Pluralism of Media Types and Media Genres

Abstract

Societies have different media systems, and a pluralism of media types and media genres clearly differ among them. The term ‘media system’ (or ‘media scene’) used in communication literature generally ‘refers to the actual set of mass media in a given national society’ (McQuail 2000, p. 192). Media systems or media scenes, if one prefers the latter term, are products of social history and the continuous development of media technologies, including their adaptations to existing media. The dimensions that differentiate media systems are numerous, and, for instance, McQuail’s short summary of them consists of scale, degree of politicization and public regulation, diversity and sources of finance (2000, p. 210). The framework, used by Hallin and Mancini (2004) to compare media systems puts the emphasis on four dimensions, namely on the development of media markets, political parallelism, journalistic professionalism, and the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system.