I have often heard folks talking about the negative impacts of Walmart business model on local small business. I heard about "small business killer", "High cost of the low price" and "Globalization monster" all the time.
Coming from China—a country where people usually tend to brag about their nation’s business giant more than criticizing it—it was challenging for me to understand the prevailing hates among the Americans about—Walmart. For many years in many countries’ people’s mind, Walmart has been a symbol of American Products and quality life with affordable price.
So, why the Americans hate Walmart? Because the complex social issues they believe was brought up by Walmart’s growth in the communities, which also happen many where in the world? The complex issues of environment sustainability which is a global issues and a result of the globalization? Talking about multinational corporations operations—why Walmart seems to be the only one being picked up all the time?
Is the hate just a "go with the flow" tendency of the public? Is it becoming a fashion to say “I don’t like Walmart”? Or an excuse for the local small business?
Well, most of the blames to Walmart focus on three major issues: Affecting Local Small Business, Employment issues, and the Corporate Social responsibilities. From my speculations, I found these arguments unsupported by the facts I found from various sources.
A Good Neighbor Boosts Local Small Business Development
A few days ago, I happened to read this article “New Walmart Opens, Small Businesses Close–Common Misconceptions” having critique on the newly released report “The Wal-Mart Effect: Wave of Destruction or Creative Destruction?” from Economic Geography. The author cited three major reasons why Walmart is not the one to blame to for the failure of local small business.
The author argued that “The ostensible mythos negatively effects intimidated local business owners to the point of considering and often calling it quits rather than evaluating all possible circumstances before closing. If local surrounding businesses offer services and products Walmart does not provide, the competition is not as tough in the long haul.”
The Walmart moving into urban areas can actually attract entrepreneurs that diversify the local market. For example, a camera store can provide higher end products and more quality photos printing services that Walmart does not have. A Chinese restaurant can benefit more from the consumers drive by Walmart. The arrival of Walmart can boost the dynamic among local small business, improve the consumers’ shopping experience by providing them with quality products with lower prices, and foster the variety and diversity of the local business environment rather than affecting the local small business.
Ultimately, the Walmart model can cultivate “potential entrepreneurial ventures in a business environment” according to the author.
A Good Neighbor Provides Affordable Quality Life and Serves the community
I came across this video clip on youtube “ We All Are Praying for this Walmart”. I made a deep breath after watching this video—it was so real and close to my everyday life that made me rethink about the massive protesting videos online.
In the video, Adelaide Randall, resident of Chicago's 9th Ward, talks about how a Walmart in Pullman Park would help revitalize a neighborhood devastated by lack of jobs and lack of access to fresh groceries.
“If the store was here, it was a nice, quiet and clean area. But when the store starts leaving, drugs got busy—they start selling more drugs, and robbering..the crime rate went up, without Walmart”
In the video, even though the walmart is a bit far away from where she lives, she still would like to go to Walmart for shopping—because “ I can find something to bring home here”.
Providing people with affordable quality life—isn’t it something we would truly appraise for?
Not to mention the chain effect that Walmart can bring to a host community—build up the community confidence, reduce the street crimes and create more potentials for the host community by attracting various business entrepreneurs.
A Good Neighbor Creates Jobs with comparative wages and demonstrate the hiring diversity in workplaces
I was impressed by this video--“The Story of William” –a typical Walmart success story for a young local associate to a potential CFO”
Walmart provides not just a single job, but training and development opportunities along side as well, and to help the employees advance as far as they want to go in their careers. In fact, about three-fourths of management-level associates in our stores started as hourly associates.(http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/FactSheets/) The average, full-time hourly wage for Walmart stores is $11.75 and is even higher in urban areas. Additionally, associates can receive performance-based bonuses.
Besides, employment in Walmart is not just about comparative wages paying the bills, it is also about helping millions of customers living better life with affordable price.
Walmart demonstrates increasing diversity and equal opportunities in workplace with more than 257,000 African-American associates; more than 41,000 Asian and 5,900 Pacific Islander associates; more than 171,000 Hispanic associates; more than 16,000 American Indian and Alaskan Native associates; more than 869,000 women; and more than 430,000 mature associates who are 50 and older. Walmart insures more than 1.2 million associates and family members making us among the nation’s largest providers of private sector health insurance. Unlike the employees of many of our retail competitors, Walmart associates – both full and part-time – can become eligible for health benefits.( http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/FactSheets/)
I’m not related to Walmart—just as an ordinary community member living in D.C., I feel Walmart is indeed a good neighbor of mine.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Walrmart—A Good Neighbor
I have often heard folks talking about the negative impacts of Walmart business model on local small business. I heard about "small business killer", "High cost of the low price" and "Globalization monster" all the time.
Coming from China—a country where people usually tend to brag about their nation’s business giant more than criticizing it—it was challenging for me to understand the prevailing hates among the Americans about—Walmart. For many years in many countries’ people’s mind, Walmart has been a symbol of American Products and quality life with affordable price.
So, why the Americans hate Walmart? Because the complex social issues they believe was brought up by Walmart’s growth in the communities, which also happen many where in the world? The complex issues of environment sustainability which is a global issues and a result of the globalization? Talking about multinational corporations operations—why Walmart seems to be the only one being picked up all the time?
Is the hate just a "go with the flow" tendency of the public? Is it becoming a fashion to say “I don’t like Walmart”? Or an excuse for the local small business?
Well, most of the blames to Walmart focus on three major issues: Affecting Local Small Business, Employment issues, and the Corporate Social responsibilities. From my speculations, I found these arguments unsupported by the facts I found from various sources.
l A Good Neighbor Boosts Local Small Business Development
A few days ago, I happened to read this article “New Walmart Opens, Small Businesses Close–Common Misconceptions” having critique on the newly released report “The Wal-Mart Effect: Wave of Destruction or Creative Destruction?” from Economic Geography. The author cited three major reasons why Walmart is not the one to blame to for the failure of local small business.
The author argued that “The ostensible mythos negatively effects intimidated local business owners to the point of considering and often calling it quits rather than evaluating all possible circumstances before closing. If local surrounding businesses offer services and products Walmart does not provide, the competition is not as tough in the long haul.”
The Walmart moving into urban areas can actually attract entrepreneurs that diversify the local market. For example, a camera store can provide higher end products and more quality photos printing services that Walmart does not have. A Chinese restaurant can benefit more from the consumers drive by Walmart. The arrival of Walmart can boost the dynamic among local small business, improve the consumers’ shopping experience by providing them with quality products with lower prices, and foster the variety and diversity of the local business environment rather than affecting the local small business.
Ultimately, the Walmart model can cultivate “potential entrepreneurial ventures in a business environment” according to the author.
l A Good Neighbor Provides Affordable Quality Life and Serves the community
I came across this video clip on youtube “ We All Are Praying for this Walmart”. I made a deep breath after watching this video—it was so real and close to my everyday life that made me rethink about the massive protesting videos online.
In the video, Adelaide Randall, resident of Chicago's 9th Ward, talks about how a Walmart in Pullman Park would help revitalize a neighborhood devastated by lack of jobs and lack of access to fresh groceries.
“If the store was here, it was a nice, quiet and clean area. But when the store starts leaving, drugs got busy—they start selling more drugs, and robbering..the crime rate went up, without Walmart”
In the video, even though the walmart is a bit far away from where she lives, she still would like to go to Walmart for shopping—because “ I can find something to bring home here”.
Providing people with affordable quality life—isn’t it something we would truly appraise for?
Not to mention the chain effect that Walmart can bring to a host community—build up the community confidence, reduce the street crimes and create more potentials for the host community by attracting various business entrepreneurs.
l A Good Neighbor Creates Jobs with comparative wages and demonstrate the hiring diversity in workplaces
I was impressed by this video--“The Story of William” –a typical Walmart success story for a young local associate to a potential CFO”
Walmart provides not just a single job, but training and development opportunities along side as well, and to help the employees advance as far as they want to go in their careers. In fact, about three-fourths of management-level associates in our stores started as hourly associates.(http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/FactSheets/) The average, full-time hourly wage for Walmart stores is $11.75 and is even higher in urban areas. Additionally, associates can receive performance-based bonuses.
Besides, employment in Walmart is not just about comparative wages paying the bills, it is also about helping millions of customers living better life with affordable price.
Walmart demonstrates increasing diversity and equal opportunities in workplace with more than 257,000 African-American associates; more than 41,000 Asian and 5,900 Pacific Islander associates; more than 171,000 Hispanic associates; more than 16,000 American Indian and Alaskan Native associates; more than 869,000 women; and more than 430,000 mature associates who are 50 and older. Walmart insures more than 1.2 million associates and family members making us among the nation’s largest providers of private sector health insurance. Unlike the employees of many of our retail competitors, Walmart associates – both full and part-time – can become eligible for health benefits.( http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/FactSheets/)
I’m not related to Walmart—just as an ordinary community member living in D.C., I feel Walmart is indeed a good neighbor of mine.
Friday, October 1, 2010
A Life-Time Enchanting Journey --The 2010 D.C. Miss Chinese American Beauty Pageant and Me
It’s been almost two weeks since the Grand Finale of the 2010 D.C. Miss Chinese American Beauty Pageant, yet for me it feels like it has just happened last night.
The grand music hall full of cheering crowds, the elegant orchestra, my fellow glamorous beauty pageant finalists, and of course, the bitterness and sweets from the past two months’ training—these exciting moments and scenes all look like they just happened.
I said to myself the night before the finale, that no matter what the result would be, it was already the time of my life.
The night before the finale, my house got blacked out for the whole night as the heavy storms hit the Northwest D.C. areas, and I got more scared by the fact that I was the only one staying in the house for the night since all my roomies were out for the night. At the same time, I couldn’t locate the bracelets and necklace that mom and grandma gave to me as signs of blessings, and being on the phone with my make up artist for almost half an hour trying to clearing out some miscommunications—Yes, I got very frustrated just the night before the finale and thought I wouldn’t be able to make it .
During that panic moment, I asked myself that did I really wanna quit in the last minute? After all these two months bitter and sweet training? the lovely fellow pageant girls that I had been hanging out with all the time? My friends who had purchased the tickets to come support me for the night? And not to mention me working my ass off in the gym and on my latin dance almost every single day during the past 2 months, sketching on the papers dozens of times with my designer friend just to finalize the evening gown design, riding metro and walking on my feet across D.C., Maryland and Virginia to look for the right latin dance dress and finally got to spend 3 nights to sew up my latin dress by myself, etc.
After the flashing back, I felt I had no reason to say no to the finale—I could not control others but I can control myself. I just need to beat myself up and try my best- so that when someday I looked back, I would not hesitate to say that no matter what the result was, it was already the time of my life.
It then was already the big time! Opening Group Dance and Self-Introduction—Great, done! Talent Show—Done! Almost like what I expected, but I still feel I could have done it better. Swimwsuit Competition—the two months’ almost-brutal work-out plan and healthy diet finally looking paid off. Evening Gown Competition—Done! On stage question—just being myself and looked like it was not bad. And I was done, Done, DONE, D.O.N.E for all the competition parts.
Here came the most exciting and long anticipated part: Time for announcing the winners!
In the backstage, I was actually already free from the nervousness and thinking what to eat when got home (yes, I love love food ).
I wasn’t expecting to win like a queen or princess. In my imagination—I was hoping that if I could win a single prize, such as the best dress, best posture, or best talent—that would already made my night. When the M.C.s and the VIPs were announcing the single awards one by one, and turned out that none—NONE of which was related to me—I was saying to myself: Ok, Serena, time to go home and eat.
When the M.C.s started to announce the top 5, I was already planning my little dinner and the Dim Sum date with the girls over the weekend in my head—my mind wasn’t very focusing on the Top 5 result since I was assured by myself that I wouldn’t be one of them, however I was truly happy to see my girls getting up on the front one by one receiving the awards that they deserve.
Therefore, when Mr. Gibson and Mr. He announced the 1st runner up was No. 11, Serena Lin—me myself--I got shocked and was not able to step up on the front until 30 seconds or so later. Suddenly the past two months memories flashing back, I was thinking about my parents in China, my wonderful time with the fellow finalists, and the hard works I had put into this pageant—I could not help but burst into tears.
I am actually glad that I was not asked to say something after the crowning since I honestly was full of mixed feeling and didn't think I could actually talk....
But, I was asked by one of the judges after the pageant, that have I imagined to win, and I said that I tried to imagine what I would say if I got to win—which was part of the preparation for each finalist—but I had never expected that I would win in that way.
But you know what, given a second chance, I think I would still like to win in surprise, just like the famous saying “ Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you are gonna get”
Inspired by this quote, I think I would just keep up the hard work—expecting less, working more and enjoying the good surprises in life.
If there is anyone that inspired me to walk into this pageant, I think that would be Audrey Hepburn—because when looking into her life path, I got to know more about the true beauty of a woman. It was the desire to reveal such philosophy of true beauty and elegancy to more fellow young Chinese American women and also to serve the Chinese American community that brought me to this journey. I believe it is a life-time enchanting journey as the winners from year to year will keep up the legend and pass down the spirits from generation to generation.
“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone”
--Audrey Hepburn
XOXO
Serena
Democracy, Elite Politics and Propaganda
Democracy, Elite Politics and Propaganda
After the reading, I have a impression that the Dewey -Lippman debate actually points to whether we need Elite Politics or the Grassroots Politics.
Lippman argued that public opinions are highly influenced by the opinion leaders/ political elites. He therefore suggested that democracy is a Nostalgic pursue and a myth. He said " and hence that governance should be delegated exclusively to political representatives and their expert advisors" He also argued that public opinions can be "manufactured".
Based on Lippman's theory, I think the propaganda tactics such as "Glittering Generalities", "Bandwagons", and the use of fear has been tirelessly used by politicians and propagandists. These tactics basically believes in the bullet magic theory, which emphasizes the vulnerability of public when messages are presented.
However, Dewey argued that although social inquiry and policy design can be done by experts, all the relevant facts and potential implications of such inquiry and proposed policies should remain a public trust which must no be manipulable by private interests. One of the very valuable arguments of Dewey is that he believed Democracy is rather the way people decide to live, learn and work together, than a technical system of governance defined by devices, such as elections. Dewey believe that elections, universal suffrage, checks or balances are only tools to achieve democracy, and the essential democracy should be ruled by the people and serve the people.
From his point of view, the tactics of propaganda do not serve a significant role in the democracy process.
As my personal opinion, I agree with Dewey more. I do not believe in Elite politics and propaganda, and I think given the time, public will distinguish the difference between true informational campaign and propaganda, essential democracy and the elites politics.
After the reading, I have a impression that the Dewey -Lippman debate actually points to whether we need Elite Politics or the Grassroots Politics.
Lippman argued that public opinions are highly influenced by the opinion leaders/ political elites. He therefore suggested that democracy is a Nostalgic pursue and a myth. He said " and hence that governance should be delegated exclusively to political representatives and their expert advisors" He also argued that public opinions can be "manufactured".
Based on Lippman's theory, I think the propaganda tactics such as "Glittering Generalities", "Bandwagons", and the use of fear has been tirelessly used by politicians and propagandists. These tactics basically believes in the bullet magic theory, which emphasizes the vulnerability of public when messages are presented.
However, Dewey argued that although social inquiry and policy design can be done by experts, all the relevant facts and potential implications of such inquiry and proposed policies should remain a public trust which must no be manipulable by private interests. One of the very valuable arguments of Dewey is that he believed Democracy is rather the way people decide to live, learn and work together, than a technical system of governance defined by devices, such as elections. Dewey believe that elections, universal suffrage, checks or balances are only tools to achieve democracy, and the essential democracy should be ruled by the people and serve the people.
From his point of view, the tactics of propaganda do not serve a significant role in the democracy process.
As my personal opinion, I agree with Dewey more. I do not believe in Elite politics and propaganda, and I think given the time, public will distinguish the difference between true informational campaign and propaganda, essential democracy and the elites politics.
What Privatization of Gobal communication means to us?
Since when it became a shame to say the communication services within a nation-state are subject to the state regulations? Since when it became a fashion to claim that the communication market of a nation-state is liberalized and open to privatization?
After reading this week's reading "Global Communication Infrastructure", I am impressed by the scale and depth of the privatization of the global communication that has been taking place since the late 20th century.
In the reading, the author cited two case studies: Intelsat and the Murdoch's News Corporation.
Intelsat first emerged as a product of the global communication liberalization--it was created in 1946 as an intergovernmental treaty organization to operate a global satellite system for telecommunications services, offering affordable satellite capacity on a non-discriminatory basis. At the time it was created, commercial satellite communication did not exist and most telecommunications organizations were state-controlled monopolies.
The clients of Intelsat included 143 member countries, and its main goal is to provide equal access to satellite communications for countries in the world. It used to play crucial rols in bringing satellite technology to the South. However, after the privatization, merger and acquisition happened from 2002 to 2005, Intelsat has to charged the same rate for all routes. Given their economic situation, poorer countries found it difficult to afford the satellite communication services.
Not only intelsat, generally speaking, empirical experience suggests that nowadays the satellite communication as a result of the great contingency of the global communication demands substantial investment and high risk, therefore only large businesses and governments will be able to afford this kind of service.
Intelsat: Rich communication, poor democracy: poorer countries cannot afford to get their words across.
Rupet Murdoch's Media Empire: The eyes of the world are on us: Cultural imperialism
Murdoch's ambition to create a global communication empire has brought TV stations,Radios, newspapers, magazines from across the continents reaching nearly half a billion people in more than 70 countries. Although many of its overseas operations is broadcasting the contents they subscribe from the host countries', the large part of the news corporation TV programs and news are produced based on the News Corporation proposition. In my perspective, this is what Murdoch's statement " The eye of the world are on us" really means.
Summary: The global shift from state regulation to market-driven policies are evident in all sectors of international communications--take a look at Murdoch's sweeping-floors acquisitions thru the globe, and the Intelsat transforming from a international non-profit to a private hold communication hardware--the expansion of private capitals in the global communication system have also contributed in widening the gap between the rich and the poor and not necessarily creating more public sphere for democracy.
After reading this week's reading "Global Communication Infrastructure", I am impressed by the scale and depth of the privatization of the global communication that has been taking place since the late 20th century.
In the reading, the author cited two case studies: Intelsat and the Murdoch's News Corporation.
Intelsat first emerged as a product of the global communication liberalization--it was created in 1946 as an intergovernmental treaty organization to operate a global satellite system for telecommunications services, offering affordable satellite capacity on a non-discriminatory basis. At the time it was created, commercial satellite communication did not exist and most telecommunications organizations were state-controlled monopolies.
The clients of Intelsat included 143 member countries, and its main goal is to provide equal access to satellite communications for countries in the world. It used to play crucial rols in bringing satellite technology to the South. However, after the privatization, merger and acquisition happened from 2002 to 2005, Intelsat has to charged the same rate for all routes. Given their economic situation, poorer countries found it difficult to afford the satellite communication services.
Not only intelsat, generally speaking, empirical experience suggests that nowadays the satellite communication as a result of the great contingency of the global communication demands substantial investment and high risk, therefore only large businesses and governments will be able to afford this kind of service.
Intelsat: Rich communication, poor democracy: poorer countries cannot afford to get their words across.
Rupet Murdoch's Media Empire: The eyes of the world are on us: Cultural imperialism
Murdoch's ambition to create a global communication empire has brought TV stations,Radios, newspapers, magazines from across the continents reaching nearly half a billion people in more than 70 countries. Although many of its overseas operations is broadcasting the contents they subscribe from the host countries', the large part of the news corporation TV programs and news are produced based on the News Corporation proposition. In my perspective, this is what Murdoch's statement " The eye of the world are on us" really means.
Summary: The global shift from state regulation to market-driven policies are evident in all sectors of international communications--take a look at Murdoch's sweeping-floors acquisitions thru the globe, and the Intelsat transforming from a international non-profit to a private hold communication hardware--the expansion of private capitals in the global communication system have also contributed in widening the gap between the rich and the poor and not necessarily creating more public sphere for democracy.
New Deceiving Propaganda Tactic: Framing Propaganda under the frame work of Global Public Sphere and Global Governance.
New Deceiving Propaganda Tactic: Framing Propaganda under the frame work of Global Public Sphere and Global Governance.
The post 911 propaganda of the Bush Administration was compared as no difference to the Nazi’s propaganda, according to Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky argued that the concept of democracy is attacked by the U.S. post 911 propaganda. He said “What honest people are saying is that ‘paying attention to our own crimes and stop committing it” and should not jump into others’ homelands to kill millions of people leaving a country devastated and the people suffering from chemical wars.
From my understanding, the nowadays’s globalization trends created a even harder battle for those anti-propaganda. To better understand the argument, I would like to take a step back for now and look at the bigger picture.
Public Sphere is first introduced by Habermas meaning “an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.” (Hauser, Gerard 1998) And in accordance with the globalization, the Global Public Sphere is usually interpreted by scholars as “through global media and Internet networks is the most effective form of broadening political participation on a global scale, by inducing a fruitful, synergistic connection between the government-based international institutions and the global civil society. This multimodal communication space is what constitutes the new global public sphere.” (Castells, Manuel 2008) It is usually understood in the frame work of Global Civil Society, which is popularly interpreted as “rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with a global or international frame of reference in their action and goals.” (Castells, Manuel 2008)
Global governance is another concept that can help us better understand how the
propagandists deceive in making use of the global civil society. Global governance can be understand as due to “the increasing inability of nation-states to confront and manage the processes of globalization of the issues that are the object of their governance, network states ad hoc forms of global governance and, ultimately, to a new form of state, examples are as follows: APEC, ASEAN, United Nations International Monetary Fund, World Bank, NATO.
After examining these concepts in the bigger picture, let’s look back at the argument. So the globalization brought up the trends of Global Public Sphere, and the Global Governance. These tendencies simply created scopes for the deceiving democracy imperialism to take place under the cover of them. Look at these organizations: Voice of America – broadcasting the blocked news to the people living in the non-democratic countries, NATO – all the NATO members were involved in the Gulf War and most of them directly or indirectly sponsored the Iraqi and Afghanistan War. APEC and ASEAN have been accused of being instruments of Chinese government economic bullying on the Southeas Asian member countries.
The National Endowment of Democracy (NED) is a cannot-be-better example. The NED funded international NGOs in the name of advocating for democracy and many of which are international NGOs, such as the Fa Lun Gong, and the World Congress of Uyghur. They which are categorized by Chinese government as “Terrorism groups” and “Religion Extremists”.
It might sound ironic, but please imagine and do this comparison:
U.S. -- Al-Qaeda--“terrorists” - war --while China’s is accused of being “behind Iran and Palestine”
China –Dalai Lama and Radeer - “Terrorism group” and “religion extremists” -- U.S. based NED is sponsoring Dalai Lama and Radeer.
According to Castells, Manuel there are three features characteristics of the international NGOS must be emphasized: “In contrast to political parties, these NGOs have considerable popularity and legitimacy, and this translates into substantial funding both via donations and volunteerism. Their activity focuses on practical matters, specific cases, and concrete expressions of human solidarity: saving children from famine, freeing political prisoners, stopping the lapidation of women, and ameliorating the impact of unsustainable development on indigenous cultures. What is fundamental here is that the classical political argument of rationalizing decisions in terms of the overall context of politics is denied. Goals do not justify the means. The purpose is to undo evil or to do good in one specific instance. The positive output must be considered in itself, not as a way of moving in a positive direction. Because people have come to distrust the logic of instrumental politics, the method of direct action on direct outputs finds increasing support. Finally, the key tactics of NGOs to achieve results and build support for their causes is media politics (Dean, Anderson, and Lovink 2006; Gillmor 2004). It is through the media that these organizations reach the public and mobilize people in support of these causes. In so doing, they eventually put pressure on governments threatened by the voters or on corporations fearful of consumers’ reactions. Thus, the media become the battleground for an NGO’s campaign. Since these are global campaigns, global media are the key target. The globalization of communication leads to the globalization of media politics (Costanza-Chock 2006).”
These interpretations mean that
1, Goals do not justify the means, no matter what cover that propaganda is using, propaganda is propaganda.
2. Through the frame work of global civil movement and the influence of global public sphere, it’s very easy for propagandists to take advantage of public’s trust on such medium and play the new persuasion game.
Micro-Look:
Is it working?
I took a look at the NED funded NOGs based on China mainland. Many of the listed names are in the government’s black list, from my belief, which means that they cannot reach out to the public almost “at all”. This trigger the question—so how do these blocked NGOs work? Are the NED’s efforts working in China? This could be my question for further research.
References:
CASTELLS, Manuel. "The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance".The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 616, No. 1, 2008, pp
Hauser, Gerard , 1998 "Vernacular Dialogue and the Rhetoricality of Public Opinion", Communication Monographs 65 (2): 83–107 Page. 86,
The post 911 propaganda of the Bush Administration was compared as no difference to the Nazi’s propaganda, according to Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky argued that the concept of democracy is attacked by the U.S. post 911 propaganda. He said “What honest people are saying is that ‘paying attention to our own crimes and stop committing it” and should not jump into others’ homelands to kill millions of people leaving a country devastated and the people suffering from chemical wars.
From my understanding, the nowadays’s globalization trends created a even harder battle for those anti-propaganda. To better understand the argument, I would like to take a step back for now and look at the bigger picture.
Public Sphere is first introduced by Habermas meaning “an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.” (Hauser, Gerard 1998) And in accordance with the globalization, the Global Public Sphere is usually interpreted by scholars as “through global media and Internet networks is the most effective form of broadening political participation on a global scale, by inducing a fruitful, synergistic connection between the government-based international institutions and the global civil society. This multimodal communication space is what constitutes the new global public sphere.” (Castells, Manuel 2008) It is usually understood in the frame work of Global Civil Society, which is popularly interpreted as “rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with a global or international frame of reference in their action and goals.” (Castells, Manuel 2008)
Global governance is another concept that can help us better understand how the
propagandists deceive in making use of the global civil society. Global governance can be understand as due to “the increasing inability of nation-states to confront and manage the processes of globalization of the issues that are the object of their governance, network states ad hoc forms of global governance and, ultimately, to a new form of state, examples are as follows: APEC, ASEAN, United Nations International Monetary Fund, World Bank, NATO.
After examining these concepts in the bigger picture, let’s look back at the argument. So the globalization brought up the trends of Global Public Sphere, and the Global Governance. These tendencies simply created scopes for the deceiving democracy imperialism to take place under the cover of them. Look at these organizations: Voice of America – broadcasting the blocked news to the people living in the non-democratic countries, NATO – all the NATO members were involved in the Gulf War and most of them directly or indirectly sponsored the Iraqi and Afghanistan War. APEC and ASEAN have been accused of being instruments of Chinese government economic bullying on the Southeas Asian member countries.
The National Endowment of Democracy (NED) is a cannot-be-better example. The NED funded international NGOs in the name of advocating for democracy and many of which are international NGOs, such as the Fa Lun Gong, and the World Congress of Uyghur. They which are categorized by Chinese government as “Terrorism groups” and “Religion Extremists”.
It might sound ironic, but please imagine and do this comparison:
U.S. -- Al-Qaeda--“terrorists” - war --while China’s is accused of being “behind Iran and Palestine”
China –Dalai Lama and Radeer - “Terrorism group” and “religion extremists” -- U.S. based NED is sponsoring Dalai Lama and Radeer.
According to Castells, Manuel there are three features characteristics of the international NGOS must be emphasized: “In contrast to political parties, these NGOs have considerable popularity and legitimacy, and this translates into substantial funding both via donations and volunteerism. Their activity focuses on practical matters, specific cases, and concrete expressions of human solidarity: saving children from famine, freeing political prisoners, stopping the lapidation of women, and ameliorating the impact of unsustainable development on indigenous cultures. What is fundamental here is that the classical political argument of rationalizing decisions in terms of the overall context of politics is denied. Goals do not justify the means. The purpose is to undo evil or to do good in one specific instance. The positive output must be considered in itself, not as a way of moving in a positive direction. Because people have come to distrust the logic of instrumental politics, the method of direct action on direct outputs finds increasing support. Finally, the key tactics of NGOs to achieve results and build support for their causes is media politics (Dean, Anderson, and Lovink 2006; Gillmor 2004). It is through the media that these organizations reach the public and mobilize people in support of these causes. In so doing, they eventually put pressure on governments threatened by the voters or on corporations fearful of consumers’ reactions. Thus, the media become the battleground for an NGO’s campaign. Since these are global campaigns, global media are the key target. The globalization of communication leads to the globalization of media politics (Costanza-Chock 2006).”
These interpretations mean that
1, Goals do not justify the means, no matter what cover that propaganda is using, propaganda is propaganda.
2. Through the frame work of global civil movement and the influence of global public sphere, it’s very easy for propagandists to take advantage of public’s trust on such medium and play the new persuasion game.
Micro-Look:
Is it working?
I took a look at the NED funded NOGs based on China mainland. Many of the listed names are in the government’s black list, from my belief, which means that they cannot reach out to the public almost “at all”. This trigger the question—so how do these blocked NGOs work? Are the NED’s efforts working in China? This could be my question for further research.
References:
CASTELLS, Manuel. "The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance".The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 616, No. 1, 2008, pp
Hauser, Gerard , 1998 "Vernacular Dialogue and the Rhetoricality of Public Opinion", Communication Monographs 65 (2): 83–107 Page. 86,
The Application of the Communication Theories
So, this week's readings basically dealt with theories and concepts, and we have learned:
Bullet Magic, Spiral of Silence, Social Validation,
Cultivation Theory, Mc Luhan's "Medium is the Message", etc.
I am most interested in two theories: The Cultivation theory and the "Medium is the message" school.
Cultivation theory basically addresses to the phenomenon that the more exposure to TV shows, the more likely the receivers are to incorporate the ideas in the shows in their daily life. More importantly, this theory implicates that when young adults are exposed to violence on TV, they are more likely to pick up such violent behavior or embrace the ideas of violence. The theory has critical meaning for contemporary communication studies because it tells the TV industry to be cautious about the impacts of what they broadcast on air.
The” medium is the message” tells that communication technology has important meaning for communication scholars because it was the first in its time to point out how important the changes of medium and technology mean to both the senders and receivers and how technology can drastically changed the way individuals are connected and communicate with each other. For example, the arising of internet and the Web 2.0, social media application have shaped the way even the language people communicating. Social media has created a digital platform where individuals meet and interact with friends and in more cases, “strangers” and “stalkers” at a level that no era before can compared. Individuals feel it is much easier and faster to interact to people in long distance. More importantly, individuals are getting used to a “customized” medium—Blogs, My Space, Facebook, Twitters, Foursquare and so forth. Extremely, by examining a person’s facebook, myspace, foursqure and bloggers, you can effortlessly see through this persons’ personal life. The boundary between reality and digital world has never been so ambiguous. You can argue the negative impacts of such technology changes making people’s privacy vulnerable. However, on the other hand, the level and the scale of such communication style changes is the one at a time and no compare in the history. It even gave birth to a new communication school “Digital Communication”.
In summary, I think both the Cultivation Theory and the Medium is the message tell me that both the content and the medium of communications matter to the receivers and one cannot live without the other for making impacts.
Bullet Magic, Spiral of Silence, Social Validation,
Cultivation Theory, Mc Luhan's "Medium is the Message", etc.
I am most interested in two theories: The Cultivation theory and the "Medium is the message" school.
Cultivation theory basically addresses to the phenomenon that the more exposure to TV shows, the more likely the receivers are to incorporate the ideas in the shows in their daily life. More importantly, this theory implicates that when young adults are exposed to violence on TV, they are more likely to pick up such violent behavior or embrace the ideas of violence. The theory has critical meaning for contemporary communication studies because it tells the TV industry to be cautious about the impacts of what they broadcast on air.
The” medium is the message” tells that communication technology has important meaning for communication scholars because it was the first in its time to point out how important the changes of medium and technology mean to both the senders and receivers and how technology can drastically changed the way individuals are connected and communicate with each other. For example, the arising of internet and the Web 2.0, social media application have shaped the way even the language people communicating. Social media has created a digital platform where individuals meet and interact with friends and in more cases, “strangers” and “stalkers” at a level that no era before can compared. Individuals feel it is much easier and faster to interact to people in long distance. More importantly, individuals are getting used to a “customized” medium—Blogs, My Space, Facebook, Twitters, Foursquare and so forth. Extremely, by examining a person’s facebook, myspace, foursqure and bloggers, you can effortlessly see through this persons’ personal life. The boundary between reality and digital world has never been so ambiguous. You can argue the negative impacts of such technology changes making people’s privacy vulnerable. However, on the other hand, the level and the scale of such communication style changes is the one at a time and no compare in the history. It even gave birth to a new communication school “Digital Communication”.
In summary, I think both the Cultivation Theory and the Medium is the message tell me that both the content and the medium of communications matter to the receivers and one cannot live without the other for making impacts.
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