Variations in political communication culture: new forms of political parallelisms and media-politics coalitions

Abstract

Tis chapter compares the political cultures in the four countries analysed in this volume. Based on an inductive qualitative approach that singles out specifcities in how political communication advisors and journalists interact within historical/institutional and professionalist/normative conditions and related constraints, the fndings challenge earlier research on political communication culture. Te chapter shows how political communication culture may act as a modifying factor in times of systemic change. It also reveals diferences between and within countries that are ofen seen as forming distinct groups: Finland and Sweden as Nordic countries and Lithuania and Poland as Central European countries that have undergone recent fundamental system changes. Te chapter ends with a discussion of how changes in the technological communication environment may afect political communication culture simultaneously in all four countries.