Perspectives on Mass Communication - A Conversation with Denis McQuail by Howard Burton

Author:Howard Burton [Burton, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771701105
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Open Agenda Publishing inc.
Published: 2021-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Questions for Discussion:

How is the use of communications technology influenced by the political structure and governing political interests of a country or region? To what extent can advances in communications technology influence changes in the surrounding political system?

To what extent did Denis’ communications research heighten his sensitivity to the strengths and weaknesses of living in another culture with another language?

III. Journalism and Society

Looking more broadly

HB: This brings me rather abruptly to Journalism and Society, which is a book that came out quite recently. Although, of course, not only are these issues that you have been ruminating over long periods of time, but the evolution of the book started off in one manifestation years earlier. Tell me about the genesis of Journalism and Society.

DM: I had a contact and friend at the University of Yekaterinburg in Russia. I had done a couple of things for him, including writing things for a little magazine that he had for his students. He asked me to write a small text on theories of journalism. This was a few years ago. So I did that, partly drawing on things I had written already. I put together a summary perspective on theories of journalism for students who were perhaps unfamiliar with the ideas.

HB: So this was written for undergraduate students?

DM: Yes. This was for the Russian students of journalism in this university. They had no wider publishing plans and I hadn’t thought of it as a publishing venture. I already had my own strong interests in journalism but, to that point, I had not expressed that very much, except for the work that I did for the Royal Commission on the Press. I very much enjoyed enlarging that and bringing together perspectives on different aspects of the position of journalism, in terms of key issues to do with freedom, and accountability, and relationship to power.

HB: These are issues that resonate very strongly with a wide variety of people. You don’t have to be an undergraduate of journalism to appreciate them.

DM: No, you don’t. But I thought undergraduate journalism students could benefit from a wider perspective than just learning about the craft or the task of journalism, those practical things that they have to learn anyway. So it was a larger perspective on what they were doing in terms of their role in society which I think is a pretty important one.

HB: Another interesting dynamic that you focus on is not only the societal role of journalists—what journalists contribute to society and how they contribute to society—but almost the other way around: how society impinges on journalism, and the give and take between these two structures, and how society structures journalists and how journalists, in fact, themselves, structure society. You get political power that comes into play. You have the role of propaganda. You have freedom of the press. You have liberty. You have truth, and so forth.

These are questions that I think deserve a much wider airing and a much wider readership. Did other people respond

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