ABSTRACT
The comparative study of the mass media has, in the decade since its appearance, been dominated by the work of Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini. Their book Comparing Media System (afterward, CMS) has set the framework for debate in this field of investigation in much the same way as Four Theories of the Press did for a preceding generation of scholars (Siebert, Peterson, & Schramm, 1963; Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Between the two texts, there have been many other efforts to establish alternatives, for example by Seymour-Ure, Picard, Alstschull, Blumler and Gurevitch, by McQuail in the early editions of his influential textbook and, from a quite different direction, by Raymond Williams (Williams, 1968; Seymour-Ure, 1974; Altshcull, 1984; Picard, 1985; McQuail, 1987; Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995). This history has been frequently, and thoroughly, rehearsed and there is little need to repeat it here (Bastiensen, 2008; Hardy, 2008, pp. 11–20).
