Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

The Limits Of Journalism: How Fictional Narrative Compensates For Journalism's Shortcomings In John Banville's The Book Of Evidence, Ian Kilroy

Irish Communication Review

AS A NOVELIST AND JOURNALIST, John Banville (1945–) straddles two worlds. A former chief-sub-editor with the Irish Press, as well as former literary editor of the Irish Times (O’Toole 1989: 25), his narrative practice draws on the principals and paradigms of both fictional and journalistic composition. Indeed, it is only with commercial success as a novelist in recent years that Banville has left day-to-day professional journalism behind him, although he still does regularly contribute to newspapers and magazines. His employment of journalistic methodologies in his professional life is related to his concerns as a novelist. Journalism’s search for an objective, …

Community Radio Development And Public Funding For Programme Production: Options For Policy, Niamh Farren, Ciaran Murray, Kenneth Murphy

Irish Communication Review

This paper originates in a wider research project funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s media research scheme.1 The project arose out of collaboration between community media practitioners and academics. The project sought to provide a comparative analysis of national ‘programme production schemes’ which are open to the community radio sector in other states. A key context for that research was the legislative requirement that the programme production scheme run by the BAI pay attention to the ‘the developmental needs of community broadcasters’. An additional context for the research was the criticism from within the sector that the BAI’s scheme …

Dropping The Captain: Louis Mcredmond At The Irish Independent 1968-70, John Horgan

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

Untangling The Web: An Evaluation Of The Digital Strategies Of Irish News Organisations, Paul Hyland

Irish Communication Review

As Ireland’s print media continue to suffer a drop in their circulations, how important is the implementation of a viable and, above all, profitable web strategy, and how extensively are these currently being employed within four Irish news organisations? These include Ireland’s three best selling dailies: The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Irish Daily Star, and a regional newspaper with a notable online presence, the Limerick Leader. This research examines the day-to-day operations of Irish news organisations; the resources devoted to their digital media/online departments, the revenue-generation strategies in place to monetize the work of these departments; and …

From Fun Factory To Current Affairs Machine: Coping With The Outbreak Of The Troubles At Ulster Television 1968-70, Orla Lafferty

Irish Communication Review

THE INDEPENDENT TELEVISION NETWORK has received only limited critical academic analysis and, as a consequence, there is a particular dearth of research into commercial broadcasting in Britain, but more specifically commercial broadcasting in Northern Ireland. In their publication ITV Cultures: Independent Television over fifty years, Catherine Johnson and Rob Turnock (2005) attempt to address this lack of scholarly analysis of ITVs’ regional structure but Ulster Television does not factor in their study. Whilst UTV at 50, a publication released for the company’s 50th Anniversary in 2009, provides some interesting insights into its progression as a broadcaster, it is primarily anecdotal. …

An Examination Of Seán Gallagher's Presidential Campaign In A Hybridized Media Environment, Siobhan Graham, John Hogan

Irish Communication Review

Political communications is an underdeveloped area of research in Ireland. There is no precise definition of political communications as the topic has developed as an ‘interdisciplinary endeavor, drawing on theoretical, philosophical, and practical foundations of diverse disciplines of study, including communication, political science, history, psychology, and sociology, among others’ (Miller and McKerrow, 2010: 61–2). Nimmo and Sanders (1981: 12) describe political communications as ‘one of three intervening processes (political leadership, and group structures being the other two) by means of which political influences are mobilized and transmitted between formal governmental institutions, on the one hand, and citizens voting behavior, on …

Edward Kennedy: The Reporter At War, Michael Scully

Irish Communication Review

ASSOCIATED PRESS WAR CORRESPONDENT Edward Kennedy (1905–1963) was among the 17 journalists chosen to witness Germany’s surrender, ending Allied combat operations in Europe during World War II (Knightley, 2002). While en route to the early morning meeting, all members of the press corps were warned that the story was under embargo until Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (or SHAEF) issued its official release. After the event, the armed services placed a 36- hour embargo on the story; when Edward Kennedy broke that embargo, he told the world that the war with Germany was over – and paid dearly for his …

New Irish In The News, Neil O'Boyle, Jim Rogers, Paschal Preston, Franziska Fehr

Irish Communication Review

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS selected findings from the ‘Media for Diversity and Migrant Integration’ project (hereafter MEDIVA), a European Union funded project involving six Member States (Ireland, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and the UK), which aimed to assess the capacity of media to reflect the increasing ethnocultural diversity of European societies. The specific focus of the project was on Third Country Nationals (TNCs) or persons without European Union citizenship. In this article we present the project’s content findings for Ireland, focusing specifically on representations of TNCs in a range of national print and broadcast outlets.

Book Review: Irish Journalism Before Independence: More A Disease Than A Profession (Kevin Rafter (Ed)), Harry Browne

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Morrissey: Fandom, Representation And Identities (Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane And Martin J. Power (Eds)), Brian O'Neill

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: John Bowman, Window And Mirror: Rté Television 1961-2001, Chris Morash

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

Young Men Consuming Newspaper Prostitution: A Discourse Analysis Of Responses To Irish Newspaper Coverage Of Prostitution, Joseph K. Fitzgerald, Brendan K. O'Rourke

Irish Communication Review

In this article we look at how young men consume coverage of prostitution in Irish newspapers. This is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the media, and newspapers in particular, seem to be an important source of information for people (Meade, 2008). This is especially true in the case of prostitution, as the only contact the citizenry generally have with sex-workers is through the media (Hallgrimsdottir, Phillips and Benoit, 2006). In many Western countries consuming media is one of the main activities that people, particularly young people, engage in and therefore is the prism through which they view …

Rocky Road To Dublin: The Influence Of The French Nouvelle Vague On Irish Documentary Film, Isabelle Le Corff

Irish Communication Review

Rocky Road to Dublin was certainly one of the first, if not the very first Irish film ever selected for inclusion in the worldwide famous Cannes festival. Unfortunately, this was in 1968 and Jean-Luc Godard, along with other nouvelle vague filmmakers, insisted on closing down the festival after only a few days. We will examine the exchanges that occurred between Irish and French culture in the making of this independent documentary film, how it was received, and the film’s notoriety in Ireland and in France from 1968 until today. We will question Lennon’s ‘personal attempt to reconstruct with a camera …

Fifteen Years Of Talk: Newspaper Discourses On Ireland's Interactive Science Museum, Marguerite Barry

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

Static Structures And Dynamic Processes Of Participation And Access: A Case Study Of Connemara Community Radio, Kevin P. Heanue, Aine Macken Walsh

Irish Communication Review

CONNEMARA COMMUNITY RADIO (CCR) is a community-based radio station broadcasting from Letterfrack in the North West Connemara area of Co. Galway since 1995. On air for 10 hours daily, it is possibly the smallest community radio station in Ireland serving a remote, yet large and sparsely populated rural franchise area. One of the main motivations behind CCR’s original establishment was that the radio station would promote community development in its franchise area (Day, 2007b; Heanue, 2002). Set against the literatures on community radio (Day, 2007a, b; Kanayama, 2007; Rennie, 2006; Sánchez, 2003; Heanue, 2002; Girard, 1992) and community development (Tilly, …

How Irish Political Parties Are Using Social Networking Sites To Reach Generation Z: An Insight Into A New Online Social Network In A Small Democracy, Kevin Lynch, John Hogan

Irish Communication Review

This study, using in-depth interviews and focus groups, examines perceptions of social networking sites as a means of communicating with Generation Z, from the perspectives of the major Irish political parties using these online resources and the perspective of their young target audience. There are two research questions: (1) How do political parties perceive social networking sites’ role in communicating with Generation Z? and (2) How do members of Generation Z perceive social networking sites’ role in communicating with political parties?

Reporting In The Sphere Of Legitimate Controversy: The Irish Press And The 2003 Iraq Crisis, Janne Halttu

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

The Application Of A Master Frame: Tracing The War On Terror In The Irish Times 2001-8, Morgan Stack

Irish Communication Review

THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’ has surely been one of the most analysed phenomenona in political communication during the first decades of the 21st century. That this might be so is perhaps unsurprising given its prominence and its impact on domestic and international politics during this period. It has increasingly been regarded as the new ordering principle of international relations (Archetti, 2004).The phenomenon has been identified as a ‘master frame’ akin to the ‘cold war’ (Hackett, 2001; Kuypers, Cooper and Althouse, 2008) which dominated political discourse in the latter half of the 20th century. Snow and Benford (1992) originally used the …

Rté And The Coverage Of Northern Ireland On Television News Bulletins In The Early Years Of The Troubles, Gareth Ivory

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.

Keeping An Eye On Youghal: The Freeman's Journal And The Plan Of Campaign In East Cork, 1886-92, Felix M. Larkin

Irish Communication Review

THE SKIBBEREEN EAGLE FAMOUSLY declared in 1898 that it would be keeping an eye on the Tsar of Russia (Potter, 2011: 49, 55–6). A decade or so earlier, Youghal was very much in the eye of the press – and, indeed, in the eye of the storm – during the Plan of Campaign, the second phase of the Land War in Ireland. The tenants on the nearby Ponsonby estate were the first to adopt the Plan of Campaign in November 1886 in order to secure lower rents (Donnelly, 1975: 334, 355– 360). The struggle that ensued dragged on inconclusively until …

Book Reviews: Volume 12

Irish Communication Review

B. O’Neill, M. Ala-Fossi, P. Jauert, S. Lax, L. Nyre and H. Shaw (eds), Digital Radio in Europe: Technologies, Industries and Cultures, reviewed by Pat Hannon

Rosemary Day, Community Radio in Ireland: Participation and Multiflows, reviewed by Pat Hannon

Paschal Preston, Making the News: journalism and news cultures in contemporary Europe, reviewed by Nora French

Christopher Morash, A History of the Media in Ireland, reviewed by John Horgan

Blessed With The Faculty Of Mirthfulness: The New Journalism And Irish Local Newspapers In 1900, Mark Wehrly

Irish Communication Review

Throughout the nineteenth century, several developments contrived – mostly indirectly – to make newspaper publishing in Britain an attractive business prospect. These included rising literacy levels, the abolition of taxes on newspapers in 1855 and innovations in the way newspapers were produced and distributed. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards this had the effect, in both Britain and Ireland, of increasing in multiples the number of different newspapers that were published (Cullen, 1989: 4–5). Likewise, in Dublin as in London, lively debates took place on the desirability of these developments, and the question of the social function of journalism was widely …

To Enlighten And Entertain:-Adventure Narrative In The Our Boys Paper, Michael Flanagan

Irish Communication Review

The form of popular literature known as the ‘Boys Own’ genre, developed in the latter decades of the 19th century and relates directly to certain concerns around the contemporary viability and perceived future of the Empire. The Boys Own genre was conceived as a response to the corrupting influence of the Penny Dreadful, with the first edition of the Boy’s Own Paper issued in 1879. Boy’s Own was soon followed by such papers as Gem, Magnet, Boys of the Empire and British Bulldog (Turner, 1948). These magazines were intended to supply the newly evolving middle-class of suburban England with suitable …

Tabloid Sensationalism Or Revolutionary Feminism? The First-Wave Feminist Movement In An Irish Women’S Periodical, Sonja Tiernan

Irish Communication Review

By 1928 women had achieved many of the objectives of the first-wave of the feminist movement. They had secured political franchise in general elections, girls benefitted from improved access to education and working women were gradually experiencing better conditions in the workplace. However, Europe remained under the rule of a patriarchy and newspapers were controlled by men within that system.

A Protestant Paper For A Protestant People: The Irish Times And The Southern Irish Minority, Ian D’Alton

Irish Communication Review

We Irish Protestants have always had a reputation for appreciating the minutiae of social distinction. Often invisible to the outsider, this extended to such as our dogs, our yachts and, of course, our newspapers. My paternal grandmother was no exception. Her take on the relative pecking order of the Irish dailies was that one got one’s news and views from the Irish Times, one lit the fire with the Irish Independent, and as for the Irish Press – ah! Delicacy forbids me to go into details, but suffice it to say that it involved cutting it into appropriate squares, and …

Crossing Boundaries And Early Gleanings Of Cultural Replacement In Irish Periodical Culture, Regina Uí Chollatáin

Irish Communication Review

The first Irish language periodical, Bolg an tSolair, was published in Belfast in 1795 although journalism in a modern context through the medium of Irish did not begin to flourish until the early years of the twentieth century. The ‘Gaelic column’ in English newspapers; Philip Barron’s Waterford-based Ancient Ireland – A Weekly Magazine (1835); Richard Dalton’s Tipperary journal Fíor-Éirionnach (1862); alongside some occasional periodicals with material relating to the Irish language, ensured that the Irish language featured as an element of a modern journalistic print culture (Nic Pháidín, 1987: 71-2).

Peering Through The Fog: American Newspapers And The Easter Rising, Robert Schmuhl

Irish Communication Review

Nearly a Century after the Easter Rising and its aftershocks thrust Ireland to the forefront of international attention and gave this island’s struggle for independence a stiff shove, journalistic coverage of those distant days still provokes questions and provides lessons of enduring pertinence, extending far beyond one academic’s obsession with the subject. This is particularly true for someone peering through the fog of time past and from afar in trying to come to terms with the events that occurred and the people who were involved during those momentous months of 1916.

The Irish Press Coverage Of The Troubles In The North From 1968 To 1995, Ray Burke

Irish Communication Review

The ‘Irish Press’ was the second-highest-selling daily newspaper on the island of Ireland at the beginning of the era that became known as the Troubles. With an average daily sale of nearly 103,000 copies during the second half of 1968, it had almost double the circulation of the Irish Times and the Belfast News Letter and it was outsold only by the perennially best-selling Irish Independent.

From Boom To Bust: A Post-Celtic Tiger Analysis Of The Norms, Values And Roles Of Irish Financial Journalists, Declan Fahy, Mark O'Brien, Valerio Poti

Irish Communication Review

The collapse of Ireland's economy into its worst recession in modern history has prompted some professional reflection about the roles and responsibilities of the country’s financial journalists. Conor Brady, a former editor of the Irish Times, asked in a commentary article published in his former paper: ‘Was the forming of this crisis reportable earlier? Were emerging trends apparent? Did they [the news media] do as good a job as they might have in flagging the approaching storm?’ Brady, editor of the paper between 1986 and 2002, the period corresponding to the rise of the Celtic Tiger economy, concluded that criticisms …

Book Reviews Volume 11

Irish Communication Review

No abstract provided.