Americanization, Europeanization, Berlusconization

Over the decades, many social researchers have repeatedly used the "Americanization" of our living conditions - a formula that, although simple, hardly holds up on closer inspection, as researchers have recently shown in two very different fields of communication. At the annual conference of Swiss communication and media researchers on image communication, Roger Blum and Marlis Prinzing questioned the flat Americanization thesis using the example of party competition. In election campaigns, they reported, it is no longer the case that all campaign planners only look to the USA. The academics therefore prefer to speak of the modernization, professionalization, medialization and de-ideologization of campaigns. Their most drastic example: In America, it would be unthinkable to present naked people on posters. In Germany, on the other hand, candidates have undressed - and because they have apparently "caught on" with voters thanks to their original excess of transparency and without emperor's clothes, this has also found imitators in Switzerland, Belgium and Poland. When questioned, Ms Prinzing also emphasizes that the Americanization thesis is "also a distraction, especially when it is conveyed in the media". Americanization is misunderstood "as a synonym for Hollywood election campaigns" and this overlooks "the major role that issues play in the USA, which are also given a forum in the media". The nude egg example shows: Election campaign professionals thus observed each other in international exchanges - a pattern of behavior that one would also like to recommend to journalists and publishing managers in search of new revenue models. After all, the Americanization hypothesis is not very coherent in the media business either. In any case, researchers at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford are by no means certain that the crisis in journalism in the USA will also have a full impact in Europe. It is premature to predict the death of newspapers, television or even commercial news media, say David A.L. Levy and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, who in their latest book on the effects of changing journalistic business models shed light on very different development paths in various European countries, the USA and the two BRIC states of Brazil and India. "If the major news media in America are facing a more serious crisis than elsewhere, it is by no means to say that they are leading the way for the rest of the world. The US could be an exception rather than the harbinger it is often portrayed as in discussions about international media development."

The fact that the Americanization thesis is rather nonsense can be seen not least from the fact that in the USA, researchers such as Everette Dennis observed a "Europeanization" of journalism years ago - for example, because many US news media no longer strictly maintain the separation of news and opinion, or because - more recently and partly inspired by the opinionated nature of users on the Internet - entire channels such as Fox are building their recipe for success on politically one-sided (right-wing) populism. Incidentally, the buzzword "Berlusconization" of the media in Eastern Europe has been circulating for years. It was coined by a respected researcher and has been quoted more or less thoughtlessly by many others. "Tabloidization" as a trend - that would probably have hit the nail on the head, and "Italianization" might also have made sense if it had been intended to refer to the growing (party) political controversy and entertainization - or to the "infantilization" of the media, as Umberto Eco once called it with regard to conditions in his home country. But Berlusconization? Actually, the emerging democracies in eastern and south-eastern Europe should be grateful that they have been spared the media supremacy and the many years of abuse of office by Berlusconi, which was cushioned with their help - incidentally also thanks to the (admittedly not selfless) commitment of western investors, who tend to stay out of political affairs, from Ringier to Springer and the Passau publishing group through to the WAZ Group and Scandinavian newspaper publishers such as Schibsted.

Obviously, even scientists, precisely because they want to make an impact, are not immune to adopting buzzwords from time to time - even if they tend to achieve the opposite of the enlightenment that research should actually be aiming for.
Sources: Roger Blum/Marlis Prinzing (2011): Bad pictures - good pictures. Lecture at the Swiss Society for Communication and Media Studies (SGKM) on March 25/26, 2011 in Basel. Levy, David A.L./Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis (eds.) (2010): The Changing Business of Journalism and its Implication for Democracy, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford.