Media Systems in the Digital Age: An Empirical Comparison of 30 Countries

TLDR

Media systems have changed significantly due to information technologies, yet typologies incorporating digitalization remain scarce. The study aims to identify, operationalize, and measure indicators of media systems in the digital age. The authors extended prior work with new indicators of online news use and media freedom, applied it to 30 countries, and used cluster analysis to identify three media system clusters. The analysis revealed three clusters, two matching Hallin and Mancini’s democratic‑corporatist and polarized‑pluralist models, and a third hybrid cluster situated between them, indicating the disappearance of the liberal model.

Abstract

Abstract Media systems have changed significantly as a result of the development of information technologies. However, typologies of media systems that incorporate aspects of digitalization are rare. This study fills this gap by identifying, operationalizing, and measuring indicators of media systems in the digital age. We build on previous work, extend it with new indicators that reflect changing conditions (such as online news use), and include media freedom indicators. We include 30 countries in our study and use cluster analysis to identify three clusters of media systems. Two of these clusters correspond to the media system models described by Hallin and Mancini, namely the democratic-corporatist and the polarized-pluralist model. However, the liberal model as described by Hallin and Mancini has vanished; instead, we find empirical evidence of a new cluster that we call “hybrid”: it is positioned in between the poles of the media-supportive democratic-corporatist and the polarized-pluralist clusters.