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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2010
A hazy or changeable concept, communication in its modern form as a technique for sending and receiving messages does not fit into any single or standard discipline. It extends outside the areas in which attempts are made to confine it, from the range of application of the humanities to the operational zones of telecommunications empires. After the ethnologists and sociologists, the linguists and the systems experts, the cyberneticists and the psychiatrists had attributed diverse meanings to it, communication in the broad sense and in its day-to-day reality entered its operational period in the 1980s with the new technology of information and communication.
1 In the singular, since the plural in its original sense refers to means of communication by air, sea and land.
2 Thinking ahead — UNESCO and the challenges of today and tomorrow, UNESCO, Paris (1977), p. 333 Google Scholar. Another example is the use of the geostationary satellite. States without their own satellites have reserved space (see World Administrative Conference on Radiocommunications, use of the orbit or geostationary satellites and the planning of space services utilizing this orbit, ORB. 1988, Geneva, 29 August-6 October 1989, also the virtually worldwide broadcasts of the European Broadcasting Union resulting from reciprocal agreements negotiated with the sound broadcasting organizations in all the countries of North and South America, in the Arab countries, in the countries of Eastern Europe and those of Asia.
3 Like the absence of news, news of a tendentious or inaccurate nature represents a threat to peace by keeping up “artificial hatred among nations by means of the printed word” ( Zweig, Stephan, Les Nouvelles littéraires, 6 08 1932 Google Scholar): A panel of journalists was set up in 1931 to pass judgement on those responsible for war propaganda. It was part of the “Peace Triptych”, as the League of Nations (peace), the International Court of Justice (justice) and the Honorary Tribunal of Journalists (truth) were known at the time. See Boiton-Malherbe, Sylvie, La protection des journalistes en mission périlleuse dans les zones de conflit armé, Editions Bruylant, Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1989, pp. 73–115.Google Scholar
4 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Articles 19 and 20; European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10; American Convention on Human Rights, Articles 13 and 14; African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, Article 9.
5 In this context, the most recent UNESCO programme of October 1989 (Communication in the service of humanity) has the merit of pointing out that “the new world order of information and communication” had as its purpose to make a major contribution to the freedom of expression and communication, based on consensus. Moreover, the programme provides for enhancement of the International Programme for Dissemination and Communication (IPDC), created in 1980 on the initiative of the western nations, also more aid from the latter for improving means of communication in developing countries and adapting them to local conditions.
6 Experiments in “total development” will be recalled (these involved taking into account all systems of communication in planning education). At the UNESCO regional conferences in San Jose, Costa Rica (1976), in Kuala Lumpur (1979) and in Yaoundé (1980), discussions on national policies were part of the debate on self-reliance, a concept inseparable from the demand for diversity and cultural identity. This concept has been enfeebled by the very people who talk about it, since the famous “national communication councils”, made up of various components of civil society, have received no encouragement from the States since the conferences. “This state of affairs, in many cases, showed that far from being the adversary of the private sector, the State, already divested of its power of arbitration, had joined the ruling classes, that small proportion of society bound up with transnational capital, in growing reluctance to consider the demands of society as a whole with regard to communication”. Cf. Mattelart, A.; Delcourt, Y.; Mattelart, M., La culture contre la démocratie, La Découverte, Paris, 1984, p. 120.Google Scholar
7 The term computerization being understood, like the earlier term industrialization, to cover all economic, social and legal modifications that arise when technical changes take place.
8 One of the adverse effects of the process is that it eliminates the time vital to the basic work of a journalist, that was formerly available to verify information. A recent example is the reporting of a mass grave discovered in Timisoara; checking later showed that it was not what it was made out to be.
9 “The daily bludgeoning (in the strict meaning of the word) of public opinion by the media through opinion polls is a perfect example of the way in which the profession of purveyor of information has deteriorated”, La communication, victime des marchands, La Découverte, Paris, 1989, p. 63.Google Scholar
10 Raised to a principle by the researchers of the Palo Alto school. Cf. Bateson, G., Birdwhistell, R. and Goffman, E., La nouvelle communication, Seuil, Paris, 1984, pp. 27–61.Google Scholar
11 Jean Pictet, to demonstrate the universal character of the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, stated that “humanitarian principles belong to all peoples and take root under all favourable conditions. When we bring together and compare different moral systems and dispose of the non-essentials, that is to say their special peculiarities, we find in the crucible a pure metal, the universal heritage of mankind”. Pictet, Jean, The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross — Commentary, Henry Dunant Institute, Geneva, 1979, p. 11.Google Scholar