GALTUNG AND RUGE REVISITED
Some of the problems characterizing the study of international news in the
1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s may be illuminated through a critical discussion
of the most important theoretical contribution to the field during this period: Johan
Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge’s article ‘The Structure of Foreign News’ (1965).
The article has been required reading at many schools of journalism and media
departments. Galtung and Ruge’s hypotheses and methodology also became
paradigmatic for much of the research on international news. Two decades after
its publication, the Finnish media scholar, Kaarle Nordenstreng, noted that much
of the research and critical advocacy of a New World Information and
Communication Order (NWICO) could be traced to Galtung and Ruge: ‘Most of
the criticism, analytical conceptualization, and guidelines for change voiced over
the past few years were articulated in the 1960s by Johan Galtung and Mari
Holmboe Ruge’ (Nordenstreng 1984: 29).
The key propositions of Galtung and Ruge are stated as hypotheses involving
twelve factors (such as lack of ambiguity, reference to elite nations, etc.), which
together are said to determine the structure of foreign news. They test the
importance of these factors through a quantitative content analysis of four
Norwegian newspapers with different political leanings. Concretely, the analysis
deals with the coverage of three international crises: Congo in 1960, Cuba in
1960, and Cyprus in 1964. They find partial confirmation of their hypotheses and
of the relevance of the twelve factors, but also state that there is much empirical
testing to be done, and that ‘much remains to be done in terms of refinement of
the hypothesis’ (Galtung and Ruge 1965: 70). Later attempts at verifying the
various hypotheses have been mixed. A major review of the research literature in
English caused Hur to conclude that: ‘the generality of the proposed hypotheses
remains questionable because one hypothesis has been supported in some
studies and rejected in others’ (Hur 1984: 367). Large German research projects,
Schulz (1976) and Wilke (1984), reached similarly mixed conclusions.
In spite of the uncertainty surrounding the empirical validity of both
hypotheses and factors, they have continued to inform the theoretical and
methodological framework of research on international news. The theoretical
standing of the position was further strengthened by the publication of Johan
Galtung’s influential article, ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’ (1971), in which
he incorporated the field of international news into what he labeled
‘communication and cultural imperialism.’ However, Galtung and Ruge’s
theoretical and methodological framework contains a series of problems that
make it untenable as a starting point for empirical analysis.
The first problem concerns their conception of the news production process.
The proposed news ‘factors’ constitute an abstract synthesis of a whole series of
different social structures and processes which enter into the production and
circulation of foreign news. These include the correspondent network, editorial
structure and policy, the different, distinctive news media (TV, radio, newspapers,
etc.), audience characteristics, and so on.
The research literature, furthermore, reveals diverging interpretations of the
proposed news factors. In some cases they are considered as the imaginary list
of news criteria according to which individual gatekeepers make their choices
(e.g., Ahern 1984). In other cases they are considered as psychological
determinants of the news process as a whole (e.g., Rosengren 1974). Others
again see the factors as an expression of macro-social determinants (e.g.,
Nnaemeka and Richstad 1980; Pollock and Guidette 1980). In other words,
Galtung and Ruge’s theoretical construction of the empirical object was
inadequate, since it is not at all clear what kind of social process in the real world
is being uncovered by the analytical use of the news factors. It may be processes
at the micro, meso, or macro level, and it may be social phenomena as different
as economic, journalistic, political, ideological, or psychological aspects of the
news production process.
Moreover, the proposed methodology is flawed. A heuristic model – a ‘radio’
metaphor – informs the development of hypotheses and factors. According to
Galtung and Ruge, the news factors are ‘nothing but common-sense perception
psychology translated into radioscanning and event-scanning activities’ (Galtung
and Ruge 1965: 66). It follows from this that the factors should be understood as
selection criteria regarding the characteristics of events. However, the method
employed is concerned neither with the selection process nor with the
characteristics of the events. Instead, a quantitative analysis of the final news
product is used to test the hypothesis.
Rosengren (1970, 1974) drew attention to the fact that a valid test of the
hypotheses must include a comparison of extra-media data (the universe of
events from which the news is selected) and intra-media data (the selected news
items). Rosengren admits that, in practice, it may be difficult to demarcate such
an extramedia dataset. However, the problems involved in the construction of an
extra-media data set should not justify the application of a ‘faulty Ersatz
methodology’ (Rosengren 1974: 146). If the factors address the social and
symbolic transformation of events into news, hypotheses about them cannot be
confirmed solely through an analysis of the resulting news. For instance, it is
impossible to know whether a predominance of elite persons as actors in the
news is due to a bias in the selection and presentation of news, or to the fact that
elite persons actually play a greater role in the events reported.
A third problem is the notion that it would be possible, once and for all, to
isolate a definite number of factors that determine the way foreign news is
structured in the (Western) world. Galtung’s and Ruge’s ambition was to propose
some very general hypotheses about the characteristics of (foreign) news in
general, or as Johan Galtung himself expressed it: ‘It is a theory concerning what
kinds of things are referred to as news. “The theory of news”’ (Galtung 1973). As
such, their hypotheses as well as the news factors are based on the assumption
that, in news from and about the Western world, there is a high degree of
uniformity across countries, types of media, political and cultural traditions, and
so on.
Consequently, according to Galtung and Ruge, the perspective for further
research on international news was to test and refine such factors and
hypotheses, which would allow scholars to predict with increased accuracy the
likely content and, hence, the fundamental structure of foreign news. Their
ambition was not to look for specificities or differences. The logic justifying their
own analysis of four different newspapers was that the more newspapers the
hypotheses turned out to be valid for, the more support the hypotheses would
receive.
Their own empirical analysis can, in fact, validate a quite different – indeed
contradictory – relationship, namely that the editorial policy of the specific
newspapers in question may account for a high degree of variation in the news. A
report from 1962 (published only in Norwegian) by Johan Galtung and Mari
Holmboe Ruge used the same empirical materials as the 1965 article (not the
1964 Cyprus crisis, for obvious reasons). It presented a conclusion which is rather
surprising, compared to that of the 1965 article: ‘What we have found is simply
that even if newspapers receive exactly the same agency material via the
teleprinter, the changes made by the editorial staff will nevertheless be enough to
produce a completely different type of news product’ (Galtung and Ruge 1962: 74;
my translation).
It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to use the same empirical data to test
different hypotheses, but in this case the hypotheses contradict each other. If the
hypotheses from the 1965 articles are unable to capture differences which,
according to the 1962 report, are prominent in the news, this is perhaps because
the 1965 hypotheses operate at a level of abstraction where one is able, for
example, to separate news from non-news. However, such hypotheses and their
constituent factors are unsuited for guiding research that aims at understanding
the differences, variations, and historical developments in international news.
