These essays were delivered at a symposium held April 5–10, 1981, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Participants from all over the United States, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe debated the question of a “new world” information and communication order.
In his keynote address, José Mayobre analyzed the new information order debate in reference to Third World claims to increased participation. Mayobre, along with Adelumola Ogunade and Georgina Encanto, discussed communication and national development in terms of ethnic integration and definitions of “development news.” Chin-Chuan Lee, Reda Khalifa, and Hyeon-Dew Kang discussed the media image of the United States in China, Egypt, and South Korea. Jeremy Tunstall focused on Anglo-American cultural and administrative hegemony in world information and the entertainment media.
Jaspar Hsu criticized the general performance of American news media in treating events from abroad. Erwin Atwood and Stuart Bullion considered how news content may contribute to the formation of “mental maps” of the world.
Considerations of education for international communication included a call for a humanistic approach by Hanno Hardt; K. S. Sitaram’s comments on intercultural communication; and Sylvanus Ekewlie’s case study of journalism in Nigeria.
Kaarle Nordenstreng asserted that journalists and their news organizations tend to echo their home countries’ ideological orientations. Panel discussions were conducted by Morris Rosenberg, Jae Won Lee, and Joseph Ashcroft, among others.
