Toward a Self-Regulating System of Mass Media in Romania from a Cybernetic Approach
Toward a Self-Regulating System of Mass Media in Romania from a Cybernetic Approach
Student: Constanta Alina Hogea
Thesis Advisor: Paul Ryan
Abstract: After the fall of communism (1989), Romanian media underwent an impressive and fast development characterized by the appearance of thousands of publications and hundreds of audiovisual outlets. This contributed to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in the number of people working in media. That doesn't mean that the number of professional journalists increased. As Peter Gross has stated, East European journalism lacks the essence of professional journalism: providing objective verified information for the public to draw correct conclusions with regard to the surrounding world. This paper presents a concrete way of changing the Romanian mass media system, which is still in transition, into an accountable and democratic system. Using systems theory and second-order cybernetics, the thesis tries to identify a way in which an ethical behavior can be adopted without being perceived as a restrictive, limitative action upon media activity.