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by Péter Bajomi-Lázár, Budapest Business School. A dual anniversary The year 2019 is a dual anniversary: ARPANET, the network designed to meet military and academic purposes was established 50 years ago, and the world wide web, allowing for the civil use of the network, was launched 30 years ago. How has the rise of the internet transformed our lives? What were the early predictions—and have they come true?  Innovations and their aftermath Accounts of the history of the media tell us that the inventors of new technology themselves were often unable to foresee the societal uses of their innovations. The telegraph, created by Samuel Morse and his colleagues, was originally to ease the transfer of information from one place to another (e.g., to let the next railway station know that the train would be late), yet the wireless has also contributed to the rise of the ‘news paradigm’ in journalism, focusing on facts and omitting comments, as correspondents had to pay for every single word transmitted. The photography invented by Nicéphore Nièpce and Louis Daguerre was to allow…

by Péter Bajomi-Lázár, Budapest Business School. What explains the persistence of partisan journalism in Central and Eastern Europe? During and after the political transformations of 1989–91, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe sought to Americanise, or Anglicise, their media systems. They made efforts to introduce public service media as modeled on the British Broadcasting Corporation; their broadcasting acts prescribed standards of neutrality and balance; and their freshly passed ethical codes prescribed objectivity as the main journalism standard to follow. Their efforts, however, have largely failed. In Hungary, “the one-party model of the press has not disappeared completely but has been transformed into a multi-party model that is still far away from the nonpartisan model of the press” (Lázár 1992). In the Czech Republic and in Slovakia, the failure of this concept of the press “is reflected in a lack of impartiality” (Školkay 2001). In Poland, most journalists continue to “represent partisan politician viewpoints” (Dobek-Ostrowska 2012). In the Baltic states, the media system “has not yet been fully separated from the existing political system” (Balčytiene, 2012, p. 62).…

Just a few days to go before our second International Study Programme (ISP) from 24 to 28 June - this time we meet in Budapest, Hungary's beautiful capital city. The Budapest Business School, BBS will be our host. Budapesti Gazdasàgi Egyetem is a public university business school specialised in business studies and social sciences. Again, over 40 students and their teachers from six countries will participate and continue their work and research on European identities and behaviour. On the programme: lectures about contemporary Hungary, stereotype and predjudice in general, practical exercises in order to reflect on behaviour and train self-awareness, and of course several sessions of SYMLOG observation practice. These observations will be done in small mixed groups, focussing on both every-day and business behaviour. Time for analyses and report will conclude the intensive 5-days-programme.