Bylines Briefs             

School hosts international conferences on trends in mass communication and culture

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication hosted two international conferences in early October that addressed the impact of communication on the modern world.

The Twelfth European Institute of Communication and Culture Colloquium on Communication and Culture on Oct. 2 focused on the theme: Communication, Citizenship and Social Policy: Re-Thinking the Limits of the Welfare State.

Saskia Sassen, professor of urban planning, Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, gave a talk titled "The State and the New Geography of Power."

The School also hosted the Ninth Annual MacBride Roundtable on Communication on Oct. 1-2.

The conference brought media scholars from around the world to Boulder to discuss mass communication trends. Boulder was the first North American site for the prestigious Roundtable, co-organized by Associate Professor Andrew Calabrese.

The theme of the conference, Global Media and Global Responsibility: A Time to Choose, examined rights and responsibilities of the press in a period of expanding technology.

Among the lecturers and panelists were Douglas Kellner, University of Texas at Austin; Joe Mehan, Columbia University; and Sakae Ishikawa, Sophia University, Japan.

In addition, Zala Volcic, a CU-Boulder journalism graduate student, presented her research on Slovene Media in the 1990s.

Stephen Bates, literary editor of the The Wilson Quarterly, marked the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Hutchins Commission report, "A Free and Responsible Press," by discussing the United States' effort to establish a voluntary code of press responsibility.

Sean MacBride, a Nobel laureate for whom the conference was named, was president of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems in the late 1970s. The commission was charged by UNESCO to write a report on world communication issues.

The controversial MacBride Report, titled "Many Voices, One World: Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication," made charges against media policies and practices, leading to industry pressure on the Reagan administration to withdraw its membership in 1983.

Since that time, efforts have been made to continue discussions deriving from the MacBride Report focusing on communication and human rights, and social and cultural citizenship.

These activities have been manifested primarily in a series of MacBride Roundtables.