics ... log in or subscribe to read full text