Cognitive Theories and the Concept of Journalism

• Main Author: Zhytaryuk Marian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2016-07-01
• Series: Social Communication
• Subjects: cognition; journalism; theory of structural balance; theory of cognitive dissonance; theory of communicative acts; congruity theory
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/sc-2016-0005

The general aim of cognitivists - the attempt to compare logical and illogical, rational and irrational in the human behavior - can be considered as one of the main object not only in the psychology, but also in the journalism. If you don’t take into account assumed problems, the truth can be treated as a lie, an importance as an irrationality, an advantage as defects. In practice the ignorance of balancing, consonance and knowledge for the benefit of “must” turned round for tendentiousness, propaganda, manipulation, rationing of authoritarian and totalitarian models of journalism or for passing from journalistic standards in total. Therefore the article describes the spectrum of cognition in the context of modern Journalism and problems of Media practices, including the balance in journalism in terms of theories of consistency.