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That was the title of the first session I attended. Comparing Media Systems is a book by Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini - it was published in 2004 but has already become a classic in our field. Their model for comparing media systems is based on a 'most similar' strategy, analysing media and journalism only in stable Western democracies (i.e. Western European and North American nations), and the purpose of the research presented in this panel was to develop themodel to include other parts of the world as well. The session was chaired by one of the authors (Daniel Hallin) and with the other author (Paolo Mancini) as respondent to the papers presented (along with Thomas E Patterson of the Harvard Shorenstein Center). The speakers – Mine Gencel Bek from Ankara University, Turkey; Boguslawa Dobek-Ostrowska from University of Wroclaw, Poland; Alfonso de Albuquerque from Universidad Federal Fluminense, Brazil; and Yoram Peri from Tel Aviv University, Israel (a fifth paper by Sahar Khamis of Egypt/University of Maryland was read by chair Daniel Hallin as Khamis had been denied entry visa into Canada) – were all attempting to place their own nations in the three-model framework of Hallin & Mancini, while simultaneously critiquing the limitations of the model and suggesting ways to develop it. Lots of interesting things came up – a point made by Boguslawa Dobek-Ostrowska demonstrated the problems inherent in using professionalism as a variable for comparison as most nations have very different notions of what “professionalism” (specifically in relation to journalism) means. Alfonso de Albuquerque pointed out that of the three models (I have posted on Hallin & Mancini’s work earlier) only two (the Liberal and the Democratic corporatist model) are models in any strict sense, whereas the third (Polarized pluralism) is better defined as the lack of a model: the liberal and democratic corporatist model are both built on a consensus around core values, whereas the key feature of the polarized pluralism model is that there is no consensus and no core values. Furthermore, de Albuquerque introduced other variables that also would be highly relevant to the comparative analysis of media systems, but that have no place in the Hallin & Mancini framework, the most important one being whether the political system is presidential or parliamentary. For example, it has been shown that media in presidential systems are more likely to focus on individual politicians and the administrative aspects of government, as well as acting as an intermediary between different branches of government, than are media in parliamentary systems. I thought that taken together, all the presentations provided some very fruitful starting points for further developing the Hallin & Mancini model, and I thought that Paolo Mancini’s respondents’ comments missed the mark a bit: he claimed that the authors were too interested in fitting their respective nations to one of the three models, rather than focusing on the variables and on the comparative dimension – I thought the authors did focus on the variables and on the comparative dimension: it struck me that their conclusions were precisely that a strict modeling approach (i.e. trying to fit any given nation into the three-system model) was not enough if we wanted to understand media system differences properly. Thomas Patterson’s comments were more fundamental: like Alfonso de Albuquerque, he argued that the polarized pluralist model all too often seems to be the default model – what is really gained, analytically, by saying that Brazil, Poland and Egypt are all basically polarized pluralist media system when they are different in so many ways? He also thought that the key theoretical contribution made in the panel was by Sahar Khamis, the Egyptian scholar who could not attend – she held that in an authoritarian system, loosening the restrictions on the media often created a kind of “safety valve” function of the media, not advancing democracy but substituting for it. A slight increase in freedom of expression allows the media to “vent” frustration against political, social and economic injustices without actually translating this frustration into political action. This, said Patterson, was an element of media function that comparative media analysis needed to look at more closely in the future – free (or freer) media not as a necessary condition of democracy but instead of democracy. The final question from the floor (in a session that generated very animated, if brief, discussion) – after the session was officially over – was something along the lines of “Now that we’ve heard all this about the need to further develop comparative media systems analysis, where do we go from here?” Paolo Mancini smiled and looked at his watch. End of session.