Information, Sociopolitical

Information, Sociopolitical 

the body of reports on current domestic and international events disseminated through the mass communications media, providing the audience with an orientation toward the facts, phenomena, and processes of political, economic, scientific, cultural, and other areas of social life. In socialist society such information must be truthful and accurate in the presentation of facts; toward this end the facts are selected and arranged for their representative character, in order to serve as the basis for objective analysis and commentary on events and processes of social life on the basis of Marxist-Leninist methodology and in accordance with the principle of partiinost’ (party spirit).

The Communist Party attributes great importance to the problem of keeping the mass of the working people well informed so that they may participate consciously and actively in public life. It also places great importance on the reception of factual and evaluative information from the working people themselves; such “feedback” information, dealing with all spheres of the national economy and culture and with various social problems, is used for decision-making at various levels of social management.

Bourgeois propaganda, which seeks to give the masses an orientation that will serve its own purposes, makes extensive use of the technique of disinformation, presenting facts and the essence of events in a nonobjective way, failing to report important information, and emphasizing sensational news about events of minor significance.

In journalism the chief forms used for efficient transmission of information are the informative genres of publicistics—the chronicle of events, notices, news stories, summary accounts, interviews, and surveys.

REFERENCE

Brovikov, V. I., and I. V. Popovich. Sovremennye problemy politicheskoi informatsii i agitatsii. Moscow, 1969.