A new media culture

by Editor · October 7, 2008

For a man often accused of holding on to the certainties of the past, Pope Benedict takes a thoroughly modern view of the new forms of media. In his theme for World Communications Day 2008 � or Social Communications Sunday, as it is observed in Southern Africa � the pope notes the growth of the �new media� and calls on Church communicators to make full use of them.

These media include the ever more sophisticated yet user-friendly Internet and cellphone technologies, with their revolutionary accent on interactivity. The traditional media were primarily a one-way relationship between provider and consumer, but the new media facilitate a reciprocal discourse between those who initiate a communication and those who receive and respond to it. Some communicators have seized the opportunities created by this shift in media culture, others are still struggling to discern the new horizons.

All the progress already made in a relatively brief time notwithstanding, the transformation is still nascent. Within a generation, the notion of the traditional media without the new technologies will seem as unimaginable as a world without the printing press.

The pope understands this. The title of his message calls on the Church to use these new media as a means to promote �a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship�. In effect, he is asking the Church to become a major player in the new media so as to influence its ethics, apart from using them as a means of evangelisation.

He is presenting us with a challenge. Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, described the pope�s yet unreleased message as �a compendium of the commitments and responsibilities that communication and communicators are called to personally assume at a time so characterised by the development of new technologies which, in fact, create a new environment, a new culture.� But that commitment resides not only with communicators but, in an age of interconnectivity and interactivity, also with the consumers.

It is a challenge this newspaper will aim to meet. Just a few weeks before The Southern Cross� 88th birthday, on October 15, we launched our new website which eschews news content for opinion, analysis, backgrounders and debate. Readers are invited to comment on every article posted on the site (provided they do so without undue abuse). This, we hope, will help facilitate the culture of respect, dialogue and friendship which the pope is calling for.

Of course, the print media will not disappear, and the new media will complement, not displace, the traditional media. While some print publications are experiencing declining readerships, The Southern Cross is among a handful of national newspapers reporting increases in circulation. But even the print media must be prepared to transform, to become, in its own way, part of the new media.

To some extent, Southern Cross editorial policy has anticipated Pope Benedict�s call to promote a culture of respect, dialogue and friendship by providing a forum for open debate among all Catholics through its Letters to the Editor (even when some of these letters are controversial and some are not infused with much Christian charity or respect). This policy was in part inspired by Durban�s media-savvy Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, who in 2001 said that The Southern Cross �is a place where we, as a Church, can come together�to communicate right across the spectrum�.

This will remain this newspaper�s policy also in its 89th year, with the added impetus of our website which is designed to facilitate further debate.