Analysis

 

PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION

This case study deals with participatory communication, because someone has gone to Armenia to deal with the people and help them out with their journalism skills. They have the government support. Participatory communication brings in the excluded ones and gives them a voice. In this case the people are not excluded, but they have been looked over, especially during Soviet times, and they were not given any focus. This, in essence, is their chance to shine.

Participatory also gets the people to define their role and it gave them more of a voice, which this case study did. Knollenberg taught the people how they can use their voice more wisely. Armenia is a third world country and this promotes nation-building, not in the literal sense, but more in the sense that if journalism were to improve, it would give Armenia more status globally.

During Soviet times, Armenia was obviously Communist, and the journalists were told what to write, and how to write it. There was not a lot of press freedom; there was actually no press freedom. There is an article which cites the problems that reporters faced in terms of those freedoms. After Armenia became independant, Reporters Without Borders found that the press needed to be focused on more. If there are more programs like this, journalism will slowly improve, and Armenia's global status will improve as well.

Armenians need to learn to write subjectively and/or objectively. They were not taught journalism skills and therefore need to learn the difference between the two and that there is a time and place to print both. This is part of the Reporters Without Borders program.