Conclusion. It is probably now appropriate to close a chapter in the history of
public communication campaigning. Weaknesses which have
usually been seen as instrumental can now be seen for what they
are: conceptual failures grounded in compromised ontologies and
false epistemologies. As I showed in the last chapter, even when
viewed within their own narrow empiricist frame, public
communication campaigns fail to satisfy a test of empirical efficacy.
But empirical failure reveals a deeper moral failure: the failure of
government to properly engage in a conversation with the citizens
to whom they are ultimately responsible. Whether public
communication campaigns are a symptom or a cause of this failure
lies beyond the scope of this thesis. But there can be little doubt that
the practice of these campaigns has encouraged the persistence of an
inappropriate relation between state and citizens.
The originators and managers of mass media public communication
campaigns conceive of and execute their creations as persuasive
devices aimed at the targets who have been selected to receive their
messages. But we do not see ourselves as targets (and there are
profound ethical reasons why we should not be treated as such),
neither do we engage with the mass media as message receivers. On
the contrary, as social beings, we become actively and creatively
involved with the communicative events which we attend to and
participate in; the mass media, like all other communication
opportunities, provide the means for generating new meanings,
new ways of understanding, new social realities. But people are
constrained from participating fully in public discussion about social
issues; the government's construal of individuals as targets and of
communication as transmitted messages does not provide the
discursive space for mutual interaction.
Governments should aim to encourage the active engagement of
citizens in public discussion by conceiving of and executing public
communication as part of a continuing conversation, not as
packaged commodities to be marketed and consumed, or as messages
to be received. It is time to encourage alternative practices-practices
which open up the possibility of productive conversations which
will help transform the relationship between citizens and state.
However, as I have argued in this thesis, changed practices must be
accompanied by profound changes in thinking, otherwise we
continue to reinvent the past. Communication practice is informed
by the ontology of communication which is itself embedded within
other ontologies and epistemologies. The dominant paradigm of
communication is at present in a state of crisis, caught between two
views of communication power. On the one hand it displays an
obsession with instrumental effectiveness on which it cannot
deliver. On the other hand-in an attempt to discard the
accumulated baggage of dualist philosophy and mechanistic models
of effective communication-it indulges in a humourless critique of
language which, as Robert Hughes astutely observes, is little more
than an enclave of abstract complaint (Hughes 1993:72). This thesis
has been an attempt to open up a space for a new ontology, within
which we might create new possibilities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218619 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Shrensky, Ruth, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Communication |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Ruth Shrensky |
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