Shelton A Gunaratne
Biographic Data
| ID | 364078 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shelton A Gunaratne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shelton A |
| FAMILY NAME | Gunaratne |
| SIGNATURE | GUNARATNE S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Minnesota State University Moorhead |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 108 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A new vision of reality for communication research
This essay calls for the adoption of the systems view of life as the unifying vision for all disciplines to follow. Newtonian science eclipsed systems thinking for more than 300 years after the publication of Newton’s magnum corpus, the Principia, in 1687. Subsequent findings have challenged some of the main presumptions of classical science such as the Cartesian view of mind–body duality and the classification of variables into distinct dependen…
Buddhism
The first part of this entry outlines the beginning of Buddhism, and its division into three main traditions as it spread into a wider Asian region (encompassing Southeast and East Asia) more than five centuries after the death of the Buddha. It then goes on to assert the likely merging of all schools of Buddhism as a result of globalization, and provides a summary of Buddhist phenomenology. The second part continues with further elaboration of t…
D aoism
This entry traces the growth of Daoism in China as a competing religio‐philosophy side by side with Confucianism and Buddhism since the 1st century ce . It examines the six principles of communication that make Daoism different from those adopted in the West. It focuses on the potential of Daoism as a source for constructing a unique set of criteria for evaluating rhetoric and the potential of applying the Daoist notion of ziran‐wuwei as an essen…
Globalizing communication/journalism, ending fragmentation within philosophy, and analyzing history as life-spans in samsara
This article is an attempt to expand the theoretical, methodological, and historical boundaries of communication/journalism studies to suit the beginning phase of the contemporary Digital Era. First, this article suggests that communication scholars should consistently use the term ‘globalization’ to describe the current endeavor to apply the horizontally integrative macro-history approach to produce a universally acceptable body of knowledge enc…
Go East young ‘man
This essay argues the case for developing a more acceptable metatheory that scholars could use as a framework to hypothesize the non-linear development of global mediatization, a term that European researchers coined at the turn of the century. We can extract the rudiments of such a theory from the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising (Paticca Samuppada), which explicates the bhavacakra (the wheel of becoming) and samsara (cyclic existence) …
De-Westernizing communication/social science research
Globalization
This essay asserts that the discourse on globalization—as filtered through the social science oligopoly of Britain, France, and the United States—is an extension of the dominant (classical) modernization/development paradigm*, traceable to Weber and Hegel, whose views contributed much toward what critics identify today as Orientalism* and Eurocentrism*. Anthropocentrism* and the belief that progress involves emulating the West (center) by the res…
Buddhist Goals of Journalism and The News Paradigm
This essay compares and contrasts the goals of Buddhist journalism with the general traits of the dominant/Western news paradigm to demonstrate the gap between the moral aspirations of the Orient and the instrumental materialistic traits revealed through the performance of the dominant/Western paradigm, which has even marginalised the moral imperatives of the Decalogue The essay goes on to assess the unique opportunities offered by Buddhist journ…
Falsifying Two Asian Paradigms and De-Westernizing Science
Classical science searches for simple rules of general applicability underlying the multiple phenomena. Its quest is order, causality, and determinism. It splits the world into elementary components and isolates them from their environment. It creates fragmentation of the scientific enterprise into insular disciplines and ignores the social stratum from which science emerges. Although its successes are overwhelming, classical science is incapable…
Understanding systems theory
What we call systems theory is more a metatheory than a monolithic theory. It has provided a set of common signposts for all systems theorists to follow. This paper, written from the perspective of communications scholarship, examines the transition of systems theory from the age of equilibrium to the age of entropy during the middle of the twentieth century, and then to the age of emergence at the end of the century. It distinguishes between the…
Systems approaches and communication research. The age of entropy
This essay examines the contemporary approaches to systems theory, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and how communication researchers can apply them creatively. It points out that using system approaches requires communication scholars to study the mutual interaction of both information inputs and matter/energy inputs. Overloads of these inputs coupled with storage problems could engender positive feedback loops and move the sys…
A systems view of `international' communication, its scope and limitations
A Yijing View of World-System and Democracy
Asian Philosophies and Authoritarian Press Practice
Contrary to Orientalist interpretations, authoritarian political practices are inconsistent with the axial Asian philosophies, which implicitly call for a socially responsible critical press (communication outlets). This is certainly the case with Buddhist philosophy. Confucianism and Hinduism also do not endorse authoritarianism. First, this essay analyzes each of these philosophies to show their disapproval of actions that enhance state authori…
Public Diplomacy, Global Communication and World Order
This article analyses the dynamics of the world order, as well as the nature of public diplomacy conducted through both global and national media of communication, within a theoretical framework derived from the fundamental concepts associated with Eastern philosophy, world-systems analysis and the theory of living systems (encompassing the paradigms of cognition, autopoiesis and dissipative structures). First, it explains the clash of classical …
Thank you Newton, welcome Prigogine
Article Thank you Newton, welcome Prigogine: Unthinking old paradigms and embracing new directions. Part 2: The pragmatics was published on March 3, 2004 in the journal Communications (volume 29, issue 1)
Proto-Indo-European expansion, rise of English, and the international language order
Article Proto-Indo-European expansion, rise of English, and the international language order: a humanocentric analysis was published on November 13, 2003 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 2003, issue 164)
Handbook of the Media in Asia
An Evolving Triadic World
A macro theory that recognizes the world s three competing center-clusters and their respective hinterlands o?ers a realistic framework for global communication research. This study has used recent data on world trade, computers, Internet hosts, and high-tech exports to map the triadization of the world in the Information Age. The original dependency theory and world-system theory perspectives emphasized the hierarchical linking of national socie…
Freedom of the Press
The world system theory can provide a refreshingly different perspective of global press freedom. The starting point of assessing press freedom should be the world system, not the ‘atomistic’ nation-state, because one cannot understand the part without knowing the whole, which is more than the sum of the parts. This article proposes the application of a revised formulation of the world system theory – which presumes a capitalist world-economy dom…
Convergence
This essay reviews the arguments of the utopians and the dystopians on the ongoing Third Communication Revolution—the convergence of telecommunication, computers, and digitization—and makes the point that the state of capitalism stimulated by this revolution has left nations—small or big—with little option but to informatize so they could effectively compete in the world material economy. Because dependency theory offers no solution for these nat…
Paper, Printing and the Printing Press
The Chinese used paper for two or three centuries before CE 105, when Cai Lun, director of imperial arsenals under Emperor He of the later Han dynasty (25-220), officially reported the `invention' of paper. The Chinese began the first printed newspaper, Jing Bao (originally Di Bao), in 713 under the Tang dynasty (618-907); and it continued until the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. In 868, Wang Jie printed the famous Diamond Sutra (Kumaraj…
Prospects and Limitations of World System Theory for Media Analysis
This article points out the potential of applying the world system theory to global communication- and media analysis as a `humanocentric' enterprise covering both the present and the past. It attempts to identify the world's core countries using a weighted index of a country's size of the economy (GNP) and of its exports. It applies the index to rank order the countries in the Middle East and North Africa region to ascertain the likelihood of a …
The Media in Asia
This overview article operationally defines Asia as the three subregions constituting the South, the Southeast and the East. It discusses the Occidental and the Oriental (i.e. Asian values) views of press freedom and argues the case for placing this debate within the framework of Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, it looks at the relevance of old media, as well as old media theory, in the context of the new medi…
Old Wine in a New Bottle
The emerging concept of public journalism in the United States is very similar to the concept of developmental journalism that the West had denounced in the past in debates concerning the New World Information and Communication Order (KWICO). Many of the ideas of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, as well as those regarding the social responsibility theory of the press associated with the Commission on Freedom o…
Freedom of the Press
The world system theory can provide a refreshingly different perspective of global press freedom. The starting point of assessing press freedom should be the world system, not the ‘atomistic’ nation-state, because one cannot understand the part without knowing the whole, which is more than the sum of the parts. This article proposes the application of a revised formulation of the world system theory – which presumes a capitalist world-economy dom…
Public Diplomacy, Global Communication and World Order
This article analyses the dynamics of the world order, as well as the nature of public diplomacy conducted through both global and national media of communication, within a theoretical framework derived from the fundamental concepts associated with Eastern philosophy, world-systems analysis and the theory of living systems (encompassing the paradigms of cognition, autopoiesis and dissipative structures). First, it explains the clash of classical …
Falsifying Two Asian Paradigms and De-Westernizing Science
Classical science searches for simple rules of general applicability underlying the multiple phenomena. Its quest is order, causality, and determinism. It splits the world into elementary components and isolates them from their environment. It creates fragmentation of the scientific enterprise into insular disciplines and ignores the social stratum from which science emerges. Although its successes are overwhelming, classical science is incapable…
Paper, Printing and the Printing Press
The Chinese used paper for two or three centuries before CE 105, when Cai Lun, director of imperial arsenals under Emperor He of the later Han dynasty (25-220), officially reported the `invention' of paper. The Chinese began the first printed newspaper, Jing Bao (originally Di Bao), in 713 under the Tang dynasty (618-907); and it continued until the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. In 868, Wang Jie printed the famous Diamond Sutra (Kumaraj…
Prospects and Limitations of World System Theory for Media Analysis
This article points out the potential of applying the world system theory to global communication- and media analysis as a `humanocentric' enterprise covering both the present and the past. It attempts to identify the world's core countries using a weighted index of a country's size of the economy (GNP) and of its exports. It applies the index to rank order the countries in the Middle East and North Africa region to ascertain the likelihood of a …
Old Wine in a New Bottle
The emerging concept of public journalism in the United States is very similar to the concept of developmental journalism that the West had denounced in the past in debates concerning the New World Information and Communication Order (KWICO). Many of the ideas of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, as well as those regarding the social responsibility theory of the press associated with the Commission on Freedom o…
Go East young ‘man
This essay argues the case for developing a more acceptable metatheory that scholars could use as a framework to hypothesize the non-linear development of global mediatization, a term that European researchers coined at the turn of the century. We can extract the rudiments of such a theory from the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising (Paticca Samuppada), which explicates the bhavacakra (the wheel of becoming) and samsara (cyclic existence) …
De-Westernizing communication/social science research
The Media in Asia
This overview article operationally defines Asia as the three subregions constituting the South, the Southeast and the East. It discusses the Occidental and the Oriental (i.e. Asian values) views of press freedom and argues the case for placing this debate within the framework of Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, it looks at the relevance of old media, as well as old media theory, in the context of the new medi…
Buddhist Goals of Journalism and The News Paradigm
This essay compares and contrasts the goals of Buddhist journalism with the general traits of the dominant/Western news paradigm to demonstrate the gap between the moral aspirations of the Orient and the instrumental materialistic traits revealed through the performance of the dominant/Western paradigm, which has even marginalised the moral imperatives of the Decalogue The essay goes on to assess the unique opportunities offered by Buddhist journ…
An Evolving Triadic World
A macro theory that recognizes the world s three competing center-clusters and their respective hinterlands o?ers a realistic framework for global communication research. This study has used recent data on world trade, computers, Internet hosts, and high-tech exports to map the triadization of the world in the Information Age. The original dependency theory and world-system theory perspectives emphasized the hierarchical linking of national socie…
Foreign News in Two Asian Dailies
Globalizing communication/journalism, ending fragmentation within philosophy, and analyzing history as life-spans in samsara
This article is an attempt to expand the theoretical, methodological, and historical boundaries of communication/journalism studies to suit the beginning phase of the contemporary Digital Era. First, this article suggests that communication scholars should consistently use the term ‘globalization’ to describe the current endeavor to apply the horizontally integrative macro-history approach to produce a universally acceptable body of knowledge enc…
Globalization
This essay asserts that the discourse on globalization—as filtered through the social science oligopoly of Britain, France, and the United States—is an extension of the dominant (classical) modernization/development paradigm*, traceable to Weber and Hegel, whose views contributed much toward what critics identify today as Orientalism* and Eurocentrism*. Anthropocentrism* and the belief that progress involves emulating the West (center) by the res…
Understanding systems theory
What we call systems theory is more a metatheory than a monolithic theory. It has provided a set of common signposts for all systems theorists to follow. This paper, written from the perspective of communications scholarship, examines the transition of systems theory from the age of equilibrium to the age of entropy during the middle of the twentieth century, and then to the age of emergence at the end of the century. It distinguishes between the…
Reporting the Third World in the 1970s
An Asian contagion
The Background To the Non-Aligned News Pool
Press in Pakistan Under President Ayub Khan
Foreign News in Two Asian Dailies
A Critical Look at the 'New Paradigm' of Communication and Development
An Asian contagion
The Background To the Non-Aligned News Pool
Reporting the Third World in the 1970s
Old Wine in a New Bottle
The emerging concept of public journalism in the United States is very similar to the concept of developmental journalism that the West had denounced in the past in debates concerning the New World Information and Communication Order (KWICO). Many of the ideas of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, as well as those regarding the social responsibility theory of the press associated with the Commission on Freedom o…
The Media in Asia
This overview article operationally defines Asia as the three subregions constituting the South, the Southeast and the East. It discusses the Occidental and the Oriental (i.e. Asian values) views of press freedom and argues the case for placing this debate within the framework of Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, it looks at the relevance of old media, as well as old media theory, in the context of the new medi…
Convergence
This essay reviews the arguments of the utopians and the dystopians on the ongoing Third Communication Revolution—the convergence of telecommunication, computers, and digitization—and makes the point that the state of capitalism stimulated by this revolution has left nations—small or big—with little option but to informatize so they could effectively compete in the world material economy. Because dependency theory offers no solution for these nat…
Paper, Printing and the Printing Press
The Chinese used paper for two or three centuries before CE 105, when Cai Lun, director of imperial arsenals under Emperor He of the later Han dynasty (25-220), officially reported the `invention' of paper. The Chinese began the first printed newspaper, Jing Bao (originally Di Bao), in 713 under the Tang dynasty (618-907); and it continued until the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. In 868, Wang Jie printed the famous Diamond Sutra (Kumaraj…
Prospects and Limitations of World System Theory for Media Analysis
This article points out the potential of applying the world system theory to global communication- and media analysis as a `humanocentric' enterprise covering both the present and the past. It attempts to identify the world's core countries using a weighted index of a country's size of the economy (GNP) and of its exports. It applies the index to rank order the countries in the Middle East and North Africa region to ascertain the likelihood of a …
Handbook of the Media in Asia
An Evolving Triadic World
A macro theory that recognizes the world s three competing center-clusters and their respective hinterlands o?ers a realistic framework for global communication research. This study has used recent data on world trade, computers, Internet hosts, and high-tech exports to map the triadization of the world in the Information Age. The original dependency theory and world-system theory perspectives emphasized the hierarchical linking of national socie…
Freedom of the Press
The world system theory can provide a refreshingly different perspective of global press freedom. The starting point of assessing press freedom should be the world system, not the ‘atomistic’ nation-state, because one cannot understand the part without knowing the whole, which is more than the sum of the parts. This article proposes the application of a revised formulation of the world system theory – which presumes a capitalist world-economy dom…
Proto-Indo-European expansion, rise of English, and the international language order
Article Proto-Indo-European expansion, rise of English, and the international language order: a humanocentric analysis was published on November 13, 2003 in the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language (volume 2003, issue 164)
Thank you Newton, welcome Prigogine
Article Thank you Newton, welcome Prigogine: Unthinking old paradigms and embracing new directions. Part 2: The pragmatics was published on March 3, 2004 in the journal Communications (volume 29, issue 1)
Asian Philosophies and Authoritarian Press Practice
Contrary to Orientalist interpretations, authoritarian political practices are inconsistent with the axial Asian philosophies, which implicitly call for a socially responsible critical press (communication outlets). This is certainly the case with Buddhist philosophy. Confucianism and Hinduism also do not endorse authoritarianism. First, this essay analyzes each of these philosophies to show their disapproval of actions that enhance state authori…
Public Diplomacy, Global Communication and World Order
This article analyses the dynamics of the world order, as well as the nature of public diplomacy conducted through both global and national media of communication, within a theoretical framework derived from the fundamental concepts associated with Eastern philosophy, world-systems analysis and the theory of living systems (encompassing the paradigms of cognition, autopoiesis and dissipative structures). First, it explains the clash of classical …
A Yijing View of World-System and Democracy
Systems approaches and communication research. The age of entropy
This essay examines the contemporary approaches to systems theory, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and how communication researchers can apply them creatively. It points out that using system approaches requires communication scholars to study the mutual interaction of both information inputs and matter/energy inputs. Overloads of these inputs coupled with storage problems could engender positive feedback loops and move the sys…
A systems view of `international' communication, its scope and limitations
Falsifying Two Asian Paradigms and De-Westernizing Science
Classical science searches for simple rules of general applicability underlying the multiple phenomena. Its quest is order, causality, and determinism. It splits the world into elementary components and isolates them from their environment. It creates fragmentation of the scientific enterprise into insular disciplines and ignores the social stratum from which science emerges. Although its successes are overwhelming, classical science is incapable…
Understanding systems theory
What we call systems theory is more a metatheory than a monolithic theory. It has provided a set of common signposts for all systems theorists to follow. This paper, written from the perspective of communications scholarship, examines the transition of systems theory from the age of equilibrium to the age of entropy during the middle of the twentieth century, and then to the age of emergence at the end of the century. It distinguishes between the…
Globalization
This essay asserts that the discourse on globalization—as filtered through the social science oligopoly of Britain, France, and the United States—is an extension of the dominant (classical) modernization/development paradigm*, traceable to Weber and Hegel, whose views contributed much toward what critics identify today as Orientalism* and Eurocentrism*. Anthropocentrism* and the belief that progress involves emulating the West (center) by the res…
Buddhist Goals of Journalism and The News Paradigm
This essay compares and contrasts the goals of Buddhist journalism with the general traits of the dominant/Western news paradigm to demonstrate the gap between the moral aspirations of the Orient and the instrumental materialistic traits revealed through the performance of the dominant/Western paradigm, which has even marginalised the moral imperatives of the Decalogue The essay goes on to assess the unique opportunities offered by Buddhist journ…
Political science (25 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (8 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Media studies (7 works)