LIVINGSTONE- On the Challenges of Cross-National
Comparative Media Research
- Examines the rationale for comparative research and the challenges and contradictions that it
poses
- ‘All the eternal and unsolved problems inherent in sociological research are unfolded when
engaging in cross-national studies
- Comparative research can pose challenges to scholars preconceptions and is liable to be
theoretically upsetting
- Validates, tests, revises existing theory but also has a more creative and innovative role
- Cross-national comparison: exciting but diffi cult, creative but problematic
- Comparative research: study that compares two or more nations with respect to some
common activity
- Comparative methodology consequences- researchers find themselves reinventing the
wheel or repeating mistakes of others
- Globalisation encourages looking at transnational dimensions of cultural institutions,
products, audiences, policies
- Choice not to conduct research cross nationally requires as much justification as choice to
do
- Researchers need to consider the extent to which the findings may reflect their national
context
Advantages of comparison
- Improve understanding of ones own country and of other countries
- Test theory across diverse settings
- Examine local receptions of imported cultural forms and identify marginalised cultural forms
- Challenging claims to universality
- Improve international understanding and learning from the policy initiatives of others
Nations as units
- Nations are far from self contained, closed, homogeneous but comprise multiple cultures with
diasporic and global trends
- ‘Patterns of movement and flows of people, culture, goods, and information mean that it’s
now not so much physical boundaries that define a community or nations natural limits’
- ‘Cultural space can no longer be pictures in terms of an order of separate, autonomous,
cultures’
- Globalisation is an ongoing process which has not yet undermined the existence or power of
the nation and many phenomena are still defined in national terms
- Whilst process of globalisation encourages cross national research it also undermines the
legitimacy of the nation state for political, economic, cultural purposes and unit of analysis
- Any project seeking to conduct cross national comparison must argue the case for treating
the nation as a unit
Difficulties of cross-national research
- Berated for attempting to compare unlike objects or categories
- Such caution results in a regrettable narrowing of the imaginative claims which comparative
analysis should generate
, - Choice of research topic tends to be better justified than choice of the comparative method
- Comparative projects are described as exhausting, a nightmare, lustrating but also
exhilarating or stimulating
- Gap between ambition and achievement, ‘in practice it proved impossible to develop agreed
guidelines for such an ambitious undertaking
- Challenges when comparison relies on multinational collaborations as cross national
collaborations are often multidisciplinary and multi method
- Increased travel and communication among research scholars around the world
- Cross national variations in professional academic cultures can create difficulties
- Compare findings, theories and concepts, research ethics, writing style, publication strategies
- Confuses boundary between the professional and the personal
- Face inequities in funding, institutional support or ease of data collection, anxieties over
issues of data ownership that arise in collaboration
Cross-national research - impossible yet necessary
- Comparative research faces significant epistemological challenges
- Produces measurement out of context, asserting methodological and theoretical universalism
at cost of recognising cultural specificity
- Comparative research often results in viewing other nations through a western lens
- Meaning of any term understanding within its unique context
- ‘Societies and cultures are fundamentally non comparable and certainly can’t be evaluated
against each other
- Understanding another group strictly in its own terms while respectful of the integrity of any
culture is impossible
- Also argue its necessity ‘all social science research is comparative’,there is no other kind
- Research uses conceptual categories that assert distinctions and compare across categories
- ‘Culturally unconditioned statements are made about the context of tv news and about the
social functions it serves as if they applied everywhere
- We can no longer simply study the news without qualifying if we mean British news or global
news etc
- Lack of clarity often permits dominant communities to make the assumption that what holds in
one country surely holds elsewhere
Models of comparative research
- Much research can usefully be categorised according tot he typology developed by Kohn
- Four approaches to cross national comprising (Kohn’s typology)
- National as object of study
- Aim to understand particular countries for their own sake, what is distinctive about a
country
- Comparison used as a strategy for seeing better
- Nation as context of study
- Tests the hypothesised generality of findings across nations to support claims regarding
an abstract/universal phenomenon (if a theory is universal)
- Attempt to capture complexity of each country compared, how theory applies to each of
the countries
- If one is studying the generality of a finding across nations
- Simpler version of model 3
- Nation as unit of analysis
Comparative Media Research
- Examines the rationale for comparative research and the challenges and contradictions that it
poses
- ‘All the eternal and unsolved problems inherent in sociological research are unfolded when
engaging in cross-national studies
- Comparative research can pose challenges to scholars preconceptions and is liable to be
theoretically upsetting
- Validates, tests, revises existing theory but also has a more creative and innovative role
- Cross-national comparison: exciting but diffi cult, creative but problematic
- Comparative research: study that compares two or more nations with respect to some
common activity
- Comparative methodology consequences- researchers find themselves reinventing the
wheel or repeating mistakes of others
- Globalisation encourages looking at transnational dimensions of cultural institutions,
products, audiences, policies
- Choice not to conduct research cross nationally requires as much justification as choice to
do
- Researchers need to consider the extent to which the findings may reflect their national
context
Advantages of comparison
- Improve understanding of ones own country and of other countries
- Test theory across diverse settings
- Examine local receptions of imported cultural forms and identify marginalised cultural forms
- Challenging claims to universality
- Improve international understanding and learning from the policy initiatives of others
Nations as units
- Nations are far from self contained, closed, homogeneous but comprise multiple cultures with
diasporic and global trends
- ‘Patterns of movement and flows of people, culture, goods, and information mean that it’s
now not so much physical boundaries that define a community or nations natural limits’
- ‘Cultural space can no longer be pictures in terms of an order of separate, autonomous,
cultures’
- Globalisation is an ongoing process which has not yet undermined the existence or power of
the nation and many phenomena are still defined in national terms
- Whilst process of globalisation encourages cross national research it also undermines the
legitimacy of the nation state for political, economic, cultural purposes and unit of analysis
- Any project seeking to conduct cross national comparison must argue the case for treating
the nation as a unit
Difficulties of cross-national research
- Berated for attempting to compare unlike objects or categories
- Such caution results in a regrettable narrowing of the imaginative claims which comparative
analysis should generate
, - Choice of research topic tends to be better justified than choice of the comparative method
- Comparative projects are described as exhausting, a nightmare, lustrating but also
exhilarating or stimulating
- Gap between ambition and achievement, ‘in practice it proved impossible to develop agreed
guidelines for such an ambitious undertaking
- Challenges when comparison relies on multinational collaborations as cross national
collaborations are often multidisciplinary and multi method
- Increased travel and communication among research scholars around the world
- Cross national variations in professional academic cultures can create difficulties
- Compare findings, theories and concepts, research ethics, writing style, publication strategies
- Confuses boundary between the professional and the personal
- Face inequities in funding, institutional support or ease of data collection, anxieties over
issues of data ownership that arise in collaboration
Cross-national research - impossible yet necessary
- Comparative research faces significant epistemological challenges
- Produces measurement out of context, asserting methodological and theoretical universalism
at cost of recognising cultural specificity
- Comparative research often results in viewing other nations through a western lens
- Meaning of any term understanding within its unique context
- ‘Societies and cultures are fundamentally non comparable and certainly can’t be evaluated
against each other
- Understanding another group strictly in its own terms while respectful of the integrity of any
culture is impossible
- Also argue its necessity ‘all social science research is comparative’,there is no other kind
- Research uses conceptual categories that assert distinctions and compare across categories
- ‘Culturally unconditioned statements are made about the context of tv news and about the
social functions it serves as if they applied everywhere
- We can no longer simply study the news without qualifying if we mean British news or global
news etc
- Lack of clarity often permits dominant communities to make the assumption that what holds in
one country surely holds elsewhere
Models of comparative research
- Much research can usefully be categorised according tot he typology developed by Kohn
- Four approaches to cross national comprising (Kohn’s typology)
- National as object of study
- Aim to understand particular countries for their own sake, what is distinctive about a
country
- Comparison used as a strategy for seeing better
- Nation as context of study
- Tests the hypothesised generality of findings across nations to support claims regarding
an abstract/universal phenomenon (if a theory is universal)
- Attempt to capture complexity of each country compared, how theory applies to each of
the countries
- If one is studying the generality of a finding across nations
- Simpler version of model 3
- Nation as unit of analysis
