During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, (4) increasing fragmentation and polarization, (5) increasing relativism and (6) increasing inequality in political knowledge. ARTICLE HISTORY

This article explores the relationship between political clientelism and the development of media systems in southern Europe and Latin America, considering the cases of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. Common characteristics of the media systems in these countries include low newspaper circulation, a tendency towards political instrumentalization of the media, limited development of journalism as a differentiated and autonomous profession, and regulatory agencies that are at the same time party-politicized and relatively weak. We argue that these media-system characteristics must be understood in relation to a broader history of political clientelism - though a number of forces, including commercialization of media industries and globalization, have tended in recent years to undermine clientelistic relationships.

This study tests the associations between news media use and perceived political polarization, conceptualized as citizens' beliefs about partisan divides among major political parties. Relying on representative surveys in Canada, Colombia, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we test whether perceived polarization is related to the use of television news, newspaper, radio news, and online news media. Data show that online news consumption is systematically and consistently related to perceived polarization, but not to attitude polarization, understood as individual attitude extremity. In contrast, the relationships between traditional media use and perceived and attitude polarization is mostly country dependent. An explanation of these findings based on exemplification is proposed and tested in an experimental design.

This study, based on a content analysis of television news and survey in eleven nations, explores the split between those who see the media as politically alienating and others who see the media as encouraging greater political involvement. Here, we suggest that both positions are partly right. On the one hand, television news, and in particular public service television news, can be very effective in imparting information about public affairs and promoting a culture of democracy in which news exposure, public affairs knowledge, sense of democratic competence and political interest feed off each other. On the other hand, the views represented in public affairs news are overwhelmingly those of men and elites, which can discourage identification with public life.

This article examines the notion of the “Americanization” of political and campaign communication. Beginning with the literature on the evolution of political communication practices in the United States and their adoption in other political systems, We explore the significance of the seeming convergence of practices and the implications for future patterns of political communication and sociopolitical development. Finally, we seek to link the notion of the Americanization of politics with a discussion of the “modernization” of societies.