This book is a pioneering effort in combining a theoretical evaluation of the major philosophies of communication with an empirical verification of a conceptual model of media ethics. It is probably for the first time that all the philosophies of communication have been examined in one work and a fresh theory of Indian mass communication is conceptualised, based on a broad distinction between Eastern and Western perspectives on communication. The empirical study on the value system of Indian mass communicators is yet another high point and the use of path analysis in communication research is pathbreaking.
To a philosopher, this book focuses on philosophy as a central concern of communication which is a departure from the glaring contemporary neglect of human problems in philosophy. To a communicator, this book proposes communication as emerging from the philosophical traditions in a culture specific context, thus explaining the objective of a new paradigm of communication.
The study of 260 print and broadcast journalists seeks to broaden the discourse on the values and ethical behaviour of mass communicators and their journalism. In addition to considering the principles of ethical behaviour, it also studies the association of major philosophical, political and socio-developmental determinants and their individual and combined effects on the value system of mass communicators in India.
The young scholar provides a new orientation to communication research and the philosophy of communication as a foundational discipline and as an interdisciplinary enterprise. In the context of the ensuing debate on whether ethics and responsibility in communication should be enforced by external forces or be allowed to arise out of media reflection or even that they be left to individual journalistic conscience, this book is a timely effort in the direction of media ethics and has implications for communication policy in India and many other developing countries.
The story of human civilization is a dramatic unfolding of the incredible expansion of the symbolic dimensions of life. The axiomatic sentence 'one cannot not communicate' coined by the German communication scholar, Paul Watzlawick, signifies that communication truly does not have an opposite. The philosophical position of Watzlawick conceptualizes human beings as both creatures and creators of language and of all other signs, symbols and rituals. It is inevitable for human beings to behave, and all behaviour has some possible communicative value. Whether we speak or are silent, whether we act or do not act, we affect others in some manner. There is often communication though not intended, we may be unaware of what we actually communicated; nor can we be sure that what we intended was what was heard and understood (Myers and Myers; 1992: 17-18).
Human behaviour has been continuously spurred, moulded and constrained by information and communication, both internally by socialization, perception and cognition, and externally through human interaction, social structures and emerging technologies. The information revolution is characterised by ever changing technology, rapid industrialisation and the resultant shrinking of the globe by the emergence of information societies. Innovative technologies such as the medium wave transmission, colour television systems, undersea communication cable links, satellite communication, semiconductors, digital electronics, computers, telephones, laser, optical fibres and the recently opened information highways have revolutionised the concepts of space and time and the life we live within them. Never before have more disciplines or more minds converged so rapidly on a single phenomenon like information and its patterning and processing, looking upon communication as central to cognition and social behaviour (Beniger; 1993: 18).
Edward. T. Hall, a distinguished cultural anthropologist, observes that communication is culture and culture is communication (Hall; 1959: 93). Indian culture, the like of which finds no parallel in human history, has been acclaimed as one of the oldest, largest and highly evolved on a multidimensional scale. Historically, India has been one of the greatest confluences of cultural strands, a laboratory of racial intermixing, of cross-fertilisation of religious ideas and secular thought, of coexistence of languages and dialects-indeed a veritable microcosm of the Globe (Khan; 1984: 1). Such magnificent cultures could not have flourished without highly evolved and refined communication systems.
Recalling India's role as a torch-bearer in many fields, Will Durant, the author of the outstanding ten-volume, work titled The Story of Civilization in the first volume, 'Our Oriental Heritage' reminds the western world that they have an Oriental Heritage apart from the more obvious Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian heritage and that the most important ingredient of their oriental heritage is from India. He refers to the perennial nature of India's cultural heritage in contrast to those extinct civilizations of Egypt or Babylon, Greece or Rome (Durant; 1935, Vol. 1: 633).
Despite the inseparable tie between communication and culture, the persistent and uncritical acceptance of Western communication paradigms by many nations with their own fascinating cultures, including Irıdia, is paradoxical. Dissanayake points out that a defect shared by most of the Western communication scholars is that they operate within a Europo-centric universe of discourse.
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