ABSTRACT
The British communications researcher James Halloran insists that all research involves the right to redefine. But, as South American media researcher Luis Beltran has pointed out there is much more agreement about the meaning of information than about the meaning of freedom in such policy statements. Researchers more and more recognize their own role in helping to understand how principles, such as the various freedoms of communication and information, are related to actual practices at a given time in society. The impact of the means of communication on social change, Lord Briggs has said, can be understood only in terms of the varied ways in which individuals and communities select from it, perceive it, and use it. Two issues in particular have surfaced in recent years as the communication infrastructure of technology and institutions has begun to approximate a world system, gatekeeping issues and periphery issues.
