RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

based upon the necessity to create additional, eff ective channels of communication among social scientists and media researchers , Such activities should also help understand and bridge the differences between national and regional scientific communities and their activities , including their literature, and produce a record of topical issues in theory and research reflecting major trends and practices across different cultures . THE FIRST COLLOOUIUM : THE CRITICAL FUNCTION OF COMMUNICATION THEORV A number of colleagues from several European and non-European countries reacted very favorably to these ideas and we decided to organize the first international Colloguium on Communication and Culture at the lnter-University Centre of Postgraduate Studies in DubrovniK from September 28 to October 2 , 1987. 1 ) The Stiftung VolKswagenwerK (FR Оегтапу ) sponsored the first Colloguium devoted to the role of the media in the cultural, sociopolitical and economic f rames of democratic industrial societies . The Colloguium offered an opportunity to twenty participants from nine countries to share and disseminate scientific findings anđ to establish professional contacts. The latter aspect was of particular importance, since there continues to be a genuine lacK of international cooperation among communication scientists . Through a series of formal presentations and intensive discussions , the participants explored the nature of theoretical perspectives and research methodologies within and across cultural boundaries . Specifically , the Colloguium focused upon the importance of historical approaches to the field of communication phenomena (Lerg, 1987), the sensitivity toward the application of conceptual schemes across cultural and political borders (Hardt, 1987), the location of communicative practice in its cultural milieu (SparKs , 1987), as well as the concern for the individual as active subject in the process of social communication . As a result of a five-day discussion , a line of guestionmg emerged which subsumeđ theoreticai and methodological issues under an emergent critical perspective on communication research. In f act, several discussions acKnowledged the lacK of a 'general critical theory' , and suggested that the cntical function of theory depends on its concrete historical and cultural (political , social, economic ) context . However , different approaches should overcome the Kind of theory or research which taKes for granted given (alreađy developeđ ) forms of social commumcation anđ their social context . Consequently , 'being cntical' denotes a theoretically and

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