scholastic work of F. Siebert, T. Peterson, and W. Schramm, the
27 Засурский Я. Н. Искущение свободой (М., 2004.) С. 97.
28 Vartanova, E. (2007). “Russian media economy: eurasion model”, pp.
103-121. Vartanova, E. (ed.). Media and Change. Moscow: MediaMir. P.110.
“Four Theories of the Press”.29 In this book, four types of media theories were described: the Libertarian, the Social Responsibility Theory, the Authoritarian Theory, and the Soviet Communist Theory.
The writer of this paper holds that it is necessary to observe the social system in which the media operated in, in order to understand the variations among individual media systems. For understanding the real relation between the media and the social system, we must understand the fundamental belief and assumption prevailing in the society: the essence of human beings, the essence of society and the state, the relation between the people and the state, and the essence of knowledge and truth.30 At the same time, they also explained the Soviet Communist Theory was but the development of the ancient authoritarian theory. Social responsibility theory is the revision of liberalism. Therefore, there was critique that the four theories as mentioned were but one theory, which was liberalism. Or, they might be taken as two types of theories, liberalism and authoritarianism.31
“Four Theories of the Press” was published during the cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union. Therefore, the principal manifestation of the book was whether or not the government should take control of the media. This was particularly the case so far as the liberalism theory was concerned. The social
29 Siebert, Fredrick S, Theodore Peterson, & Wilbur Schramm, Four theories of the press (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956).
30 Siebert, Fredrick S, Theodore Peterson, & Wilbur Schramm. Four theories of the press (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), p.2.
31 McQuail, Denis. McQuail’s mass communication Theory (London, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2002), p.200.
responsibility theory was proposed as a supplement to liberalism, but the details of the theory triggered much controversy. At the same time, a number of scholars had proposed revision and supplements to the said theories. R. Lowenstein and J. Merrill were two scholars who had queried the “four types of theories” the most in the 1970s. R. Lowenstein suggested that the four theories were not applicable to Kenya, Egypt, Myanmar, and other developing countries. The four theories also could not explain the flexibility and exception of media systems in many countries of the world. In 1983, scholar Denis McQuail suggested that the four theories simply could not be universally applicable because they could not be applied to developing countries. As such, McQuail proposed the
“Democratic-participation Theory” and “Development Media Theory”.32 In 1987, American scholar William Hachten expanded the four theories into five media theories.33 The content of the models proposed by Hatchen resembled the essence of the four theories. The cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union started at the end of WWII. In the 1980, Gorbachev launched his Perestroika that prompted the collapse of the communist countries in Eastern Europe. The cold war ended formally at the beginning of 1990s when the Soviet Union disintegrated. The end of the cold war did not bring an end to the discussion of the types of media. In 1997, Finnish scholar Kaarle Nordenstreng proposed 5 models in the study of media.
32 McQuail, Denis . Mass communication theory: an introduction (London, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 1994).
33 William A. Hachten. The world news prism: changing media for international communication (5th Edition). (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1987), pp.14-31.
In “De-Westernizing Media Studies” edited by British scholar James Curran and Korean scholar Myung-Jin Park, wide scope comparison had been made on the societies of different countries, and analyzed the development of the media under the political and economic background. This book was a collection of 22 papers covering the media systems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America observing the media systems of the worlds from two perspectives:
democratic vs. authoritarian, neo liberalism vs. regulated media theories. These provided us a coordinate with 4 quadrants. Here, democratic countries and authoritarian countries were operated under the neo liberalism or regulated media system. Basing on these, they proposed “Five Types of Theories”: democratic/neo liberal media theory (Japan, USA, UK, Australia), democratic/regulated media theory (Sweden, Italy, South Africa, India, Israel, France), authoritarian/ neo liberalism media theory (Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia), and authoritarian/regulated media theory (Zimbabwe, Egypt). The fifth type of theory was the transitional and mixed media theory including China, Eastern Europe, South America, Middle East, and Russia.34
After the publication of the book by Curran and Park, American scholar Daniel C. Hallin and Italian scholar Paolo Macini published the “Comparing Media Systems” in 2004. In the book, they compared the media systems in different countries. Further to the analysis of the systems, they showed their concerned of the symbiotic relation between politics and the media, and proposed possible trend of development of the media systems from the
34 James Curran & Myung-Jin Park (Eds.), De-westernizing media studies (London: Routledge, 2000).
perspective of history. Paolo Mancini, one of the authors of the book, had visited Moscow and shared the interchanges with Russian scholars. Their concepts attracted much attention and discussion in Russia. The two scholars suggested four dimensions for comparing media systems: the strong or weak development of a mass circulation press, degree of political parallelism, the degree of journalistic professionalism, the degree and nature of state intervention in the media system. They also suggested that the attributes of political system were factors critical for the comparison of media systems including: the role of the state in the society；the consensus or majoritarian characteristics of the political system；the pattern of interest group organization，including the distinction between more fragmented liberal and more corporatist systems；the distinction between moderate and polarized pluralism；
the development of rational-legal authority in contrast to clientelist forms of social organization. They further classified the media systems of the West into 3 types with reference to geopolitics and individual attributes:35 the Mediterranean or Polarized Pluralist model, Northern/central Europe or Democratic Corporatist model, North Atlantic or Liberal model.
Countries fell into the categories of the four theories proposed by Curran and Park could easily be classified. However, the transitional and mixed media theory could not be easily classified since they are transforming and mixed. As suggested by Jan Ekecrantz，what direction would such transforming media systems move in the four quadrants? Eight years after the publication of this
35 Daniel C. Hallin & Paolo Mancini, Comparing media systems: three models of media and politics (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
book, how far the media systems of these countries have advanced?36 The directions of transformations of these countries largely relied on their domestic political and economic development and such development at global level. The media systems in the contemporary world turned complex, which added complexities to the analysis of the media systems. Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini suggested that the development of the media systems in Russia or Eastern Europe resembled the Mediterranean Model. Yet, the history of media development in Russia and the Mediterranean was different and development took place in different stages. The writer of this paper thus emphasized that readers should not take this as the standard model for analysis because a country that completely fit into the models simply does not exist.
In this paper, the writer suggested that no model proposed by the aforementioned scholars in the West could give an exact picture of the media system in contemporary Russia. As mentioned by Ya.
Zassurskii, “The media system in Russia underwent different stages of transformation not just because the country transformed into democratic system and market economy, but also because the country was also in the process of the transformation of global mass media. Media systems all over the world were in the process of transforming into new and complex media systems37”. Professor
36 Ekecrantz, J. “Post-Post-Communist Media? A Challenge for Comparative Media Studies”, in Vartanova, E. ed., Media and Change (Moscow: MediaMir, 2007), p.87.
37 Zassoursky Y. N., “Changing Media and Communications”, in Y. Zassoursky and E. Vartanova eds., Changing Media and Communications. Concepts, Technologies and Ethics in Global and National Perspectives (Moscow, 1998), P.19.
E. Vartanova also held that the mode of development the Russian media system featured a mixture of attributes, “For Russia, the mode of mixed attributes included the social economic problems unique to the country and was related to the advancement of globalization of information technology. At the same time, it was closely associated with the history of traditional Russian ideology, culture and world view.”38 Therefore, the Russian media system was a mixture of different models that could not be put into specific model for discussion as wished.