Reading Room Search
Go here for complete Reading Room Article Index
Displaying 426 - 450 of 607
Photolanguage is a technique that utilizes evocative and symbolic pictures for self-expression, communications and group development.
The term was coined in France in the mid-1960s by the religious audio-visual thinkers Pierre Babin, Will, and Claire Belisle and their colleagues at the Centre Recherche et Communication/Audio Visuel Expression de lajoi (CREC-AVEX) in Lyons, France. They developed a method and published several sets of Photolanguage which, in turn, inspired other collections around the world.
The challenge of creating a photolanguage for the Philippines was tackled by Jesuit... Read More
What are Group Media? An Early Experiment in Media Education
In our mass media world, where do tom-toms fit? This article describes an early media education movement to empower small groups around the world to 'develop social consciousness and critical perceptiveness.' By Don Roper
Finding an adequate and descriptive term for a new concept or program is always a challenge. In the case of the activity we are designating here by the words 'group media," the struggle to name it properly relates directly to difficulties in defining the concept itself.
Historically, this challenge was initially faced by the Central Committee of the newly formed World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) when it met in London in 1975. The organization had crystallized around two print and electronic Media Development Units and had also formed a Commission for Communication... Read More
Challenge of Group Media, The
From the Third World comes a powerful new approach to education in a media age By Elizabeth Thoman, CHM
From Nigeria to Indonesia a new approach to communications has emerged in the past decade.
Called "group media" or 'group communication" the emphasis is less on the media PRODUCT (whether newspaper, video production or puppet show) and more on the PROCESS that happens when a group of people use a media experience to uncover new insights about themselves and their relationships — to one another, to their social, political or economic condition, even to their God.
Group media, as a category in the communications field, has emerged out of the use of communications for education, particularly... Read More
On Thursday, June 1, 1982, a delivery truck eased to a stop at Federal Communications Commission headquarters and a perspiring crew of workers began to unload a 57,600 page mountain of densely worded Bell System documents.
They weren't lawyers' briefs protesting the telephone system's breakup, as might have been expected. Rather, they were a bid for one of the most appealing slices of the newly divided telecommunications pie.
Ma Bell was staking a claim to a key role in a communications system that may one day have us all speaking into our wrist watches, a la Dick Tracy: cellular radio.... Read More
If you're like most people, you're dubious, to say the least, about the possibility of talking to your ORT screen.
But the prospect of interactive computer technology, in which you put information into a system for intelligent processing and two-way communication, shouldn't be so threatening because you've been dealing with an "interactive communications medium" for practically your whole life.
You don't remember that, you say? Well, you started learning how to use it about the time you started to talk. It's called the telephone.
In fact, now that computer and telephone technology have... Read More
Confound it! It Talks!
Early phone users had to master the 'how' as well as the ‘what for.' By Rosalind Silver
It's the spring of 1876. and people are talking about a new device that promises to handle essential communication tasks previously reserved to humans.
Not surprisingly, its presence raises questions and anxiety. Will it disrupt social relations, throw people out of work, destroy privacy? What will happen to existing systems? Will only business and the wealthy be able to afford it?
During the next century, answers to those concerns about the telephone — yes, the telephone — were ultimately found. Today we take this ubiquitous communications system almost for granted. But to Alexander Graham... Read More
Media&Values founding editor Sr. Elizabeth Thoman, CHM, was honored October 10 in Washington, DC with the Faith and Freedom Award for religious communications presented by the Religious Heritage of America.
She is the first Catholic sister and one of the few women to receive the award for "outstanding and creative" use of the media to communicate the ethics and principles of religious values.
A national interfaith organization, the R.H.A. has given the award in the past to communications leaders of many denominations including Dr. Everett Parker of the United Church of Christ, Lilian... Read More
As the World Watches: Media Events are Modern 'Holy Days'
How television's coverage of extraordinary events creates meaning for our lives. By Rosalind Silver
That bright morning in 1961 should have been a normal commuting day. But police monitoring the early morning traffic in California became more and more puzzled by a break in the pattern. Instead of proceeding to work, an ever- growing number of commuters slowed down, pulled off the road and parked. They were listening to the radio.
Since the patrolling officers did not have AM radio, it took them a while to realize the cause of this phenomenon. The bemused drivers were merely joining the workers, housewives and students who were already gathered around television sets in homes, offices, and... Read More
The censorship of the classics — from Shakespeare to the Grapes of Wrath — is an old story, but it is happening again. According to a recent survey of school librarians, 34 percent have had challenges on specific works, with many parents or individuals lodging complaints, often fanned by the flames of moral outrage stirred up by national interest groups.
Book burning rallies are the extreme, but recent crusaders have pressed for the elimination of such acclaimed books as Huckleberry Finn, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and 1984. In some cases, teachers or librarians are threatened with... Read More
Marcus Welby Speaks: Health Messages on TV
Today's media provides a wealth of information and images about our habits and our health. Only some of it may be good for us. By Elizabeth Thoman, CHM
First there was Ben Casey. Then Marcus Welby and later the staff of General Hospital.
Almost from the beginning of network television, programmers knew instinctively that the public was hungry for information and images about what makes the human body function and how it affects our happiness.
In the health revolution of recent years that hunger has not abated. If anything, it has increased and the proliferation of media outlets — and new technology — feeds us a smorgasbord of opportunities to learn more about our bodies and our health.
There are two ways to look at health education via the... Read More
When the people of prehistoric cultures got sick, they called on the traditional skills of the tribe's shaman, who applied a combination of magic, closely guarded herbal secrets and psychology to cure the sufferer.
If the patient died, the witch doctor was likely to blame the gods, who were obviously punishing the patient for sins committed or taboos violated.
Modern patients, on the other hand, are apt to be hooked up to the latest computerized medical device, which uses its own magic to picture and photograph their inner workings, monitor their vital signs and serve as a guide to... Read More
Pictures Without Bias
How to Avoid Discrimination in Visual Media Stewart L. Burge and Judy E. Pickens.
Editor's Note (1983):
Communications has provided the legs for bias, carrying it from person to person, generation to generation. Communicators can help end discrimination by selecting not only words but also images that are bias-free.
Whether one puts out a newsletter, delivers a sermon or creates a television production, there is growing sensitivity by responsible leaders and communicators to words and phrases that imply stereotyping or discrimination against others.
Already "firefighter" is quickly replacing "fireman" and "grandfatherly" is increasingly obsolete in an era of 65-year-old... Read More
Rewarding the Messenger
'Communicator' Award Recognizes a Media Professional's Vision and Values By Rosalind Silver
Unlike the ancient kings of legend, our society gives its communications kudos to the bringers of bad news.
Reversing that trend by making sure that some of the honors go to the bringers of good news is the purpose of the new Media&Values Communicator Award established this year by the Board of Directors of the Center for Communications Ministry.
The 1983 award — the first — was presented March 7 to Dr. Richard Byrne, a professor of communications and computer specialist, at the Center's first Annual Celebration and meeting of members. Dr. Byrne was honored as "an outstanding... Read More
The following is excerpted from the text of Dr. Byrne's remarks when he accepted the 1983 Media&Values Communicator Award
"I currently see the world divided into two camps, and they're not equal in size. There are people in the world who think that something is going on and people who don't.
The people who think something is going on call it the Communication Revolution or the Information Age or the Post-Industrial Society. They believe that computers are real and that they work, and that we ought to be using them to make life valuable.
The others don't believe any of that works, and... Read More
For three decades we have been concerned about the effect and affect of computers on human life. We have been obsessed with the delivery system. We should have been questioning the effect and affect of information availability on human life.
The convergence of computers and communications has altered our lives because of what they do with information, not because of what they are."...the newspaper has arguably reached the limits of its growth as a form in that the costs of its raw materials are beginning to outweigh the advantages of distribution and delivery to so wise an audience. If it... Read More
The "Information Age" is dawning. We all know it, we see it around us in new products and services which come on the market almost daily.
To the average consumer, this might appear to be a helter-skelter evolution of new hardware gadgets for the home, all based on miniaturized integrated circuits.
There are computer "chips" in our toasters, cars, shavers, calculators, microwave ovens, radios, clocks, and in some of our television sets. Computer power of a proportion unthinkable even ten years ago is thus already in millions of homes.
Institutions in the vanguard of this new age know that the... Read More
Are you ready for the optical reception of announcements by coded line electronics drawn from a universal databank encoded by the Information Providers?
Well, get ready because its coming and it's bringing the Information Age into your life.
What we are talking about is simply the marriage of television (both cable and broadcast), computers and the telephone. The result will be generically known as videotex, or the display of words and graphics on a television screen by means of some kind of control mechanism.
Simple systems may use some- thing like a pocket calculator. More sophisticated... Read More
For most of us, getting information is still a matter of seeking out some expert or a "trusted friend." Or we pore through books, newspapers and professional reports hoping to find the precise information we need.
Now the linking of computers to a television screen promises an information revolution in our lives. Sitting in the comfort of our homes or offices with a keypad in hand, we will be able to call up on the screen literally any sort of information from any part of the world.
Like the initial stages of cinema, radio and television, the next ten years will be critical in deciding the... Read More
Coming of Age! Media&Values at 21
We celebrate our 21st issue with plans for future development. Elizabeth Thoman, Editor
Twenty-one… a magic age on the road from youth to maturity.
In the publishing world, it is said that if a magazine can make it through the first five years, it will make it for ten.
And so, this issue of Media&Values is a double celebration. It's our 21st issue and the beginning of our sixth year of publication. It is, for us, a magic time, full of gratitude for growth as well as eager anticipation of future development.
As editor and publisher these five years, I am most grateful for all the people who have made Media&Values a reality four times a year. This includes not only present... Read More
An understanding of the impact of cartoons rests in part on an appreciation of the cartoon code, how and why it works the way it does. Under scrutiny, the cartoon code is surprisingly complex, but it is not without logic. There are a handful of basic techniques which the cartoonist manipulates to create a symbolic world of make-believe.
Basically, cartoonists, as all good communicators, transmit information through three processes: leveling, sharpening and assimilation
In the process of leveling, communication is simplified. The cartoonist radically "levels" what we usually see in our... Read More
When "Doonesbury's" Joanie Caucus walked out on her husband and daughter last year, some saw her action as a dramatic coming-of-age for comic strip women.
The actions of Gamy Trudeau's liberated feminist, are important because she represents a link between "girl" and "woman" in the evolution of female cartoon characters, says Kathleen Turner, a mass media specialist at Notre Dame.
"Comic strips," she says, "encapsulate the important images of women at various times in our society's history."
For example, the first strip about a woman, "Polly and Her Pals," featured a "tall, attractive young... Read More
A Comic Strip Writer has Got to Understand Life
An exclusive interview with Doonesbury artist, Don Canton By Shirley Koritnik, SCL
How are you benefiting from the partnership of an insightful New York City writer and a reflective Kansas City artist? They've been peopling your breakfast table with hundreds of characters every morning for almost twelve years now.
They call themselves GB. Trudeau and Don Canton. You call them "Doonesbury," and smile with a certain admiration and fondness. Zonker. Duke. Joanie Caucus. Lacey Davenport. Professor Kissinger. Rev. Scott Sloane, Jr., "the fighting young priest who talks to youth." The playful barb.
"A comic strip writer has really got to understand life: how and why people behave... Read More
The comics. They may be worth a glance as you check your horoscope. They may provide a chuckle as you sip your morning coffee. But seriously? You can' take the comics seriously!
Au contraire. The comics are taken quite seriously -- by fans whose complaints deluge any newspaper that dares cancel a strip, by semi-literate adults who can find in them a sort of pictographic "Ann Landers" and certainly by historians and analysts of popular culture who regard the "funnies" as a revelatory aspect of cultural history.
The comics, say these experts, offer a cross-section of human psychology and... Read More
Once upon a time the computer was a big machine with millions of vacuum tubes that lived in an air conditioned room. People were either afraid of it or in awe of those who knew its secrets
Then it got smaller and sprouted transistors. It found its way into the "computing departments" of large corporations.
Some thought it would stay there but in the past few years it has begun to appear in the upstairs office of a small publisher, the living rooms of thousands of homes and even, yes, the church secretary's desk. Along the way the computer, now personal-size, has gotten a lot friendlier, a lot... Read More
With my 'electronic lapel pin" blinking away on my jacket, I picked up the file of materials I had been gathering for this issue of Media&Values.
Evidence of the technology I'm reading about are all around.
...I push a few buttons and in seconds connect by satellite to someone in New York who clarifies a question in a manuscript.
...I fumble around on the desk for my credit card-size calculator to add up lines of type and compute crop marks on the photos.
...Headlines come, haltingly at times, out of my correcting electric typewriter but every time have to type anything twice I dream... Read More