Centre for Communication Rights

To meet the increasing demand for materials and resources about the right to communication, The World Association of Christian Communication (WACC) has launched the Centre for Communication Rights (CCR). The site, situated on the WACC homepage--righthand side, is a great place to find resources on policy related to communication rights, including case studies, training manuals and practical handbooks and links to media observatories (organizations that monitor policy and practice) in Europe and Latin America (so far). There are also resource sections on: Building and Recognizing Communication Rights, Development, Democratization, Gender, Language and Culture, and Ethics of Communication. Anyone interested international communication in the areas of policy, human rights, or development should make a beeline to this site!

February Commquote

February's rather contrarian quote on global ethics comes from Stefan Sonderling at the University of South Africa.

"It is commonly believed that the fabrication of common global ethics will provide the panacea for all the evils of the world, much like the belief in the myth of the magical power of communication. Global ethics are considered of great importance because they seem to respond to pressing practical needs of economy, business and about such attitudes is the fact that attempts to construct a new grand narrative of global ethics is emerging, even though the idea of grand narrative has been criticised by postmodern philosophy (Lyotard, 1984)...Globalisation is not a uniform world but could be understood as a paradox of unification and fragmentation, and is experienced as the 'return of the Middle Ages' (Eco, 1987), or as being a neo-medieval world of fragmented loyalties and overlapping sovereignties (Bull, 1985)...It is perhaps, as Latour (1993) suggests, that we have never been modern, or as Kaplan (2003) puts it: 'The world is not modern or postmodern, but only a continuation of the ancient'. According to Meyrowitz (1986), 'we may be returning to a world even older than that of the late Middle Ages. Many of the features of our 'information age' make us resemble the most primitive of social and political forms: the hunting and gathering society.' Indeed, the imagery of the medieval Dark Ages is an apt description of the contemporary discourses on ethics: some clamour for a return to medieval religious values, while the increasing enforcement of the new saccharine global ethics has brought back a new Dark Ages and growth of ignorance (Rauch 1994; Thompson 2008)."

--Stefan Sonderling, What If Morality Should Turn Out to be the Danger of Dangers? Global Ethics and the Growth of Ignorance, in Communicatio, Volume 34 (2), 2008, pp 290-327

July CommQuote

When Tim Russert died news outlets and networks deferred to his home network, NBC, to be the first to announce the news. NBC delayed announcement until the family had been notified. But folks updating Wikipedia were not so restrained; Igor Tossell writing for the Globe and Mail (Canada) offers some insight into why he went into the Meet the Press entry and updated history before it "happened" in the more official media.

"But the online swarm is an amoral organism that doesn't have much use for clubby gentlemen's agreements. A full 40 minutes before NBC announced the news, somebody else updated Russert's main Wikipedia entry, indicating his date of death, and changed everything to the past tense...The thing is, Wikipedia isn't really about history at all. It's actually a creature of the moment. It might be spotty on historical details, but it's the best answer we have to the question, "Where do things stand right now?" Who's alive? Who's dead? Is the Burj Dubai finished yet? What happened on the last episode of Lost? It's not so much an encyclopedia as a registry of - and I use this word with some trepidation - reality. It's an ever-changing ledger book of where things stand in our universe. And being the one to register momentous news in the ledger of life is like being God's secretary. This may or may not have been exactly what Jimmy Wales had in mind when he started Wikipedia those years ago. This probably wasn't what that benighted soul had in mind when he prematurely killed Tim Russert on Wikipedia. But the lure of being the one to update the accounts on reality will have people clamouring to yell "first" for as long as they have the option."

--Ivor Tossell
I Killed Tim Russert (on Wikipedia)
The Globe and Mail, June 27, 2008

January journal roundup

A few end of year 2007 special issues to point out:

The fourth issue of Social Semiotics (Volume 17, December 2007) is heavily devoted to Michael Jackson (Framing Michael Jackson: Celebrity on Trial) exploring "many questions about celebrity scandal, cultural performance and identity, intersecting with ideas about race, gender and sexuality," according to Jenny Kitzinger and Sujata Moorti in the issue's Introduction.

Communication Research and the Study of Surveillance is the topic of The Communication Review (Volume 10, Number 4, 2007), edited by Kelly Gates and Shoshana Magnet.

Paul J. Lavrakas edits Public Opinion Quarterly's (Volume 71, Number 5, 2007) special issue titled: Cell Phone Numbers and Telephone Surveying in the U.S. While the issue focuses on the use of cell phones in surveys, it leads off with a historical piece on two of the most influential researchers on survey methods with telephones, Warren Mitofsky and Joseph Waksberg.

The Journal of Mass Media Ethics, which explores questions of media morality, devotes a special issue (Volume 22, Number 7, 2007) to the question, "Who Is a Journalist?" Edited by Wendy Wyatt, the issue features an interesting article on the role of "fake news" (The Daily Show, The Colbert Report) in media criticism, among others.

And while not a theme issue, Comm history buffs should check out Critical Studies in Media Communication's (Volume 24, Number 5, 2007) Critical Forum which is devoted to Daniel Czitrom's Media and the American Mind with short pieces by Jack Lule, Sue Curry Jansen, David Park, Jefferson Pooley, and Peter Simonson, followed by a response to the contributors from Czitrom himself.