Karol Jakubowicz, Ph.D.

A Warsaw Journalism Center International Conference

Palace of Culture Warsaw, Poland

October 11-12, 1997

Co-organized and co-sponsored by

the Goethe Institute, the Polish National Broadcast Council, the German Embassy, and the American Embassy

Note: This material is Copyright, 1997, by Karol Jakubowicz, Ph.D.

The Audience and Its Rights and Needs

With reference to T.H. Marshall's classic analysis of the three basic aspects of citizenship -- civil, political and social -- Murdock and Golding (1989) argue that communication rights must be seen as an indispensable extension of social rights. They identify three main kinds of relations between communications and citizenship:

First, people must have access to the information, advice and analysis that will enable them to know what their rights are in other spheres and allow them to pursue these rights effectively. Second, they must have access to the broadest possible range of information, interpretation, and debate on areas that involve political choices, and they must be able to use communications facilities in order to register criticism, mobilize opposition, and propose alternative courses of action. And third, they must be able to recognize themselves and their aspirations in the range of representations offered within the central communications sectors and be able to contribute to developing their representations.

As far as the need for information and interpretation is concerned, Bardoel (1996) distinguishes between „instrumental journalism” (devoted to providing information) and „orientating journalism”, serving to provide a general orientation, background, commentary and explanation to the public. Both have been part of „classical journalism” which:

in a society held together less by geographical and physical relationships than by medial and symbolic links [has been] a conductor of social debate and a broker of social consensus ... the „social superego” and the „moral regulator” for the coordination of society (Bardoel, 1996: 297).

Civil society has traditionally been mediated by professional and democratic gatekeepers - whether they were journalists and editors, political parties, teachers, etc. - who guarded the flow of information to the citizens, helped organise civic discourse and opinion, and so the process of decision-making. They were a force of cohesion in society, in part by creating a common political vocabulary, a common political agenda and by assisting the formation of public opinion.

Accordingly, the audience has always relied to the media and journalists to perform many functions, A general list of the tasks that the media ought to fulfill in a democratic system has been developed by Jûrgen Habermas, the German sociologist (quoted in Cohen, 1996: 47):

1. Surveillance of the socio-political environment, reporting developments likely to impinge, positively or negatively, on the welfare of citizens;

2. Meaningful agenda-setting;

3. Providing a platform for for illuminating advocacy by politicians and spokesperson for other causes and interest groups;

4. Facilitating a dialogue across a diverse range of views, as well as between power-holders and mass publics;

5. Creating a mechanism for holding officials accountable for how they exercised power;

6. Providing incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved in public life;

7. Putting up a principled resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence.

The need for the journalist and his/her editor in all these functions this is eloquently expressed by Elihu Katz (n.d.: 9):

Some people argue that CNN-type journalism empowers the viewer to be his own editor. Perhaps so, but personally, I would like to delegate the editing of my news to a professional editor. Even if I were given the opportunity of interviewing George Bush or Saddam Hussein directly, I would rather it were done by a professional interviewer. What I do not wish to forgo is that this work be done with me in mind.

On the last aspect of communication mentioned by Murdock and Golding, it is true that one of the most deeply felt needs addressed to the media is that for self-recognition in media content. People want to recognize themselves, their ideas, their way of life in images of reality offered by the media. Additionally, there is a "social identity" motivation for media use: people want to maintain and strengthen their social identities through what they see, hear, and read in the media, and, as a consequence, reinforce group affiliation, values and identity.

Groups seek to promote their interests and to project their identity. This is why they regard inadequate or tendentiously negative presentation in media content as a gravely prejudicial form of injustice. And this is also why, when they cannot gain access to the media to remedy that situation, they seek in many cases to establish their own community, alternative, "parallel" and "free" media.

In all these cases, psycho-social needs and expectations addressed to the media add special urgency and poignance to the role of the media in a democracy. It is hard to overestimate their importance. Consistent failure to satisfy them generates an overwhelming feeling of frustration and alienation in members of the audience. This is what is likely to happen primarily in an undemocratic country, where the media may be used for political propaganda purposes and to paint a rosy picture of the situation in the country, potentially considerably different from the reality people experience every day.

For all these reasons, in a later work Murdock (1996) points out that full citizenship is now seen as requiring the exercise of not only civil, political and social, but also full cultural rights. These are:

· Rights to Information;

· Rights to Experience: rights of access to the greatest possible diversity of representations of personal and social experience in fictional media genres (especially television ones), aiding efforts to answer fundamental questions which invariably spring up in people’s lives;

· Rights to Knowledge: rights to explanations of patterns, processes and forces shaping the present and of its links with the past, helping translate information and experience into knowledge and develop personal and social strategies;

· Rights to Participation (in communication and through it in public life).

To complete this very brief and general overview of audience needs and rights in the field of communication, we must also mention the right not to communicate, and especially the right not to be communicated to, to escape omnipresent media and channels of communication which increasingly bury individuals under an avalanche of public and private communication messages.

New Information and Communication Technologies: What Impact on the Media and Journalism?

The following figure illustrates the main patterns of social communication.

[What follows is a rough effort to approximate Dr. Jakubowicz's reproduction of the Bordewijk, van Kaam chart. -- Nicholas Johnson]

Source: Bordewijk, van Kaam, 1986.

Mass communication has so far conformed to the allocutory pattern. With digitization of the means of communication, the emergence of the new technologies introduced a qualitatively new situation into mediated communication by making it possible ultimately to invest practically every act of such communication with the following three features:

INTERACTIVITY: communication participants can interact, engage in conversation, are in a feedback situation

INDIVIDUALIZATION: communication can be addressed to an individual or group, not necessarily to a mass audience

POTENTIALLY ASYNCHRONOUS CHARACTER: the message need not be received as it is sent; it can potentially be stored and retrieved later

Thus, the development of new information and communication technologies, with their great profusion of highly diversified content create infinitely more opportunities for individuals and groups to communicate: „when we use our telefax, telephone, mobile telephone and e-mail - we are all senders - whether strong or weak” (Rasmussen, 1996: 64). These new „network media”, as Rasmussen calls them, create new structures of communication, complementing both face-to-face and mass communication.

New technologies can immeasurably boost the active communication capacity of virtually all members of society. Especially digitization has made possible the convergence of point-to-point telecommunications, electronic mass media and computers which, when taken to its ultimate conclusion, is designed (if the policies and market trends today taking shape continue) to create what is known as the Global Information Infrastructure (GII), composed of products which include a wide variety of wired and wireless telephone equipment, personal computers that communicate in highly multifarious data sources, and audio-video equipment that convey entertainment and information (in many cases interactively) to a vast host of consumers. Thanks to this, GII is to become

an information environment enabling people to communicate with each other and access information any time, anywhere - a network of people linked by interoperable and competing public and private commercial networks, connected to public and private sources of information, and using the most appropriate means for communicating their ideas (such as audio, text, images, video, braille and multimedia) in natural, straightforward ways” (Electronic Industries Association, 1995: i)

This, then, means that GII would ensure prevalence of „conversation” as the dominant model of human and social communication.

Bardoel (1996) lists the following forms of impact of new technology:

· explosion of information; more new information is produced and there is easier access to sources of information;

· growing amount of information;

· speed of information circulation is steadily increasing;

· and the density of information is growing also, with public and private spaces packed with information.

All this greatly boost what he calls „communication pressure” existing in society. In line with this, Rasmussen points out that „increasing heterogeneity, complexity and speed of information in contemporary society calls for more differentiated, more rapid and more flexible media” than the old mass media.

What does all this mean for the mass media and journalism?

New information and communication technologies make possible the creation of individual symbolic universes -- by and for each person separately. This can take the form of the „electronic newspaper”, i.e. „The Daily Me”: „an electronic device that searches the world’s information sources and databases and pulls together a digest or collection that reflects your own individual set of preferences and interests, as defined by you and specified in your search software -- in short, your own user profile” (Winsbury, 1994: 30). With the profusion of content offered by cable and satellite television and control made possible by the VCR, they, too, can be turned into „personal media”. As Rasmussen (1996) points out, this means that every individual can potentially become a social actor.

In other words, the role of the journalist may be reduced:

· the information explosion means that the part played by the journalistic product will decrease, as audiences can access information directly;

· the growing amount of information means that the audience can devote less time to particular news items or stories; zapping has become the order of the day as audience members race to keep up with the flow:

· for the journalist, faster reporting means less time for selection and processing; as the time difference between the event and report is decreasing, those involved are allowed less time to give their reactions. The life of public issues is shortened as the publicity process speeds up. This decreases rather than increases the scope for journalists to explain, interpret and give meanings to events: „The processing of new from the Vietnamese jungles for broadcast in New York took some 30 hours, compared to the Gulf’s no-time-at-all ... there was non-stop information without interpretation and non-stop interpretation without information” (Katz, n.d.: 7).

· with the shifting emphasis from allocution to consultation, it is increasingly to the receiver that the task of selection falls, giving them more power over choice of information source;

· journalists find it increasingly difficult to attract the public’s attention, especially as individuals seek the defence of being „absently present” to the danger of being swamped by information, and in many cases tune out of the information flow: „artificial memories, such as the answering machine, video recorder, fax and personal computer afford an escape from the pressure of permanent accessibility and direct communication, and allow messages to be received later -- or not at all” (Bardoe, 1996: 291).

What is increasingly happening is a process of disintermediation, of the removal of the media as intermediaries between the public and information. It is claimed that with direct on-line access to data bases, news services and a profusion of other information sources, the public will no longer need the media and editors to mediate between them and reality and will derive their information in „raw” form, rather than as processed and edited by the media.

Disintermediation is already happening to some extent. Katz singles CNN out for special consideration in this respect:

News is like hot potatoes for CNN. Like other American networks, it collects its news as quickly as possible via satellite connections to reporters and other sources throughout the world. Unlike the other networks, however, it also uses satellites to distribute the news as quickly as possible. Af first glance, this sounds like the ideal deployment of the new media technology. The only trouble is that it eliminates the editor. Rather than collecting information and trying to make sense of it in time for the evening news broadcast, the CNN ideal is to do simultaneous, almost-live editing, or better yet, no editing at all (Katz, n.d.: 8-9).

Also the practice of Euronews to broadcast segments called „No Comment” shows the existence of a trend towards „télévision verité„, which like its predecessor -- „cinéma verité„ puts a premium on as faithful a record of reality as possible, without editorial or directorial interference.

While putting the information receivers in control, this situation may also have considerable drawbacks from their point of view. Information Society is said to create a state of tension, alienation and anomie caused by the meaning crisis brought on by man's limited capacity for understanding of, and adjustment to, ever-increasing amounts of information and rates of change (Klapp, 1982).

This may mean that, as Sepstrup (1987) has pointed out, the passive majority will be content to take advantage of the "video dimension of information society:" the profusion of television channels, cable, video games, etc., and only a relatively small active group will be able to gain mastery of new information technologies ("the data dimension") of the information society. Also English media scholar Michael Tracey asks whether the prevailing model of future society will be a „civics” or a „circus” model. Will we have, he asks,

a new sophisticated citizenry or a new ignorance drowning in trivialized pleasures and an obsessive tele-consumerism; accessing the post-industrial Alexandrian library or Mortal Kombat 50; feeding democracy by massively amplifying access to news and analysis or, through a plentitude of distraction, producing a culture parched and ignorant; or a mix of all of the above (Tracey, 1994: 42).

Another aspect of the same situation is that through electronic networks citizens are approached separately, without there being a common identity or a shared debate. This direct democracy would lack the mechanisms of common consideration and working out compromise acceptable to the majority that are inherent in representative democracy. This centrifugal force may inaugurate an era of direct civic discourse, but may also usher in disorientation of individuals, who are already having difficulty adjusting to rapid change in society. This could destabilise communities and in an era already distrustful of political and other leaders, further fragment societies and weaken a sense of responsibility to others.

The shared public world could diminish. Multiple, unique and potentially unshared private worlds based on various interests or idiosyncracies could emerge and dominate ... If readers and viewers delete certain kinds of political news from their personal profiles during non-election periods, how will they remain acquainted with ongoing public political issues? And what will alert them to the need to re-acquaint themselves and re-select domestic political news at election times or at times of crisis? ... These emerging systems raise important questions about how shared social and political frameworks can be established in complex pluralistic societies. How will it be possible to conduct social and political debate in this new environment? (Firestone, 1994/5: 22).

In other words, as Les Brown (1994) points out, the paradox of democratizing media in such a manner (creating possibilities of individuals and groups living in worlds of their own, weakening both geographic and national communities) is that it leads to a lesser form of democracy, with people and communities detached from the dialogue that is vital to democracy.

Predicting Future Scenarios

The main question is whether the new network technologies will replace the old mass media, and how the outcome will affect journalism. After all, as Teresa Sasiñska-Klas (1997: 3) asks „do we regard as a journalist someone who introduces data onto the World Wide Web?”.

For the time being, we see both the emergence of new types of journalism on the Web and the introduction of traditional media onto it. On the one hand, in June 1997 there were some 4000 on-line publications available on the Internet, differing from traditional newspapers and periodicals by their use of multimedia capabilities. In June 1997, 1290 „traditional” newspapers were available on the Internet in the US, 639 in other countries and the introduction of 128 newspapers more was pending (Gogo³ek, 1997). In the U.S. the number of radio stations using the Web to carry their programming rose from 56 in 1996 to 430 in 1997, i.e. by 624%, and there are 42 stations relying solely on the Web.The Fox Television 24-hour new network, finding it hard to get onto cable systems already committed to carrying more established news networks, turned to the Web to carry its Webcasts. Other services available include ABC, CNN All Politics, HBO, Korean Daily TV News, The Sports Network (Canada), etc.

Rasmussen (1996: 63) predicts that the traditional mass media will not disappear, but will simply „take [their] place in a broader, more pluralistic tele-graphic culture. The new media locate mass communication in its historical context and demonstrate other means of communicating over long distances”. Bardoel (1996) makes a similar prediction with regard to journalism: as new journalistic practices and ways of obtaining and packaging information develop, classical will now, he says, be one of a number of options regarding the way media users obtain their information. They will be able to choose between:

· such information services and product/market combinations as „electronic newspapers”, prepared by information processing specialists who could be called „information brokers”;

· the work prepared by traditional journalists;

· and raw information sources or files/databases.

The reasons why traditional journalists will most likely stay on are social and psychological as much as professional. The fact that huge and ever-growing amounts of information (whatever its quality) reach the public is proving counter-productive in terms of the public's ability to understand contemporary reality. Beaudrillard (1980: 139) calls it an "implosion of meaning": instead of facilitating communication, he says, information exhausts itself in the staging of communication. Jean-Pierre Dupuy (1980) puts it succintly "More and more information, less and less meaning".

Faced with a mass of information which there is no time to digest or analyse, often relating to developments, countries or individuals they have no or little knowledge of, people often treat such news in a state of „suspended belief” for lack of a frame of reference within which to place it, and thus of an ability really to understand it. Faced, in the context of disintermediation, with the constant need to choose which of a great mass of news to receive, people may „lose their way on the information highway”, and potentially opt out of it.

Hence, it is pointed out, the need for new intermediaries and gate-keepers, capable of performing the functions of agenda-setting, of making sense of events and focussing attention on issues of importqance. Several authors point to the role of broadcasters in this respect. Saito (1995: 33) makes the argument that as the multimedia era approaches, the broadcast media, which have long played a fundamental role in society, will likely take on increasingly important functions: „they will be needed to shine the light of journalism over society”. Others point specifically to public broadcasters: „if the public sphere cannot be maintained by the commercial media, its preservation could devolve to public service broadcasters” (White, 1994: 22). The International Federation of Journalists (1995: 14) stresses the crucial importance of public service broadcasting: „In a world where the electronic media is increasingly dominated by international channels and producers, it is vital to continue with national public service radio and television systems. The continuation of broadcast and production of programmes of high quality with regard to ethics, responsibility, journalistic versatility and quality must be maintained”.

As far as traditional journalism is concerned, this will probably give a higher profile to „orientating journalism” than to „instrumental journalism”, since the job of obtaining information will no longer be so important:

More than ever, the task of journalism will lie in filtering relevant issues from an increasing supply of information in a crowded public domain and its fragmented segments. Journalism evolves from the provision of facts to the provision of meaning. In the new ocean of information, „navigation” is desperately needed. Information in itself is less important than communication shared with others. Communication rather than information becomes the key word, and journalists have a long tradition of bringing minds together ... „Journalism” - if it ever existed as such - is falling apart. On the one hand, there is a need for information brokers, on the other, for directors and conductors of the public debate. The function of classical journalism will probably shifr to the latter position ... Greater individual freedom produces, more than ever, the need for common orientation. This might be the most important mission for journalists in the future (Bardoel, 1996: passim).

On the other hand, „instrumental journalism” will have to redefine its identity and professional practices for application on the new technologies. „Information brokers” will need to explore and develop new techniques in the direction of meaningful and profitable exploitation of information services. A knowledge of technology, or layout (computer graphics), and of the compact, brief and sequential presentation of information via menus and trees, is essential. Information and database management will also grow in importance. So will understanding of marketing and an orientation towards target groups, since direct audience feedback via interactive techniques and payment by individuals per unit used will mean direct dependence on consumers. Already now on-line journalists sometimes find it hard to deal with direct and immediate audience reaction and criticism. At the same time, they put a premium on an individual style and a more personalized journalistic approach.

Another clear trend will be the need for journalists to work for different media, since the maxim „Single source, multiple media” is gaining currency in media conglomerates today. Competitive pressures and the need to cut costs lead many newspaper groups and media conglomerates to consolidate functions, and so increasingly to recycle news reports and stories, or other journalistic inputs for use in different media. It can be expected that journalists will find themselves more frequently on publishing desks, together with layout and marketing staff, and that many will work individually and from a distance as modern teleworkers.

Journalism will not die, but it will certainly have to change. Human beings and their needs (some of which were listed above) are not likely to change as fast as the technology does, and the need to meet those needs will keep journalists in their old and new guises in business for a long time to come.

REFERENCES

Bardoel, J. (1996) „Beyond Journalism: a Profession between Information Society and Civil Society”, European Journal of Communication, Vol. 11, No. 3: 283-302.

Beaudrillard, J. (1980): `The Implosion of Meaning in the Media and the Implosion of the Social in the Masses' in: K. Woodward, Ed., The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture, Madison: Coda Press.

Bordewijk, J.L., B. van Kaam (1986) ‘Towards a New Classification of Teleinformation Services’ InterMedia 14(1): 16-21.

Cohen, J.L. (1996) ‘The Public Sphere, the Media and Civil Society’. (In:) A. Sajó, M. Price (Eds.) Rights of Access to the Media. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.

Dupuy, J-P. (1980) „Myths of the Informational Society” in: K. Woodward, Ed., The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture, Madison: Coda Press.

Electronic Industries Association, Telecommunications Industry Association (1995) White Paper on the Global Information Infrastructure: Principles and Promise (Pre-publication draft copy).Mimeo.

Firestone, C. (1994/5): ‘Digital culture and civil society: a new role for intermediaries?’. InterMedia 22 (6).

Gogo³ek, W. (1997) Prasa w Internecie. Paper presented to a Seminar „Media and Journalism at the Turn of the Century”, Warsaw, June 6-7.

International Federation of Journalists (1995) Information Society: Access and Pluralism. Brussels.

Katz, E. (n.d.) The End of Journalism. Notes on Watching the War. Mimeo.

Klapp, O. (1982): `Meaning Lag in the Information Society', Journal of Communication, Vol. 32, No. 2.

Murdock, G. (1996) „Rights and Representations: Public Discourse and Cultural Citizenship”. (In:) J. Gripstrud (Ed.) Media and Knowledge. The Role of Television. Bergen: Department of Media Studies, University of Bergen.

Murdock, G., Golding P. (1989): „Information Poverty and Political Inequity: Citizenship in the Age of Privatized Communications” Journal of Communication 3(39): 180-195.

Saito, M. (1995) ‘The social mission of multimedia and broadcasting: the case for coexistence’ InterMedia Vol. 23 (1).

Sasiñska-Klas, T. (1997) Edukacja w zakresie dziennikarstwa i wiedzy o komunikowaniu w koñcu XX wieku. Paper presented to a Seminar „Media and Journalism at the Turn of the Century”, Warsaw, June 6-7.

Sepstrup, P. (1987) `Media Policy in a World of Changing Media Patterns' (in:) A. Smudits, ed., New Media: A Challenge to Cultural Policies. Wien: VWGO.

Winsbury, R. (1994) ‘The electronic newspaper: no longer just a gizmo, but fundamental to the survival of the newspaper industry?’ InterMedia 22 (1).

Rasmussen, T. (1996) „Tele-graphy in the Post-Broadcasting Era”, Nordicom Review, No. 1

Tracey, M. (1994) ‘A civics model or a circus model: which will prevail?’. InterMedia 22 (3).

White, P. R. (1994) ‘Fragmentation of news - fragmentation of politics?’ InterMedia 22 (3).

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