Thomas Krüger

In advertising, a single catchword may move mountains.

In research however, such buzzwords often create trends unable to withstand a diverse reality. For decades, many social science researchers have used the phrase “Americanization” with regard to our living conditions – a formula that on closer inspection does not hold, as researchers have recently illustrated on two very different communication fields. At an annual conference of Swiss communication and media scientists dealing with visual communication, media researchers Roger Blum and Marlis Prinzing questioned the Americanization hypothesis in the field of party competition and campaigning. According to Blum and Prinzing, campaign planners no longer look  to the U.S. when conceptualizing election campaigns.  Researchers now prefer to discuss the “modernization, professionalization, mediatization and de-ideologization” Read the rest of this entry »