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The University of Vienna, Austria
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Cost, Travel Arrangements |
Participants are responsible for paying for their own transportation to Joplin. For a conference fee of $50 per person, housing and meals for the five days of the conference will be provided in college facilities. |
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Conference Purpose |
The conference is designed to enable collegiate journalists from around the world to come together to attain communicative efficiency in considering multicultural societies. They will meet with and learn from professional and academic journalists who have expertise in multicultural and intercultural journalism and who will help participants gain the intercultural communication skills necessary for future work in the news media or in public relations. The conference is based on the theme that multicultural or intercultural journalism means communication efforts working towards understanding among cultures of the world. The conference springs from two projects, one that the University of Vienna has undertaken with Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, Brazil, in media and minorities in multicultural societies. This conference will be a furtherance of that project. The second project is one that the University of Vienna has undertaken with Missouri Southern State University in a general approach to international journalism. |
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An International Conference
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This conference is an international and interdisciplinary program for the gaining of expertise in dealing with multicultural societies and gaining the necessary intercultural skills. Specifically, we are concerned with understanding persons from other countries and with minority journalism. Through guest lectures by professional newspersons and by academicians with backgrounds in journalism, minority affairs, and intercultural communication particularly, conference participants will gain relevant, practical, and essential knowledge and research competence, a greater degree of sensibility and problem consciousness, and development of greater analytic abilities. When the University of Vienna agreed to join with Missouri Southern State University in this project it was part of an agreement in which students from the University would produce copy for a June 2000 edition of International Crossroads. |
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Conference Developers |
Developers of the conference are Dr. Chad Stebbins and Dr. Thomas A. Bauer. Dr. Stebbins is associate professor of journalism, adviser to the nationally recognized college newspaper The Chart, and Director of the Institute of International Studies at Missouri Southern State University. Dr. Stebbins is a specialist in community journalism and is the author of the recent book All the News Is Fit to Print: Profile of a Country Editor; he is executive director of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors, and is editor-in-chief of Grassroots Editor, a major American journal. In the past three years he has visited schools and departments of journalism in several European nations as well as in Africa, a tradition he intends to continue. Dr. Bauer is professor of audio-visual media at the University of Vienna, and frequent visiting professor at New York University and Stanford University in the United States. Dr. Bauer is one of the five members of the steering committee which manages the European Communication Sciences Network established within the SOCRATES program of the European Commission. Many universities throughout the world have honored him for his work in multicultural journalism as well as his pioneering efforts in distance learning through television. |
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Ideas Behind the Conference |
Minorities in a narrow sense and multiculturality in a broad sense are places of learning for a future society. As such, both are a political and cultural challenge to the media or the ability of communication of a society respectively. Multiculturality is a term describing the worldwide change in which micro and mesocultures no longer exist in a delimited and isolated way but in coexistence and sociostructural mixture with other cultures, traditions, and worlds of ideas. Multiculturality, however, also stands for minorities which do not always have enough social lebensraum and political room in superior political and cultural contexts of life. Multiculturality implies that the media construct a universal symbolic world which mixes topics and cultures and so crucially changes the individual and collective perception of the cultural, social and political world. This structural change of society also takes place in increasing migrations, in Europe after the decline of the communist central administrations, in the United States as a destination for many from around the world, and between many countries offering economic or political possibilities. Minorities find themselves, often, in seemingly hopeless situations. In many countries there are restrictive residence permits for foreigners. There are increasing acts of violence against minorities in some countries; there may be laws disadvantaging minorities, and there are often hostile attitudes by members of the public and members of the government. Efforts of organizations, the media or some individual journalists respectively to create at least a tolerant if not even an interculturally public consciousness have not yet been very successful universally. Socially committed communication research must respond to these developments. On the one hand, it should offer analyses and solutions for problems by means of research and training. On the other hand, it must work out stable practices. With regard to this social phenomenon, new job-models in the communication field have to be prepared which are able to reduce subjective and collective lacks of comprehension of minorities and which simultaneously are authentic communication channels for the minorities themselves. Societies live out of the identities and personalities of their people, groups, and communities. By the same token, society does not become identifiable for the individual as long as its face does not have clear and recognizable features. This can only be reached by communication as unfeigned as possible. |
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About the World Press Center |
The World Press Center, as visualized, would be for students in journalism at colleges and universities throughout the world. It would serve as a resource center for these students in whatever ways needed and possible. It would provide opportunities for summer short courses in American journalism techniques followed by internships on cooperating news media. Annual conferences, in addition, would focus on topics of vital concern to those students who will be future practicing journalists. |
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About International Crossroads |
International Crossroads is a magazine published by Missouri Southern State University for the purpose of exposing students around the world to journalism which reflects the moods, the tempers, the personalities, the concerns, the lifestyles, the cultures, the history, and the potential of other peoples in other lands. Articles, generally, should be timeless in nature. Articles may be essays, feature stories, news stories, or other acceptable journalistic forms. Photographs are urgently requested whenever possible; they may be color or black and white. Photo essays are welcomed, as well. An emphasis on human interest articles in helping others become acquainted with new people and new places is particularly desired. Publication is in the summer, and deadline for submissions is approximately April 15. The magazine is distributed widely throughout the United States and to those cooperating institutions and students. There is no payment made to contributors, nor is there a charge to participating institutions for copies to distribute to contributors Articles may be submitted by mail (allow a minimum of two weeks for delivery), by fax, or by e-mail. |
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For further details on the conference, the World Press Center, or International Crossroads: |
Please contact: Dr. Chad Stebbins, Director Institute of International Studies Missouri Southern State University 3950 East Newman Road Joplin, MO 64801-1595 Telephone: (417) 625-9736 |
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Institute of International Studies
Missouri Southern State University - Joplin 3950 E Newman Road ·Joplin, MO 64801-1595 Voice: 417.659.4442 · Fax: 417.659.4445 Updated September 11, 2003 Page Maintained by Sharen Brown Copyright©; Missouri Southern State University, 2003, all rights reserved |
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