Vol 4, No 1 (1985)

RESPONDING to the complaint that a great deal of the communications research in the Third World is Western-biased, this article, using sources and examples from many parts of the world, looks at the past, present and future of social science research as applied to mass communications. Among complaints have been that the research grew up promoting business-industrial and military-psychological warfare aims (mainly of entities in the United States), and pushing for the status quo and homogenization of cultures. Much of the research was ethnocentric, myopic, culture- and timebound. To avoid some of these problems, cross- cultural and cross-national research should seek to determine equivalence levels (functional, conceptual, linguistic and metric): relevance and worth of the research, especially to the country being studied: and degree and type of methodology.

A SYSTEMS approach to the phenomenon of communication implies in many important respects a break with the traditional assumptions and principles of communication theories and research methodologies. There is increasing dissatisfaction among communicologists with the influence of positivism (and respectively reductionism) in Communication Science as in the case of the covering law model. Some of the most important theoretical implications such as holism, selfregulation, hierargical organization, adaptation and organized complexity are briefly discussed. Attention is also given to methodological implications of concepts such as information, message. group, rules and meaning.

ACCORDING to the needs-and gratifications approach, a person actively chooses programmes, articles and films and uses the content of this mass media material to gratify certain needs in him or herself. In this paper, results of a longitudinal study of the relationship between certain personality needs on the one hand and the television viewing behaviour and television programme preferences of adolescents on the other hand, are discussed. Based on a large scale South African study of the influence of television on school-going children, the data of approximately 2 000 adolescents, retested from their 12th to 18th year, are used. Multivariate statistical techniques, e.g. profile analysis, were used to analyze the data obtained by various psychometric instruments and questionnaires.

IN this article the author deals with certain arguments by the art philosopher historian Ernst Gombrich on the perception of images. The central argument is that the human being does not perceive (look at) reality with an innocent eye, but his outlook on life, cultural background and ideological beliefs "colour" his perception and interpretation of images. In the second part of the article he formulates a model which can be used in empirical research to determine the meaning which a respondent attaches to an image (images), as well as that which influences the final interpretation he makes.. This model is based on an underlying observational strategy and a search for and selection of sources of meaning.

THE purpose of this study was to identify the dimensions of communication climate. To achieve this purpose a theoretical construct in respect of communication climate, based on a literature survey, was finalised. A questionnaire covering the various dimensions of this theoretical construct was then drawn up. The questionnaire was completed by a sample of 250 people within a single organization. The main dimensions of communication climate as measured by the questionnaire were isolated by means of factor and item analyses. The results of these analyses confirmed the nature of the conceptual construct to a high extent. The questionnaire did not however succeed in identifying all dimensions. To alleviate the shortcomings of this study, a number of re- commendations for further research are made.

THIS paper builds on Gene Youngblood's use of cybernetic theory in film analysis. It combines the cybernetic method with Peircian-derived semiotics in an attempt to derive a meta-theory of social process and film textual structure. An attempt is made to resolve the more deterministic elements of Youngblood's theory, developing a more probabilistic approach. The paper ends with some conjecture on how the cyber- semiotic theory developed can be combined with Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist approaches developed by the scholars contributing to the British journal Screen.

THE article represents an overview of com-munication research undertaken in South Africa during the period 1974-1984. Be- cause of the relatively short history of the discipline in this country, a penetrating ana- lysis is hardly possible. Some interesting trends with regard to the distribution pat- terns of the research purposes (degree/ non-degree) and the emphases within specific subdisciplines, could however be Identified.

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