From: Howard Frederick <hfrederick@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Book: Global Communication and International Relations
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 19:39:56 GMT

                                  REVIEW

             Global Communication and International Relations

               _Media Information Australia_, February 1993
                             by Peter B. White
            EDUPBW@lure.latrobe.edu.au Wed Nov 4 14:17:48 1992


Frederick, Howard H.  _Global Communication and International Relations_, 
     Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, California, 1993.  ISBN 0 534 19344 7
     pp. plus 287, $A34.95.  Distributor:  Nelson Australia.

     The massive increase in the scale and speed of global communications 
poses significant challenges for scholars and policy makers.  An 
examination of these issues should be a part of every undergraduate media 
program.  Howard Frederick's excellent textbook provides a cogent and 
exhaustive overview of the issues raised by the transborder communication 
of values, attitudes, opinions, information, and data by individuals, 
groups, people, institutions, governments and information technologies.  

     But he does more than provide an overview of the history and the 
current debates about the nature of global communications.  His lucid 
description of the background to, and consequences of the UNESCO debate 
about the free flow of information stands out as a model of scholarship 
which combines political analysis and a concern for cultural values.  He 
also provides some interesting avenues for further exploration and 
thinking.  The copious references to other primary and secondary material 
provide scholars with ready access to the scholarly and policy oriented 
literature.  This is a book which deserves to be incorporated in 
undergraduate programs.  It will a significant resource for graduate 
students and other researchers.

END OF REVIEW

                    Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1993 
                   ISBN: 0-534-19344-7    Price:  $18.95 
                   To order, call 1-800-354-9706 or send 
                   email to hfrederick@igc.apc.org for an
                           electronic order form. 
 
     From the Preface by George Gerbner, Dean-Emeritus of the Annenberg 
     School of Communication:  "This tour-de-force is timely and necessary.  
     The new communication systems [are] shaping not only one's culture and 
     perspectives but increasingly one's history and fate.  There is no 
     more profound and difficult challenge as we approach the twenty-first 
     century.  This book will help prepare us to meet it."

     Howard Frederick's unique book treats international communication in 
an international relations context -- the *first* truly comprehensive study 
of its kind.  Frederick's book discusses how the modern media face the 
challenge of promoting peace, building confidence among nations and 
peoples, and strengthening understanding.  Accelerated by the rapid 
advances in electronic technologies, global information networks have 
become central to international relations.

     _Global Communication and International Relations_ is a challenging 
treatment of communication that discusses all the relevant communications 
issues -- historical, theoretical, and policy-oriented -- and does so in a 
clear, interesting style.  Frederick's up-to-date book covers the entire 
gamut of communications controversies and topics in a way that's certain to 
provoke lively discussion.  Everything is documented in this comprehensive 
approach that includes more than 100 endnotes within each chapter.  

     _Global Communication and International Relations_ is a book that is 
both rigorous and applied, and gives instructors an integrated way to 
presenting a complex subject with clarity and completeness.  

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