Title: Measuring Strategy by Tracing Political Media Relations Tactics – A Conceptualization
Abstract: Conceptualizing the strategic interplay of communication experts with political
journalists is like being in the middle of so far conflicting approaches. The mostly economic science
based literature on strategic communication management often implies a prescriptive and rational
approach of decision making and behavior. From a social sciences perspective, however, the
empirical transfer of mere economic rational choice models has been reasonably challenged.
Although many rational choice theorists accept actor rationality to be limited rather than total and
the metaphor of a “game” between the two groups is frequently used, only tentative efforts of social
sciences to integrate rational choice models into the concept of strategy can be observed. This
article seeks to make a case for network analysis to be applied in political media relations, as it
enables the integration of approaches of strategy that have been kept separate so far. Doing so
would allow strategic interactions to act as infrastructure for a descriptive analysis and
environment for testing cost-benefits with the help of game theory. In this way, it allows for both a
systematic integration of different strategy concepts and a comparative evaluation of their validity
and explanatory power for empirical ex-post analysis in different social contexts. Developed in the
German context, a possible comparative approach will be exemplified by the Russian Federation in
accordance with the most different systems design.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-05-14
Language: en
Type: article
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