Pages: 143-166The idea of "development journalism," central to many discussions of mass communication and development in the Third World, needs to be reconceptualized because deliberations about its validity and usefulness have been bogged down in arguments structured by Western notions of press freedom. The debate has diverted attention from important questions about how journalism can contribute to participatory democracy, security, peace, and other humanistic values. This article argues that social transformations are deeply rooted in changing ideas and practices related to space and time. Thus, as background for reconceptualizing development journalism, the expectations and actual impacts of the dominant models of mass communication and development are analyzed, with particular attention to the relationships among mass communication, space, and time. Then the concept of emancipation is explicated and a normative model for "emancipatory journalism" is outlined. The model specifies an activist role within "new social movements" for journalism and journalists in the process of national development. The relationship between emancipatory journalism and social change is considered in the final section.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.