Spatial comparative election communication research investigates campaign practices, its media responses and its effects on the electorate in different countries.
Some of the most common theoretical approaches of international comparative studies in election campaign communication research are: The theoretical assumption of modernization derives similar developments or convergence of campaign communication practices in Western democracies, present e.g. in the political systems of United States and UK, from professionalization of society.
Professionalization is therefore assessed as a consequence of differentiation in modern societies in general, which affects organization, management and style of political campaigning as well as the multiplicity of media and the fragmentation of voter groups.
Modernization and professionalization are regarded as more adequate theoretical approaches, as their assumption of a general international trend in campaigning is not contradictory to national particularities.
Today Americanization serves as a yardstick, while context-sensitive approaches like media dependency theory, modernization and hybridization are widely established.
[22] They developed an approach that relates contextual variables to different models of election campaigning and show their empirically observable attributes.
As empirically observable attributes of campaign organization and electorate, such as organizational resources, like online activism and party membership, and characteristics of mass media, such as news coverage, should be examined.
With regard to international comparative research on election news coverage, e.g. Jesper Strömbäck and Toril Aalberg[24] in 2008 explained diversities in similar countries like Sweden and Norway by different framing concepts, media bias as well as cultural and structural variations.
[29] - Spatial comparison focuses internationally on most different outcomes in most similar political systems, e.g. election campaigning news coverage in democratic corporatist countries like Sweden and Denmark.
Regarding in particular the validity of international and intercultural comparative approaches, research methods are required to deliver adequate culture-specific measurements of observed phenomena and practices to consider different cultural contexts.
As a consequence of cultural differences, language barriers and limited financial resources, research is often bound to Western regions, which partly explains the Western-centered scope.