Abstract
The conditions of digital communication environments, dissonant public spheres, the crisis of liberal democracy, and global problems of postmodern society fundamentally shape today’s public communication and political information flows. Therefore, in our essay we discuss the changes in political and media systems and how they challenge research questions, designs, and methods of comparative research in the field. We focus on the premises, concepts, and practices of comparative study and propose that researchers need to re-calibrate their essential point of view. It is necessary to move away from the idea of ordered political communication systems and focus instead on fluid ecosystems of message flows on different societal and geographical levels. Regarding the empirical study, we argue that such environments require the consideration of multiple levels of analysis to account for more contextualization and the use of innovative methods of data collection and analysis.
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Pfetsch, B., Benert, V., Schieferdecker, D. (2023). Ever More Dynamic, Complex, and Transnational: Comparing Political Communication Under the Conditions of Digital Environments and Disrupted Democracy. In: Salgado, S., Papathanassopoulos, S. (eds) Streamlining Political Communication Concepts. Springer Studies in Media and Political Communication. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45335-9_3
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