Communication Rule Structure and the Communication Management of the South African Crisis

Abstract

The communication and development research literature indicates that as a society develops industrially, its dependence on mediated communication increases (Lerner, 1958, Pye, 1963). There is also an assumption implicit in the writings of many scholars that social development is accompanied by increased professionalization of the production and distribution of mass mediated communication content (Merrill, 1974). In the parlance of professional mass communications, this means that, among other things, there is more and clearer separation between news and information, on one hand, and opinions and commentary, on the other. News and information require that facts be gathered and organized according to the positivist social science methodology which has come to be known as precision journalism (Meyer, 1973). Professional opinion and commentary require that logical, rational, analytical thinking be applied in the evaluation of available facts and their implications. While these kinds of changes have historically occurred as a part of mass communication development, they are not inevitable and are of small consequence when compared with other dimensions of change that also take place not just in the system of national