Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

John David Bourchier: An Irish Journalist In The Balkans, Michael Foley

Irish Communication Review

In 1920, the funeral took place at the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria's Rhodope Mountains of the journalist John David Bourchier (1850-1920) of Bruff, Baggotstown, Co Limerick, Ireland. One newspaper in Sofia led with the headline: 'Our Bourchier is dead.' When news of his death became known in Sofia, a crowd gathered outside the hotel where he had lived on and off for 30 years. His funeral service was in the Alexander Nevski Memorial Church, a stunning monument of neo-Byzantine architecture that commemorates the Russian soldiers who died in the fight for Bulgarian freedom in 1877, from what is still referred …

Journalism Education In Ireland, Nora French

Irish Communication Review

The start of journalism education in Ireland is generally dated from the 1960s with the setting up of the journalism course in the College of Commerce, Rathmines. However, there were some earlier initiatives in the first decade of the 20th century. A series of lectures was organised by the Institute of Journalists in Trinity College Dublin in 1908-9 (Hunter, 1982; Institute of Journalists, 1909) and journalism is said to have become a degree subject in Queens College/University College Cork around the same time (Stephenson and Mory, 1990; Murphy, 1995). These efforts appear to have rapidly faded. They coincide with similar …

Raiders Of The Lost Archive: The Report Of The Inter-Departmental Committee On The Film Industry 1942, Roddy Flynn

Irish Communication Review

In 1938, Sean Lemass, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, established a three man committee with a broad remit to examine and report on every aspect – actual and putative – of the Irish film industry. This report would examine not merely the exhibition, distribution and production of film but also its potential as a cultural force and the extent to which the established censorship regime was fulfilling its obligations to ‘protect public morality against any danger of contamination or deterioration which might threaten it through the influence of cinema’ (RICFI, 1942: 44).

Regulation Of New Economy Markets: The Case Of Wired Residential Internet Service Provision, David Jacobson, Tom Weymes

Irish Communication Review

The ISP market in Ireland is relatively immature. Although Ireland’s first Service Provider IEUnet was established in 1991, it is only in the last two or three years that a choice of provider and access price points has emerged under the regulatory regime of the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation (OTDR). This has been achieved through the introduction of a telecommunications licensing regime by the ODTR, the specifics of which are available from the ODTR website.2 From a position where there was only one telecommunications operator, the former PTO3 namely Eircom, there are currently 77 other licensed operators …

Media Education In Ireland: An Overview, Brian O'Neill

Irish Communication Review

The Irish educational system is frequently celebrated as a world class system that is held in high domestic esteem, has contributed substantially to Ireland’s economic success and been compared very favourably with our counterparts elsewhere in the European Union. Such contentment belies the fact that it has also been a system very slow to change, is notoriously centralised and has only in the last decade instituted significant legislative reform that will enable and facilitate the growth of new curricular areas such as media studies – the topic of this article – an area in which Ireland lags substantially behind our …

Driving Ireland Past The Chequered Flag: Jordan Grand Prix, Formula One And National Identity, Eoin Kirk

Irish Communication Review

Sport has changed. The nineteenth century rationale of amateurism, fair play and recreational participation has given way in the age of mass media and late capitalism to the staging of sport as commercial entertainment (Wenner, 1998; Whitson. 1998). While televised sport may work to create connections between people who have not yet met and are not likely to do so, it too, has slowly transformed these very relationships between sporting individuals and teams and the communities they supposedly represent (Whitson, 1998; Rowe et. aI, 1998). Can the needs of national and international television, global commercial forces, transnational fans and audiences …

Anti-Communism And Media Surveillance In Ireland 1948-50, John Horgan

Irish Communication Review

Ireland in the immediate post-war period offers, to the student of Cold War politics and intrigues, some unusual insights into the nature of political surveillance in general and to the surveillance of the press in particular, according to documents recently released by the US State department and made available in the US National Archives in Washington.1 Politically, the situation was becoming more volatile. Fianna Fáil, which had been in power continuously since 1942 and had won its most recent election in 1944, was coming under increasingly vocal criticism from two key groups of erstwhile supporters: urban workers, who had been …

Dancing About Architecture : Postmodernism And Irish Popular Music, Stephen Ryan

Irish Communication Review

Listening to Bono of U2 in a recent radio interview, I was struck by a comment he made. He was talking about contemporary and past musics, and how the past and the present are tied up with hopes and fears about the future. It was, he argued, a case of the difference between yesterdays tomorrow and todays tomorrow. Yesterday's tomorrow was about a confidence for the future, a belief that progress was more or less inevitable and, for music, that artistic creativity would continue to blossom and produce great works.

All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Call: Fashion Victims In The New Look Telecom Industry, Maria Lohan

Irish Communication Review

The Telecom industry In Ireland is currently in training to tone itself up in preparation for both convergence and competition In the new look telecommunications Industry. Only those companies who have completed extenslve tummy tucks on staffing and removed the weight of subsidized charging may enter this new telecommunications club. Not only this, but you must of course have the right personality to attract partners with dowries of infrastructure. An important characteristic is a willingness to invest In anything electronic - but property will do too. And what should the fashion conscious Telecom player be sporting this season? Well POTS …

New Technologies And Changing Work Practices In The Media Industry: The Case Of Lreland, Ellen Hazelkorn

Irish Communication Review

The broadcasting environment in Ireland is the most competitive in Europe. RTE's revenue is strictly limited. The licence fee has not increased since 1986. Advertising revenue is controlled by law. The preservation of a comprehensive and effective radio and television service can only be sustained by the most efficient and cost effective approach to the production of programmes of quality.

Book Reviews Volume 5

Irish Communication Review

Book Reviews

D. Butler, The Trouble With Reporting Northern Ireland Aldershot, Reviewed by Catherine Curran.

K. Tester, Media Culture and Morality, Reviewed by Eoin Devereux

B. Gunter, J. Sancho-Aidridge and P. Winston, Television - The Public's View, Reviewed by Amanda Dunne.

R. Winsbury and S. Fazal (eds.) Vision and Hindsight: The first 25 Years of the International Institute of Communications, Reviewed by Desmond Fisher.

R. Silverstone, Television and Everyday Life, Reviewed by Richard Fitzsimons.

J. Tambling, A Night in at the Opera London, Reviewed by lan Fox.

S. Moores, Interpreting Audiences, An Ethnography of Media Consumption Livingstone and P. Lunt …

After The Green Paper: What Next For Broadcasting In Ireland? : Discussion, Ellen Hazelkorn

Irish Communication Review

On 27 April 1995, the long-awaited Green Paper on Broadcasting, drafted by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins. and entitled Active or Passive? Broadcasting in the future tense was published. Its publication carne one week after the publication of the Interim Report of the Competition Authority on the newspaper industry In Ireland. and preceded the publication of an examination of the skills requirements of lhe independent film and television production sector In Ireland. entitled, Training Needs to 2000 (June 1995). It is remarkable that within a very short space of time, three very substantial studies …

Freedom Of Access To Information On The Environment - The Reality In Ireland, Geraldine O'Brien

Irish Communication Review

A chink of light appeared on the horizon in 1990 with the lrish Government's laudable comments on the adoption of the EC Directive 90/313 on Freedom of Access to Information on the Environment. This commendable approach was contained in the Government's Programme for Action during its EC Presidency and appeared to herald new beginnings. The Directive would come Into force on 1 January 1993.

Saving Us From Ourselves: Contraception, Censorship And The 'Evil Literature' Controversy Of 1926, John Horgan

Irish Communication Review

In the history of Irish public policy on communications, the ban on the publication of information about contraception merits a special place. It existed for half a century. and the circumstances of its elaboration and implementation offer a special insight into the sensitivity of Irish governments on matters of sexual morality, as well as into public and media attitudes to the controversies involved.

Some Thoughts On Freedom Of Information And The Civil Service, Sean Dooney

Irish Communication Review

All new civil servants receive from the personnel unit of their department a number of circulars dealing with various aspects of their conditions of employment. One of these circulars. the receipt of which they are obliged to acknowledge, deals with official secrecy. The Circular draws attention to the obllgations of civil servants in relation to secrecy in the transaction of official business, which obligations are provided for in Section 4 of the Official Secrets Act 1963. That section, as readers are no doubt aware, provides that they shall not communicate any official information to any other person unless they are …

Scots Gaelic And Welsh Language Broadcasting In The Cultural Contexts: A Comparative Analysis, Fachna O'Drisceoil

Irish Communication Review

This paper will be a presentation and comparative analysis of the experiences of Welsh and Scots Gaelic broadcasting. The intention is to draw conclusions regarding broadcasting strategies in those languages and to identify the implications of those conclusions for Irish language broadcasting strategy. It was decided that a brief discussion of a wider range of lesser used languages would be superficial in nature, and of little real benefit to understanding the Irish situation. Instead, a more detailed presentation will be given of the Welsh and Scots Gaelic cases on the basis that their cultural and historical experience has most similarity …

On Gendered Knowledge In Communication: Women In The Film Industry, Michele Martin

Irish Communication Review

Studies in communication have shown that, in the fllm industry. women as directors obtain less financial support than men. They find themselves in a peculiar situation: the discrimination they suffer obliges them to innovate. and hence they often find themselves at the 'avant garde' of cinematographic production. This is specifically true in the area of documentary film-making. To use Carle's words, In film 'the revolution passes through women'.

Feature Writing In Women's Magazines: A Limited Ideological Challenge, Susan Liddy

Irish Communication Review

Since the emergence of the International women's movement in the early 1970s. women's magazines have increasingly popularized feminist Ideas. The fragmented format of the genre ensures that a debate on feminist issues can surface in features side by side such old reliables as beauty tips, recipes or advice on how to attract and keep a man. In 1991, over one third of feature writing in Woman's Way and three quarters in U, reflected items from the Irish feminist agenda. Issues like the wage gap, the absence of state funded childcare, the need for equal status legislation , rape and domestic …

New Media Technologies In Europe: The Politics Of Satellite, Hdtv And Dab, Hans J. Kleinsteuber

Irish Communication Review

It has been lhe tradition in Europe to develop media technologies at national level with close cooperation between the state and the private sector, and frequently with competition between different states and their industrial Infrastructures. The creation of new technologies mostly occurred within lhe electric, and later the electronics industry and included studio equipment, transmitters and receivers; it also included those industries supplying equipment to areas such as telecommunications. optics and the aerospace indus try. The state has always provided some of the central players. for example, Post Office administrations (Telecoms), research ministries, the military sector and in particular, the …

Thatcher, The Iba And Death On The Rock, Tony Fleck

Irish Communication Review

Since its beginnings in the 1920s. broadcasting in these islands has always been considered by the vartous governments of the day. whatever their political complexion. to be too important to be left solely to the broadcasters. Successive administrations have attempted to regulate and control what is heard or seen over the airWaves by a series of acts of the British Parliament or Dail E!reann. These acts have been drafted so as to give designated ministers the power to decide on the composition and membership of the Authorities. Boards of Governors or Commissions established by law - and to dismiss them …

Devils And Angels: The Rise Of Irish Telethon Television, Eoin Devereux

Irish Communication Review

In this article I wish to examine the issue of how the media portray the lrlsh poor with particular reference to the emergence of fund-raising or telethon television. This study Is part of a larger project which examines how the Irish national public service broadcasting organization, Radio Teiefis Elreann (RTE), portrays poverty and the poor through an examination of fund-raising television, factual television (news, current affairs and documentaries) and fictional accounts of poverty (television drama) over a twelve month period. My project represents a significant departure from the existing debate about poverty and the media in an Irish context in …

Political Communication And Broadcasting: Theory, Practice And Reform, Colum Mccaffery

Irish Communication Review

The origins of this research project lie in the writer's dissatisfaction with the growing library of work which frets aimlessly about the effects of broadcasting on political communication. Missing from the shelves, It is argued, is a clear statement of w Is achievable by way of political communication. In other words, if television's contribution to political communication is to be criticized, a set of criteria - a specification - for adequate public debate is long overdue.

The Demonization Of Women In Popular Culture: Some Recent Examples, Ciaran Mccullagh

Irish Communication Review

Until recently the study of popular culture .was dominated by the perspective of the Frankfurt School. For them all mass culture was identical. Cultural products were 'cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types' (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1 977:352}. They were the products of the 'assembly-line character of the culture industry' (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1977:380}. The similarities extended beyond plotlines and genre-types to the consistent promotion of conventional values. This culture was primarily a form of social control. It was, to quote De Tocquevil!e, ·a tyranny (which} leaves the body free and directs its attack at the soul' (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1 …

Thirty Years A' Growing: The Past, The Present And The Future Of Irish Broadcasting, Vincent Finn

Irish Communication Review

Way back in the early months of 1960, the then British Prime Minister, Harold · McMillan - whose most memorable phrase until then had been his salutation to the British public 'You've never had it so good' - made a six-weeks tour of the African continent. By the time Mr. McMillan arrived in Cape Town he was geared up for another phrase-making speech, this time to the assembled members of the South African Parliament: 'The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and, whether we like it or not, this growth of the national consciousness is a political fact. …

Media Education In Ireland: An Overview, Brian O'Neill

Irish Communication Review

The Irish educational system is frequently celebrated as a world class system that is held in high domestic esteem, has contributed substantially to Ireland’s economic success and been compared very favourably with our counterparts elsewhere in the European Union. Such contentment belies the fact that it has also been a system very slow to change, is notoriously centralised and has only in the last decade instituted significant legislative reform that will enable and facilitate the growth of new curricular areas such as media studies – the topic of this article – an area in which Ireland lags substantially behind our …

Patterns Of Irish Viewing, Tom Harper

Irish Communication Review

Analyses of the way people view programmes have been examined extensively in the USA and in the UK. For example, work by Barwise et al (1988). Collins et al (1982) and Ehrenberg (1990) is generally well known In the broadcasting area. Much of their work has to do with segmentation of the TV audience, audience flow, repeat viewing and audience duplication. This paper examines some of these concepts using Irish data from the AGB TAM panel.

Attitudes On Tv Advertising For Children: A Survey Among Flemish Parents Of Children Aged 6 - 12 Years., Els De Bens, Patrick Vyncke, Peter Vandenbruane

Irish Communication Review

The issue of 1V advertising and children has always been quite controversial. From I the early 1970s until now, hundreds of studies have been conducted on this topic. Some of these studies are based on the observation of children in experimental situations. By their use of a non-verbal research method, these studies have the advantage of avoiding misrepresentation caused by some children's verbal skills when responding to verbal tests.2 The disadvantage of this type of experimental research, however, is that the real-life validity of the results is sometimes quite low: the skillfully constructed research-experiments In which children's short-term reactions to …

Government, Propaganda And The Irish News Agency, John Horgan

Irish Communication Review

The theme of identity forged in adversity has bulked large on the agenda of the founders of many small nation states, and the case of Ireland is no exception. The extent and nature of the Irish diaspora, in addition, has given this theme an added dimension: its propagation to the world at large. Bending the world's ear to the cause of righting . Ireland's wrongs has been a constant, if rarely successful, strand in Irish nationalist policy for over two centuries. It is only in more recent times, however, that it has become more formally associated with the official structures …

The Political Lobby System, Michael Foley

Irish Communication Review

At the heart of the political system in Ireland, inside Leinster House, is a small groQp of journalists who cover politics. They are the political correspondents. They have a privileged position, their own rooms, access to politicians in their place of work, access to government ministers and regular briefings from the government press secretary and from the press officers of the other political parties. It is these few journalists, working together, who write the first story on any event, who decide what to cover and how stories should be covered. It is to these journalists that the government press secretary …

Social Scientists And Journalists: Are The Former Really So Different From The Latter?, Liz Fawcett

Irish Communication Review

As a journalist who has recently begun carrying out sociological research, I have been struck by the parallels between social science and journalism. I have also been intrigued by some sociological studies of the media which seem to me to suggest that we are little more than a bunch of jumped-up charlatans. This article seeks to examine whether journalism is, in fact, so very different from the social sciences and to ask what might motivate some social scientists to wish to establish a firm differential between the two occupations.