Page 201 - Communication Theory and Research

McQuail(EJC)-3281-14.qxd 8/16/2005 6:33 PM Page 186

186 Communication Theory & Research

— less issues
(selection)
MACRO
politics
— less participants
solutions (support)
mass media
MESO
movements
support
meso-media

MICRO
citizens
problems
micro-media

FIGURE 14.1 COMMUNICATION PYRAMID–PUBLIC/POLITICAL DEBATE
Source:Bardoel (1995)

the pyramid – so the assumption goes – lead to greater opportunities for mediated
communication on the meso-level, the selection and filtering of relevant issues
higher up in the pyramid may be expected to gain in significance. Journalism
will therefore, in my view, continue to play a crucial part in recruiting and
processing relevant issues from the growing plurality of public spheres towards
the political centre (Habermas) or towards the top (in my model). Therefore the
function of journalism as a director of social debate will be more essential than
ever in a society in which the pressure of communication is steadily increasing.
Journalism will not, as in the era of mass media, control the public debate, but
can take the lead in directing and defining the public agenda. As journalists are
no longer the indispensable intermediaries between the outside world and the
public, they must prove their position in this respect. It is important that journalists
take this aspect of their intermediary task more seriously than they seem to do
at present. [...]

Orientating and instrumental journalism

The position of journalism as a ‘unified’ profession that encompasses many very
different activities at very different levels, seems no longer tenable. The advent
of new media formats, based on multimedia applications and the increasing
(inter)activity of the user, make this presumption less realistic then it already
was. Ideal-typically, I see two sorts of journalism developing (Bardoel, 1993:
117–20). First, there is orientating journalism whose job it is to provide a general
orientation (background, commentary, explanation) to a general public. Second,
there is instrumental journalism, geared to providing information (functional,
specialistic) to interested customers. (I gladly leave to the reader the question of
whether all of these activities should be called journalism.)