Balancing contentious concepts : Ideas of “communication†and “information†in UNESCO’s magazine Courier 1948–2020

This paper focuses on how ideas of “communication†and “information†were envisioned – and presented for a global readership – by UNESCO through its public magazine Courier (1948–). By combining distant reading (topic modeling) and close reading, the analysis makes use of all published articles (1948–2020) and traces the changing contexts of these two concepts as a way to study how (sometimes) conflicting ideals were treated editorially. Over the course of history, notions of information and communication in general, and of their flows in particular, have attracted various interests and discussions. Gradually after the second world war, such discussions became increasingly urgent and international (e.g. Peters, 1999). UNESCO was a key arena in which these discussions took place, such as in the meetings of its General Conference, which were also channeled through the organization’s public magazine Courier. These debates were further affected by the changing member base of UNESCO, with an increasing number of countries that gained independence and joined the organization from 1960 and onwards. Eventually, this change meant that new lines of conflicts emerged, as the East-West tension of the Cold War was joined by a North-South divide between the industrialized power and the global South, or “Third Worldâ€. The growing membership also entailed an increasing diversity of interests, perspectives, and ideologies that needed to be considered (Carlsson, 2003). This included the use of language and how concepts were treated. With this background in mind, and its attempt to hold a uniting position, Courier is an important source to study how concepts that became associated with contested notions and ideals, such as “communication†and “informationâ€, were handled and presented with a global readership in mind. This is also the point of departure of this present article, which addresses the following research questions: What contexts were “communication†and “information†connected to in ...