1991 McLUHAN TELEGLOBE CANADA AWARD PRESENTED IN DECEMBER TO BRITISH COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST JAMES D. HALLORAN,
 
PAST PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH
 
Ottawa, December 4, 1991 -- At a ceremony held today at the
Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec, His Excellency the
Right Honourable Ramon John Hnatyshyn, Governor General of
Canada, presented the 1991 McLuhan Teleglobe Canada Award to
James D.  Halloran.  The biennial international award in
communications consists of a prize of $50,000 and a silver
medal created by Canadian artist Lois Betteridge.
 
     James D. Halloran has made a distinct and significant
contribution to the field of mass communications.  He has
been Director of the Centre for Mass Communications Research
at the University of Leicester, England, since it was
establish in 1966.  He was formerly president of the
International Association for Mass Communications Research .
His work on topics as varied as the effects on television,
deviance and mass media, demonstrations, the need for
communication research, and development communication, with
many organizations, including the International association
for Mass Communication Research, the Prix Jeunesse
International, the Centro Internazionale Studi Famiglia in
Milan, Unesco, and the Council of Europe, to name just a
few, have named him a renowned and respected figure in mass
communications research...
 
     The winner of the 1991 award was chosen by a jury of
five eminent Canadians from among a field of candidates put
forward by 19 Unesco National Commissions in all parts of
the world.  The jury was chaired by Florian Sauvageau, and
was comprised of Adrienne Clarkson, Paul-Andre' Comeau,
Michael Snow, and Anna Stahmer.  Alan Hancock, representing
the Director General of Unesco, sat on the jury as an
observer.
 
     Under the permanent patronage of Unesco, the McLuhan
Teleglobe Canada Award was created in 1983, World
Communications Year, by the Canadian Commission for Unesco
in association with Teleglobe, which funds the award.  Open
to candidates of all nationalities, the award honours an
individual or a group whose work has made an exceptional
contribution to a better understanding of the influence of
communications media and technology on society.  Four
eminent international figures in the world of communications
have already received this prestigious award:  Luis Ramiro
Beltran, Bolivian Journalist (1983); Umberto Eco, Italian
communications specialist, writer, teacher, and social
critic (1985); Elihu Katz, Israeli communications
specialist, sociologist, scholar and author (1987); and
Pierre Schaeffer, French creator of audiovisual forms of
expression and communication (1989).
 
     The McLuhan Teleglobe Canada Award pays tribute to
Canadian communications philosopher Marshal McLuhan, whose
extraordinary work in this field at the University of
Toronto over the past 30 years received worldwide attention.
Books such as The Mechanical Bride (his first, published in
1951), The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), and The Medium is the
Message (1967) earned him a reputation as a prophet in the
electronic age.  Phrases from his works, such as "the medium
is the message" and "the global village" have entered
everyday thought and speech.
 
     In the past decade, Teleglobe Inc., parent company to
Teleglobe Canada, has evolved from a $3-million-a-year
supplier of communications products with 30 employees to a
$400-million-a-year provider of solutions worldwide in the
fields of information technology, networking and
telecommunications, employing some 2,500 people and managing
more than a billion dollars in assets.
 
     As an advisory and liaison body, the Canadian
Commission for Unesco coordinates the Unesco program in
Canada and advises the Canadian government in its relations
with Unesco.  The commission is at the centre of a vast
network of specialists and governmental and non-governmental
organizations working in Unesco's fields of jurisdiction.
 
      JAMES D. HALLORAN- THE MAN AND HIS WORK
 
     Known for his pioneering work on various aspects of
critical communication studies, James D. Halloran has been
Director of the Centre for Mass Communication Research at
the University of Leicester, England, since its founding in
1966.  He is past president of the International Association
for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) and is credited with
having made the IAMCR the truly worldwide organization that
it is today.
 
     James Halloran was born in Birstall, near Leeds,
England, and graduated from the University College of Hull,
obtaining postgraduate qualifications in education and
educational administration from the universities of Leeds
and London.  Following work as a teacher, prison tutor and
further education officer, he joined the University of
Leicester as a lecturer and then senior lecturer in the
Department of Adult Education before being appointed
Director of the Centre for Mass Communication Research.
 
     He has been a member of many national and international
bodies, including the British government's Television
Research Committee, the Prix Jeunesse International Research
Group, the East Midlands Regional Board of Central
Independent Television and the Council of the Media Society
of the Institute of Journalists, and a consultant to a
number of others, including Unesco, the Council of Europe,
the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development, the
British government's Committee on the Future of Broadcasting
(Annan Committee), the International Commission for the
Study of Communication Problems (MacBride Commission) and
the Centro Internazionale Studi Famiglia in Milan.
 
     Author of various articles and books on the media and
the various aspects of the communication process and
involved in a wide range of research projects at the
national and international levels, he has made a lasting
contribution to the field of mass communication.  A brief
survey of some of his publications and a few projects in
which he has been involved gives an idea of some of his
research interests and the scope of his work.
 
     The effects of mass media, and television in
particular, has been the focus of much of his research, as a
member of the Television Research Committee and the Prix
Jeunesse International Research Group, in work for the Annan
Committee and in other research projects.  One of the
working papers of the Television Research Committee, for
example, explored the relationship between television and
delinquent behavior.  "The Effects of Television" (edited by
James D. Halloran, 1970) was broader in scope, looking at
the social and political effects of television, television
and the arts, the effects of television on other media, and
television education.  Some of the Prix Jeunesse research in
which he has been involved has looked at such topics as pre-
school children and television, what television producers
know about their young viewers, and television and the image
of the family.
 
     Halloran has also focused on violence and the media in
such works as "Mass Communication: A Symptom or Cause of
Violence?" and "Studying Violence and Mass Media: A
Sociological Approach," emphasizing the importance of
studying media violence in relation to other institutions
and to violence in society as a whole and of setting it
within the appropriate social , political, and economic
framework.
 
_Demonstrations and Communication: A Case Study_ (J.D.
Halloran, P. Elliot and G. Murdock, 1970), which compares
and contrast coverage of an anti-Viet Nam war demonstration
in various newspapers and by two television channels in
order to look at how the news is selected and presented and
the influence of "news values" in making an event a news
story, has become a classic in the field.  This is a topic
he has followed up in an article for the recently published
_Encyclopedia of Mass Communications_ (1991), concluding
that "the media-- television in particular-- in portraying
demonstrations, will reinforce the prevailing simplistic
analyses of complex situations" and that this "will
certainly not lead to an increased understanding of the
social situations which rise to demonstrations."
 
     Throughout his work, Halloran has stressed the
importance of and need for research, from Mass Media in
Society: The Need of Research (Unesco, 1970) to the recently
published A Quarter Century of Prix Jeunesse Research.  As
he wrote in 1987, not enough information is available and,
more importantly, the information that is available is
partial and unbalanced.  However, he has cautioned, we must
not be unrealistic in our expectations.  While research will
always be important and useful, "the neat, simple, packaged,
convenient, unequivocal answers sought by so many are still
not likely to be forthcoming.  The nature of the problem is
not susceptible to this type of answer.  The process is too
complex."
 
     One of Professor Halloran's lasting contributions to
the field of mass communication has been as the president of
the International Association of Mass Communication
Research.  He is credited with single handedly building the
organization into a worldwide association of communication
scholars and in this way furthering a better understanding
of the influences of communication processes on different
societies.  In honour of his contribution to the association
during his 18 years as its president, the IAMCR is
publishing a collection of articles by communication
scholars in 13 different countries entitled Mass
Communication Research: On Problems and Policies- The Art of
Asking the Right Questions.  The topics of the articles,
including mass communication research and policy-making,
mass media effects, violence, media education and
communication technology, cover many of Halloran's own
research interests.