Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1987

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Paul Ashdown

Committee Members

Ronald E. Taylor, Hubert A. Howard

Abstract

UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems concluded in 1980 that lack of trained personnel and defects in journalism training programs are among the basic reasons for communications deficiencies around the world, especially in developing nations.

To help explore the possibility that a universal curriculum model could be developed for use across cultures in the Third World, a worldwide survey of journalism curricula in developing countries was conducted. The findings reveal that a universal model does appear to be use in many Third World journalism training programs. This model is generally patterned after the American model; a combination of journalism skills courses, liberal arts courses, and conceptual knowledge courses relating to mass communication. The Third World model, however, makes two important departures from the U.S. model:

1. There is a strong "developmental" orientation in many of the Third World journalism training programs. This suggests a general acceptance in the Third World of the developmental theory of the press, which posits that the primary role of the press is to assist the government in modernization. This is in sharp contrast to Western ideology, which casts the press in a "watch dog" role, an adversary to government.

2. While most Third World journalism programs conform to the idea that a good liberal arts education is the foundation of a good journalism education, none of the training programs in the developing nations appear to require approximately three-quarters of a student's work to be in the liberal arts— the standard in the United States, as defined by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

In addition to the comparative study of curricula, an international journalism training program in London, which attracts students from throughout the developing world, was observed for three months. The findings support the idea that a single, flexible, curriculum model can be used for cross-cultural journalism training of Third World students.

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