Suchergebnisse

This talk is a lightly edited transcript of Robert Hackett's keynote lecture atthe Union for Democratic Communications 2015 Conference, "Circuits ofStruggle," May 2, 2015, in Toronto. Hackett is the recipient of the 2015 DallasSmythe Award, awarded by the Union for Democratic Communicationsto an outstanding and influential scholar working in the critical politicaleconomic tradition of Dallas Smythe. In this talk, Hackett discusses his connectionsto Smythe, as well as his recent work around journalism, the media,and climate change.

This commentary suggests that Naomi Klein's influential book This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate, implicitly points to the influence of media institutions on societal response to the crisis, yet does not analyze them explicitly. Communication scholars could help fill that gap. Conversely however, Klein's work suggests productive avenues for media researchers to explore, including a fresh take on the relationship between climate crisis, communication and capitalism as a system, and the potential for alternative media to challenge dominant cultural narratives.

The Media Democracy Day (MDD) project is an annual event for alternative, independent, and democratic media in Canada. It has approached the project of media reform with a three-pronged ambition: Know the Media, Be the Media, and Change the Media. This year, MDD's annual conference was held between Nov. 7th and 8th at Vancouver Public Library. For more information about MDD, Please visit http://mediademocracyproject.ca/.

The task of identifying appropriate models of journalism for Pacific Island nations as they strive for more democratic governance is not a straightforward one. This article summarises several contending models of democracy—market liberalism/competitive elitism, public sphere liberalism, and radical democracy—and their attendant expectations of news media. When measured against the stated ideals of press freedom, and notwithstanding the emergence of the internet, the existing news systems of the dominant Western liberal-democracies, notably the US and UK, have significant democratic shortcomings, in relation to 'watchdog', public sphere, community-building and communicative equality criteria. Accordingly, the author argues that the practices and concept of press freedom need to be expanded and supplemented by a broader understanding and implementation of communication rights, entailing legal and cultural forms that support the full participation of all segments of society in the social cycle of communication. Such a paradigm is especially appropriate for postcolonial countries dealing with issues of economic development and inter-ethnic conflict.

This essay recalls an ad hoc protest campaign against Amerika, a television mini-series broadcast by the ABC and CTV networks during the fading years of the Cold War (1987). Depicting a fictional Soviet takeover of the US, the program aroused a storm of controversy in both the US and Canada, where it raised additional issues such as cultural sovereignty. The partners, activities and accomplishments of the protest campaign are described; it changed the program's discursive context and forced the broadcasters to respond. More enduringly, the campaign prefigured a later wave of democratic media activism by questioning media content, challenging the asymmetrical media-audience relationship, implying a new model of public communication, highlighting the contradictions between media imperatives and social movements, and providing a springboard for specifically media oriented activism.

This paper compares different normative and institutional paradigms of journalism with respect to peaceful conflict resolution and democratic communication. It begins with the problematic but still dominant 'regime of objectivity,' and then considers three contemporary challengers: peace journalism, alternative media, and media democratization/communication rights movements. The paradigms are compared in terms of such factors as public philosophy, epistemological assumptions, characteristic practices, institutional entailments, relationship to dominant institutions and power structures, allies and opponents, and antagonisms and synergies between them. I conclude that while peace journalism is a promising initiative, it could gain traction by exploring synergies with the other challenger paradigms.

This paper compares different normative and institutional paradigms of journalism with respect to peaceful conflict resolution and democratic communication. It begins with the problematic but still dominant 'regime of objectivity,' and then considers three contemporary challengers: peace journalism, alternative media, and media democratization/communication rights movements. The paradigms are compared in terms of such factors as public philosophy, epistemological assumptions, characteristic practices, institutional entailments, relationship to dominant institutions and power structures, allies and opponents, and antagonisms and synergies between them. I conclude that while peace journalism is a promising initiative, it could gain traction by exploring synergies with the other challenger paradigms.

"Als Beitrag zur Beurteilung der Chancen für die Realisierung friedensjournalistischer Prinzipien in der Praxis berücksichtigt dieser Artikel drei konzeptionelle Modelle zur Untersuchung des Verhältnisses zwischen Journalismus und anderen Machtinstitutionen und -beziehungen. Das Propagandamodell von Herman und Chomsky beschreibt effizient einige Methoden der Beeinflussung von Journalismus durch Staat und Kapital. Es birgt aber die Gefahr, reduktionistisch und funktionalistisch zu sein. Das Modell der 'Hierarchie der Einflüsse' von Shoemaker und Reese ermöglicht die Beurteilung der Positionen für und gegen Friedensjournalismus auf jeder seiner fünf Faktorstufen. Bei beiden Modellen besteht das Risiko, die Spezifität und Kohärenz von Journalismus als kulturelle Praxis und Form der Wissensproduktion zu verdecken. Pierre Bourdieus Vorstellung von Journalismus als relativ autonomes institutionelles Gebiet hat den Vorteil, konzeptionellen Raum sowohl für strukturelle Einflüsse von und auf Nachrichtenmedien als auch für die Tätigkeit und Kreativität von Journalisten zu gewährleisten. Die drei Modelle tragen gemeinsam dazu bei, Aufgaben, Herausforderungen und potentielle Strategien für die Bewegung des Friedensjournalismus aufzuzeigen." (Autorenreferat)