Vol 6, No 2 (1987)

THIS article represents a review of trends in the development of Communication as academic discipline In South Africa. Sallent results of a number of surveys are the following: (a) large number of students have graduated over the past ten years (B degrees -3279; Honours = 489; Masters = 82 and at least 22 doctorates). Wide differences in post-graduate penetration be tween universities are also noticeable (see tables 1 and 2; (b) Mass communication is at present the single most frequently offered course in university communication curricula while theory and methodology as indepen dent communication courses figure fairly prominently. Speech and interpersonal com munication are not salient in university courses (see figure 1); (c) Since 1980 a total of 182 research projects in communication have been completed. As in the case of teaching, mass communication has been the most popular field of research. In contrast hardly any research on methodological problems have been under taken over the past seven years (see figure 2); (d) Analysis of applications by com munication students and researchers for financial support from the HSRC indicated that their success rates have been lower than comparable disciplines (see figure 3). Against the background of the importance and relevance of communication to contemporary South African society the paper concludes with a number of interpretations and future challenges

THIS field study of 327 professional hospital nurses Investigates the relationship between employees' perceptions of top-level management organizational communication and employee job satisfaction and job performance. Pearson product-moment and canonical correlation analyses revealed significant positive relationships between top management communication and employee job satisfaction and, to a lesser ex tent, with job performance. Although considerable research has been conducted into the immediate supervisor employee communication relationship, which has demonstrated a strong, positive association, the top management-employee communication link has been largely overlooked. Findings here suggest that employees look to top managers and im mediate supervisors to fulfill separate and distinct communication needs. This study sought to pave the way for more research into the effects of top management communication on various orginizational effectiveness variables. The authors draw conclusions from their fin dings, propose a model for future research and suggest future research directions.

AGAINST the background of the indefinability of entertainment the author postulates a for questions that the researcher could ask in connection with the viewer's aesthetic exparience of television entertainment, par ticularly related to television fiction. The central question is: why and how does television entertain the viewer? This question leads on to the following questions: what is entertainment? The answer is that it is in definable. In the style of Plato the researcher should then ask the following: but what is it that leads the viewer to attach the value "entertainment", which is associated with pleasure and satisfaction, to television fic tion? Possible answer: catharsis due to the ability and needs of the viewer to identify with a make-believe world and characters. What makes this identification possible? Amongst other possibilities specific rhetorical motifs which have always been associated with communication pleasure and which are also present in the content (and forum) of television fiction. Is this the big answer? No. The aesthetic experience of a work (also of television) does not allow it to be described easily.

A CHANGING political culture in South Africa has seen in recent years a massive ex pansion in the use of political advertising - both by extra-parliamentary pressure groups and establishment mainstream parties. Standards of commercial advertising in South Africa are controlled by the Trade Practices Act and editorial copy by the terms of the Media Council's Code of Conduct. Remarkably, political advertising is subject to neither. This article examines the impact of political advertising in three aspects: effects on the political debate itself, the audi alteram partem rule of journalistic balance and the over-all impact on the culture of the newspapers in which the advertisement ap pears. A brief survey of the role of political adver tising in other countries is included as well as some observations on the way in which ma jor foreign newspapers approach political advertising. The author argues against further statutory controls on the content of political advertising but suggests that the newspaper industry itself has a responsibility to counter patently false or tendentious political adver tising in its columns.

THIS Investigation examines the audience experience with television news in South Africa and presents a process model of uses and gratifications based upon an expectancy-value approach. The prime objective was accomplished when three reliable scales for the measure ment of values attached to television news Items; expectations about finding such news-items; and gratification of these ex pectations were developed. A significant correlation between all three scales was in dicated, although the correlation between values and expectations was much stronger than the correlation between values and gratifications. While the correlation between expectations and gratifications was still significant, it was also much lower than the correlation between values and expecta tions. This finding provides evidence against the criticism that since a gratification is ex pected and sought, it must necessarily be obtained. Instead, it is found that television news programmes in South Africa, while ef fective, are imperfect providers of news related gratifications sought. To cast addi tional light on the relative lower correlation between expectations and gratifications, the degree of dependence on television news as primary source was taken into ac count.

TELEVISION and video viewing patterns in the family: a monitoring survey. This study focuses on the family as the social context of electronic mass media sage, with special reference to television and video viewing. In a countrywide telephone survey interviews were con ducted with family members selected on the basis of a random sample. The findings indicate that most of the parents and their children watch television as a family and that certain television programmes can stimulate conversations and can improve relations among family members. As in the case of television viewing, the results indicate that video viewing is also a family activity, as about two-thirds of the respondents mostly watch video films within the context of the family. Most of the parents control video viewing in the family by objecting to the hir ing of certain types of video films, and by knowing what type of video films their children watch with their friends.

MANY scholars and politicians have sug gested negotiation as a solution for South Africa's problems. Although the subject of negotiation has been eclectic in the absorp tion of Insights from other disciplines, it is only fairly recently that communicologists have become interested in the topic. Today there are various theoretical approaches underlying the study of negotiation. The Theory of Games (or Game Theory) is one of the earlier approaches -one however which is still popular in some quarters. This article overviews the literature on Game Theory as applied to conflict and negotiation, and the writer concludes that though useful initially, it is no longer suitable for the study of real-life conflict and negotia tion situations. The communicologist will have to find a less behaviouristic approach if he hopes to understand (and apply) the com plexities of negotiation. Only then can we begin to talk of solutions

THROUGH the national Statutory Council, the Government has already set the negotiating table. decided on the guests who will attend. and the table manners to be observed