Artikel

Overheidsvoorlichting: traditionele standpunten en nieuwe visies

---

Abstract

Traditional ways and new directions in the study of public information— The author traces the evolution of scientific thinking about public information in Belgium from the early sixties. In the traditional conception, which dominates the work during the sixties, public information was seen as a one-way process between the (central) government and the citizens. Authors were mostly aware of the possibility that the government may try to give political propaganda instead of information. In the early seventies a radical change occurred in the ideas of public information. Government information was seen as a two-way communication process and much attention was paid to the notions feedback and follow-up. Government has the duty to give information and the citizen has the right to get information. One of the most important causes of this conceptual or paradigmatic change, the author points out, is the publication in the Netherlands in 1970 of the report of the BIESHEUVEL-Commission about the publicity of public affairs. The ideas of the sociologists of the famous Frankfurt-School about democracy and publicity and the possibility to apply the findings of persuasive communication processes and communication models to the governmental information by means of specialized agencies and spokesmen, are also analysed. In the period after 1975, no progress has been made in Belgium in the field of public information. Communication scientists have „migrated” to other fields like scientific information. The author tries to find the causes of this crisis situation. The political apathy of many citizens on the one hand, the lack of information on vital problems or the information of bad quality on the other hand, are certainly responsible for this lower interest by many scientists in the field of political sociology and mass-communication.

How to Cite:

Van Parys, G., (1980) “Overheidsvoorlichting: traditionele standpunten en nieuwe visies”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 25(3), 219–243. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.94766