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DU SOL NCWEB
6th Semester GENERIC ELECTIVE (ENGLISH)
Media and Communication Skills
Unit-5 Some Significant Issues in Mass Communication
Pre-historic men developed the ability to interact with their five sensory channels. They used signs, symbols, and body language to communicate. This system is called nonverbal communication. Ancient men slowly developed language giving particular meaning to the sounds they produced on various occasions. It was a very different form of oral communication.
The idea of preservation(संरक्षण) gave birth to carvings (नक्काशी का कार्य या कला) and paintings on cave walls. They are called petroglyphs.
The evolution of modern communication has five stages based on the developments in communication technology. These stages are called the five waves of communication technology.
First Wave: The Age of Print: It was in 1456 that Johannes Guttenberg of Mainz, Germany invented movable types from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony. These types were light weight, strong and durable. He developed a method of printing with mass-producing movable types, oil-based ink, and wooden printing press. The first book he published using his machine is the famous "42-line Bible".
Second Wave: The Age of Signals: The next stage in communication technology starts with the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse. A telegraph is defined as any system that allows the transmission of the enclosed information by signals across a distance. That is why this stage is called the age of signals.
Other major advances during this stage were the telephone, photography, radio, cinema, and television. Alexander Graham Bell of Scotland invented the first practical telephone. The first bidirectional transmission of speech by Bell and his friend Watson was made on March 10, 1876. Bell said over the telephone: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you".
First photograph was produced in 1826 by a French inventor Joseph Nicephor Niepce.
Edison's Kinetoscope (a device for viewing through a magnifying lens) was an early motion picture exhibition device, developed by the U.S. inventor Thomas Alva Edison in 1888.
In 1895, the French inventors Lumiere Brothers (Auguste Lumiere and Louis Lumiere) developed a camera- cum - projector called Cinematographe.
Third Wave: The Age of Man and Machine: Invention of the computer, as a machine capable of storing, retrieving, and transmitting data, led to machine-based human communication.
Charles Babbage, a professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, is considered the Father of Computers. He first developed a mechanical computer called the 'Difference Engine' in 1822.
Later he developed a more complex machine 'Analytical Engine'. ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer.
Fourth Wave: The Age of Satellite Networks: The age of satellites began with the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite by the erstwhile Soviet Union on October 4, 1957.
After that many countries launched satellites, including communication satellites, which offer microwave radio relay of messages for radio and television broadcasting.
Approximately 2,000 artificial satellites orbiting the Earth relay analog and digital signals carrying voice, video, and data to and from one or many locations worldwide.
The first satellite television signal was relayed from Europe to the Telstar satellite over North America in 1962.
EDUSAT is India's first communication satellite dedicated exclusively to educational services. It relays messages through audio-visual medium, employing a multi-media multi-centric system, to create interactive classrooms.
Fifth Wave: The Age of Network of Networks: The fifth wave, the age of networks, began with the introduction of the Internet.
The Internet is the network of networks that connects billions of computers worldwide. Pentagon, a defense research wing of the USA, built the first computer network called Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – ARPANET during the 1960s to transfer data among their departments.
The popular use of the Internet is materialized by Tim Berners Lee, a British computer scientist, with his introduction of the World Wide Web.
Constitutional Provisions – the Freedom of the Press and its Control
The freedom of the press is guaranteed in India by this article of the Constitution, though the Constitution also places certain restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression which are also applicable to the freedom of the press and media. These restrictions have been imposed in order to ensure that there is no threat to the following:
(संविधान के इस अनुच्छेद द्वारा भारत में प्रेस की स्वतंत्रता की गारंटी दी गई है, हालांकि संविधान भाषण और अभिव्यक्ति की स्वतंत्रता पर कुछ प्रतिबंध भी लगाता है जो प्रेस और मीडिया की स्वतंत्रता पर भी लागू होते हैं। ये प्रतिबंध यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए लगाए गए हैं कि निम्नलिखित को कोई खतरा न हो)
· The sovereignty and integrity of the nation (राष्ट्र की संप्रभुता और अखंडता)
· The security of the state
· Friendly relations with foreign states
· Public order
· Decency and morality
· The restrictions are also meant to prevent the following:
· Contempt of the court
· Defamation and incitement to an offense
Right to Privacy
The term ‘privacy’ is usually used to describe the rightful claim of an individual to define the degree to which he or she wishes to share himself or herself with others and his or her control over the time, place, and circumstances to communicate with others.
It also signifies the individual’s right to control the dissemination of information about himself or herself: it is his or her own personal possession.
There can be possibly four different, though overlapping ways, in which the invasion of privacy of a person can be done by the media. They are –
· intrusion upon a person’s seclusion or solitude;
· appropriation of a person’s name or likeness;
· public disclosures of embarrassing private facts; and
· Publicity which places a person in a false light.
The Right to Information
The Right to Information is one of the basic human rights in a democratic society and is indispensable for the free flow of information.
The Right to Information Act provides for citizens’ access to information that is under the control of public authorities.
Right to Information is essential for the media as it gives the media information (barring some which are official secrets for various reasons) that can be published to keep the citizens informed about the workings of the public authority.
With the Right to Information Act becoming operative, it has become very easy for the media to gather information from the public authority by filing an RTI application. The information gathered through the RTI act helps the media be a better watchdog of the governmental processes.
The Press Council of India
The Press Council of India was set up with the idea that a democratic society needs a free and responsible press. If the Press in particular and media, in general, are “to function effectively as the watchdog of public interest” then they should have the freedom of expression which is “unfettered and unhindered by any authority.”
Copyright Act 1957
The objective of the Copyright Act is to safeguard the interests of the writer or the creator of a work of art, literature, etc. In the case of literary, dramatic, or musical work, “the Copyright Act does not authorize the doing of any of the following acts; namely:
· To reproduce the work in any material form
· To publish the work
· To perform the work in public
· To produce, reproduce, perform, or publish any translation of the work
· To make any cinematograph film or a record in respect of the work
· To communicate the work by radio transmission or to communicate to the public by loudspeaker or any other similar instrument the radio-transmission of the work
· To do in relation to a translation or an adaptation of the work any of the acts specified in relation to the work in the first four clauses.”
In India, before the enactment of the Copyright Act in 1957, British Common Law was used as the law to settle disputes relating to copyright.
FM and Privatization of Radio
With the popularity of television as well as it becomes cheaper, the significance of radio had gone down significantly as people preferred to switch on their television sets instead of radio as audio-visual media appealed to anyone more than just the audio media.
The privatization of radio led to its revival to some extent amongst the youth as we see that FM during travels in our cars is a very popular choice amongst younger generations.
A Brief History of Print Media in India
The evolution of Newspapers in India is with the introduction of the Bengal Gazette started by James Augustus Hicky in 1780 from Calcutta. Very soon other Newspapers such as Calcutta Chronicle, Madras Courier, and Bombay Herald, Bombay Courier, Bombay Gazette entered the scene and the Newspapers in Hindi and other regional languages also started flourishing in the various parts of the nation.
Bengal was the birthplace of Journalism in India and the language press. ‘Samachar Darpan’ was the first Indian language Newspaper which was a Bengali weekly newspaper introduced in 1818 and the first periodical of India in the Indian language was ‘Dig Darshan’ in Bangla language started in the same year.
Raja Rammohan Roy, who is considered the founder of the revolutionary Indian Press, recognized the power of Newspapers and used it as a vehicle for propagating his liberal ideas and eradicating the social evils prevailing in Indian society. He introduced ‘Sambad Kaumudi’ in Bengali in 1821 and published articles promoting women's education, social betterment, and awakening and development of scientific outlook.
Fake News and the Future of Journalism
Fake News impacts the readers vociferously as they feel cheated and are not able to trust the ways news is being disseminated. There are primarily three effects of fake news on people in general. They are:
· People feel ambivalent towards the “information structure” as they feel that their voices will never be heard in such an atmosphere where false news is being propagated and disseminated.
· People feel that the editorial team of the news industry is not up to their job in verifying the facts and figures and moreover proliferates news which increases their visibility.
· The cultural authority of the news industry is being questioned which not only affects journalism but also other key institutions such as science, medicine, and education.
Google, Facebook, and other social media have been misappropriated to propagate fake news and thus the credibility of the digital media has been on a decline temporarily, but that does not mean that the digital media itself is prone to such problems. Digital media has also led to the decentralization of the news industry and has made it possible for every citizen to voice their concerns and views leading to a much more democratic setup.
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