Perception is reality

When I think back on this course, if I remember nothing else, I’m sure I’ll still remember Jhally’s radical article, which is pretty unforgettable. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed Berger’s uncertainty principle, which is one of the most practical applications of communication theory I’ve ever encountered and Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production underlies so much of all mass media studies. I’m sure I’ll draw on that again and again, especially given the critical lens applied to cultural production by Hesmondhalgh, which really helped me formulate my own opinion.

 

What makes Jhally’s apocalyptic view of advertising so memorable? Jhally’s wild opinion of advertising made me think about the true cultural role of advertising. Is advertising all bad?

Jhally believes that the weak correlation between material wealth and subjective happiness mean advertising is leading us away from happiness (Jhally, 2000), but is it really? In one of my favourite documentaries, Art & Copy, one of the ad executives explains how, “advertising makes food taste better, makes cars run better, it changes the perception of everything” (2009).

The old adage goes that “perception is reality”, so does that mean our perception of material entities as better through the lens of advertising means advertising makes the things in our “material world” to draw on Madonna better?

When I watch a commercial like the following Nike commercial, I’m amused and feel like going for a run. This advertisement makes me happy in and of itself and it doesn’t really have anything to do with the selling or collection of material goods. It’s just a good advertisement and good advertisements are relevant to our happiness and are formative cultural pieces.

Bourdieu focused on small scale cultural production versus mass cultural production, so he would not be interested in advertising as a means of producing culture, but it doesn’t change the cultural relevance of culture. As Jhally points out, it’s where our stories are told (Jhally, 2000). Think of the blurred lines between art and advertising. Andy Warhol’s soup can canvas or virtually every full page ad in Vogue are art forms and advertising. The ability to reflect and influence culture make advertising relevant and not as doomsday as Jhally wants us to believe. But I’m biased as a marketing person, what do you think?

 

Art & Copy Trailer. (2009, July 29).YouTube. Retrieved April 4, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLfvmiB4edI

Hesmondhalgh, D. (2006). Bourdieu, the media and cultural production. Media, Culture & Society, 28(2), 211-231.

Jhally, S. (2000). Advertising at the edge of the Apocalyse. In R. A. a. L. Strate (Ed.), Critical Studies in Media Commercialism (pp. 27- 39). New York: Oxford University Press.

Nike Free — I Would Run To You. (2012, April 11). YouTube. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIfSPKYBcEo

Setting the agenda: Quebec’s bizarre election

As McCombs and Shaw wrote 42 years ago, “[i]n choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position” (1972).

This was certainly true here in Quebec on Monday, when the Parti Québecois (PQ) party was unceremoniously booted from power in grand fashion. Reduced to just 30 of Quebec’s 125 seats, the PQ’s casualties included a slew of ministers and even the party leader, who fell in a riding held by the party for two decades. Despite polls that hinted at a possible loss for the party, no one seems to have anticipated the magnitude of the PQ’s collapse.

I won’t delve too deeply into provincial history, but the PQ was founded in 1967 with the sole purpose of promoting Quebec’s separation from Canada. As the cause’s popularity waned, the PQ worked to reframe itself as a left-wing party that would stand up for Quebec within Canada for the time being, and only pursue independence when they judged the time right. That strategy — paired with a proposed France-style “secular charter” banning religious clothing in public institutions — brought them a great deal of support in rural Quebec, where uneven riding distribution — some would say gerrymandering (Allison, 2014) — has given thinly populated rural ridings disproportionate clout in the provincial legislature. As late as mid-March, the PQ’s victory seemed imminent.

Enter Pierre-Karl Péleadeau, the media mogul I’d mentioned earlier on this blog, who entered the race as a star PQ candidate and seems to have lost the election almost all on his own. There are a couple of reasons for this — plenty of Quebecers despise him for launching a two-year lockout of a newspaper’s staff, for example — but the biggest reason seems to be that in his first speech as a candidate, he proclaimed his support for an independent Quebec.

This should hardly seem strange for a PQ candidate — independence is, after all, the party’s raison d’être — but the opposition parties seized on his comments to warn of an impending separation if the PQ won power. For the three weeks leading up to the vote, Quebec’s English- and French-language news media seemed to report on little else, turning the election into a referendum on Quebec sovereignty. Pro-independence media outlets proclaimed it was time to cut ties with Canada. The federalist (pro-Canada) media fretted over the damage that separation could do. With one blundering speech, the agenda for the entire provincial election was set by one man — wiping health care, the economy, higher education, and even (to some extent) the ban on religious clothing off the issue table. It was all over radio, TV, newspapers and the Internet.

That in itself might not have been a crippling blow, but as the PQ leader backtracked from Péladeau’s comments for fear of alienating voters, big segments of the PQ’s small hardcore separatist base flocked to independence-minded fringe parties, who pulled in some 10% of the vote. Plenty of other former PQ supporters switched to the CAQ party, dismayed by Péladeau’s discussion of independence. Incredibly, the PQ lost both pro-independence AND anti-independence votes.

The result: between March 17 and the April 8 election, the PQ plummeted in the polls, hurtling from majority government territory (Grenier, 2014) to a momentous, historic defeat — all because of one man, one toxic issue, and the incessant way Quebec’s media covered both. Immediately afterwards, the media proclaimed that Quebecers had rejected sovereignty once and for all (Perreaux, 2014; Coyne, 2014), despite the fact that the election was won and lost on an issue that all the major party leaders essentially agreed on.

All this to say, Quebec is a truly strange place. : )

 

References

Allison, S. (2014, April 2). Sam Allison: Quebec’s gerrymandered riding map. National Post. (Retrieved from: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/04/02/sam-allison-quebecs-gerrymandered-riding-map/)

Coyne, A. (2014, April 7). Andrew Coyne: Quebecers not only just said no to separation, but yes to the 1982 Constitution. National Post. (Retrieved from: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/04/07/andrew-coyne-quebecers-not-only-just-said-no-to-separation-but-yes-to-the-1982-constitution/)

Grenier, E. (2014, March 17). Liberals gain among francophones, but PQ still in majority territory. Threehundredeight.com. (Retrieved from: http://www.threehundredeight.com/2014/03/liberals-gain-among-francophones-but-pq.html)

Lévesque, R. (1976). For an Independent Quebec. Foreign Affairs, 54, 734. (Retrieved from: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/26074/rene-levesque/for-an-independent-quebec)

McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public opinion quarterly, 36(2), 176-187. (Retrieved from: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~amgutsch/Mccombs.pdf)

Perreaux, L. (2014, April 7). Solid Liberal majority means respite from national-unity debate. Globe and Mail. (Retrieved from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/elections/solid-liberal-majority-means-respite-from-national-unity-debate/article17870091/)

World getting closer with technology

Poster’s (1998) argument that geography is no longer important rings true. Today, technology has made the world a tight-knit community where people who belong to tribes can maintain their tribal identity outside of the tribe’s geographic borders. For example, immigrants who move to a new land can still maintain contact with their homeland using internet technology.

Even in Canada, tribes are tied together with technology. Usually Canadians associate a tribe with an immigrant community but Canada itself is made up of tribes – also known as regions. We have Quebecers, easterners, westerners, central Canadians, and so forth. With some regions having a more robust economy than other regions, people have left their tribe in search for work. For example, people from across Canada have made their way to Alberta to work in the oil industry. In the past, travelling and working in another part of Canada would disconnect a person and their tribe. However, now people can break the vast distance of this country and connect using technology. For example, people can use Skype to have face to face contact with loved ones back home.

Technology has taken the public of Habermas (Kennedy, 2010) and has expanded it. The coffee house is no longer located in one building – it is now located in home offices and on mobile devices. Our virtual coffee house allows participants to talk to one another, engage in debate and keep informed about events as they happen.

The improvement of technology has allowed different publics to form, which breaks the barrier of geography. For example on professional websites, such as LinkedIn, users can join different groups, and engage in conversation from their home or from their phone. Before internet technology, people could join a local chapter of an association but their contact with others outside of their geographic boundary was rare. Often, it was the yearly convention when people broke through their geography constraints and talked to members of other tribes.

Geography is no longer a physical space. It is now part of wires, cable and computer screens that make up modern technology. And, what is happening is good because it breaks down barriers within tribes and even among tribes. It also allows people to connect with each other more freely. With the virtual public, we continue to get to know one another even though we may have left our geographic boundary, which makes home just a click away.

References

Poster, M. (1998). Virtual ethnicity: Tribal identity in an age of global communications. In S. Jones (Ed.), New Media Cultures: Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting computer-mediated communication and community. (pp. 184-212). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452243689.n7

Kenedy, P. (Host). (2010). Ideas with Paul Kenedy. The Origins of the Modern Public. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

baby steps… toward democratic communication

In the “Paris is always more than Paris” chapter of her book Jansen (2002) examines Critical Theory originating from the Frankurt School, and essentially declares that democratic communication is too idealistic to be realistic, with a focus on politically-charged discussion. There are many arguments made that stress that with mass media, corporate media monopolies and complex language the average citizen is disenfranchised and excluded from any democratic dialogue of substance.

“…in the twentieth century, mass media and mass entertainments had so thoroughly colonized the consciousness of the industrialized masses that they were no longer able to even conceive of resistance, let alone articulate a platform for emancipatory social change (Jansen, 2002, p.45).”

In the chapter it is believed that mass media is a pervasive entity, sneaking into every facet of our every-day lives, which prevented society from “articulating the desire for something better” (p. 48). It does seem as though mass media were more trusted in the 20th century. Traditional media, print were viewed as a balanced, reliable source of information, of the “truth”. I believe that as a society, we are growing more and more critical of mass media, thus in the 20th century citizens were probably not quite as quick to question the motives of media or to examine the possibility of agenda setting or corporate and political influence.

Although the internet does allow us to get lost in mindless imagery and indulge in celebrity gossip, I feel that where the 20th century print media may have created an environment of complacency and acceptance of the status quo, the 21st century is encouraging critical thinking. I believe that the theorists that Jansen exposes in this chapter provide arguments that the media present one opinion, that of the dominating elite, and the general public digest it, believe it, and live it. With social media, there are greater opportunities for the average person to be exposed to a greater variety of opinions regarding one issue, allowing an expansion of our individual worldviews. Sometimes I feel as though my values and ideologies are in flux as I’m confronted with many seemingly valid viewpoints and angles of each issue. At the very least, I would argue we are closer to reaching the concept of “emancipatory communication”.

Jansen describes this concept as “something better, a good place where the link between community and communication could be affirmed—I am even tempted to say “consecrated.” I use the past tense here because emancipatory communication….has fallen out of fashion (Jansen, 2002, p.48).” I don’t think that emancipatory communication is as far off as the theorists in this chapter fearfully assume. Social media has introduced the concept of “citizen journalists”. With the ease of a smart phone anyone has the opportunity to hold the pen, the microphone or the video camera. They also are able to capture a voluntarily participatory audience.

My friend is moving to China for work in a couple days and I was quick to say, I can’t wait to see your Facebook pics, until she sadly broke the news that where she will be living in China, Facebook is blocked. (This may be the case for the whole country, I’m not sure.) So let’s not take for granted our opportunities for democratic discussion, we may not individually have a voice as loud as the politically or economically powerful, but at least we have unchained access to an online presence and footprint!

References:

Jansen, S. C. (2002). Paris is always more than Paris. In Critical communication theory: Power, media, gender, and technology (pp. 43-68). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

 

Jhally Ho!

  

“20^th century advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it” (Jhally, 2000, p. 1). Well now, that’s quite the opening statement, Jhally…quite the statement, indeed. I think it’s safe to say that Jhally has a slight flare for the dramatic, and maybe even a tendency to overstate and oversimplify; however, he has some valid points. My first questions though: what exactly is this “world as we know it”? Because, for me, a child of the 80’s, I am living in the world that I know. Sofia Vergara is selling me soda today, just like the “Pepsi girl” did before her (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAs81k8o398), and “Fido Dido” did before that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c__yf0j1oI).  Perhaps a more accurate statement would have been to say that the cumulative cultural effects of advertising would be responsible for destroying the unsullied world our ancestors once knew; because, as soon as that first nickel landed in my Teddy Ruxpin piggy bank, I was itching to buy “stuff”.

Jhally’s apocalyptic prophecies and distaste for the advertising industry reminds me a lot of McLuhan and his disdain for the “Gutenberg Galaxy” – the ‘constellation’ of changes that began with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. And, to be quite frank, I think a lot of this “loathed” consumerism can also be attributed, in some part at least, to an advancing (at least, in a technological sense) society. Does advertising go too far to sell unnecessary products to people who simply do not need them? I would have to say “yes”. But advertising also informs the world of new developments in science, technology, medicine, etc. Without advertising, how would we know about these new discoveries? What would be the best way to communicate these to the masses in a timely fashion, if not through advertising? Sure, some of these new technological advances are purely for entertainment – as in the case of the latest interactive gaming console. However, some are also for the general well-being of a consumer – such as a new anxiety medication, or a new “Life Alert” type system for senior citizens. Clearly, I am just playing devil’s advocate here. I am well aware of the power of advertising, and how it can be used for either good or evil. In fact, I had a very interesting conversation with a young work colleague of mine last week. We were reminiscing about fond childhood memories, and she shared with me that her and her friends used to set up traps around her house, in hopes of catching a “House Hippo” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TijcoS8qHIE). I am sure most of you may recall this public service announcement, from Concerned Children’s Advertisers, demonstrating viewer vulnerability, or perhaps rather gullibility. The intent of the commercial was to advise and encourage television viewers to question what they see in the media because not everything portrayed in advertising is truth. From the sounds of things, my colleague must have been too excited with the prospect of having an exotic little friend, that she neglected to wait for the advisory at the end.

In any case, dramatics aside, Jhally is correct in his assertions that advertising-induced consumerism is certainly having a negative impact on society. I just wish he was a little more forthcoming with some proposed solutions, rather than relying almost exclusively on his ominous scare tactics to stir up emotions within his readership.  That being said, I am not sure what the answer is either. So, in the meantime, I’ll side with Georg C. Lichtenberg in saying, “I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better” (as cited in Bowden, 2011, p. 308).

Bowden, P. (2011). Telling It Like It Is: A Book of Quotations. CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform.

Jhally, S. (2000). Advertising at the edge of the Apocalyse. In R. A. a. L. Strate (Ed.), Critical Studies
in Media Commercialism (pp. 27- 39). New York: Oxford University Press.

Fraser’s Critique of Habermas’s Public Sphere and the Quebec Election

As I read through Nancy Fraser’s Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, and processed her criticisms of Jurgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, I was reminded of the results of the Quebec Election this week. The outright rejection of the Charter of Values by the electorate is a firm example of how Habermas’s theory of the bourgeois public sphere worked well and how Fraser’s concept of a ‘weak public’ was distorted for political purposes.

Nancy Fraser’s primary criticism of Habermas’s theory of the bourgeois public sphere is that it is concept that cannot work as it is ignores those that are marginalized and oppressed, and therefore social and/or political changes work to benefit a few and not for the whole. “The public sphere, in short, is not the state; it is rather the informally mobilized body of nongovernmental discursive opinion that can serve as a counterweight to the state.” (Fraser, p. 75) She argues that Habermas’s concept of the bourgeois public sphere is one where social inequality is never addressed, as it is categorized as ‘private’ by a dominant masculine ideology. (Fraser, p. 77)

Is there a firm definition of a people that are marginalized and oppressed? The Parti Quebecois argued the Charter of Values protects the Quebec culture as they are a minority with a much larger and anglicized North America. (Janus, 2014) The Charter calls for the removal of all wearable religious symbols (burkas, large crucifixes, kippas, kirpans, etc….) if you are a public sector employee within the province. The argument was put forward that by secularizing the province, the Quebecois, the French language and women are protected. (Janus, 2014)

The ‘weak publics’ as Fraser calls it (Fraser, p. 75) is a primary reason why the PQ and the Charter of Values legislation did not succeed this past week. To me, Fraser’s ‘weak publics’ is defined as those that band together with an outcome that is only opinion forming and has no impact on the legislative process. (Fraser, p. 75). If this is the case, this ‘weak public’ did indeed band together in opposition to the Charter, and did affect legislation – by stopping its introduction. This opposition was composed of a number of a diverse of socio-economic and political interests that converged together to defeat this legislation that claimed to protect secularism and women’s rights. (Janus, 2014). Fraser’s concept of participatory parity (Fraser, p. 75) of balanced socio-economic interests, factored little in the rejection of the party and the legislation.
Fraser argues the foundation of Habermas’s bourgeois public sphere is when “private persons deliberated about public matters,” (Fraser, p. 70) and as such is guided directly and indirectly by economic and social conditions within a capitalist society. In the case of the Quebec election, the “private persons deliberating about public matters” corralled around a repressive legislation that would institutionalize discriminatory hiring practices based upon religious affiliation.

I would argue that Habermas’s theory was correct in that there was a deliberation within the bourgeois public sphere and it concluded that the marginalized and oppressed individuals were not the Quebecois, but the various religious and cultural minorities with the province. Economic status was not a driving factor. I believe the bourgeois public sphere worked when it determined who in fact was the ‘minority’ in this case.

Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25/26, 56-80 Retrieved from: http://moodle233.msvu.ca/m23/course/view.php?id=1581.

Janus, A. (2014). Quebec Needs To Pass Values Charter Minister Says As Hearings Begin. CTV News. Retrieved from: http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/quebec-needs-to-pass-values-charter-minister-says-as-hearings-begin-1.1638268#ixzz2yPLHUFLG

Who’s Who in the Zoo? Influence in the digital public sphere.

Juergen Habermas’s “Public Sphere” has taken a beating since the German theorist first popularized the idea. The Public Sphere, as defined by Poster (1995) is “a domain of un-coerced conversation oriented toward a pragmatic accord.”

Juergen Habermas

Habermas’s view of the public sphere as something everyone can become part of is often called naïve – race, gender, sexuality or socio-economic status all impact the share of voice in the public sphere, as Fraser (1990) pointedly notes.

With the emergence of digital tools, and in particular social media, we see many of the gaps in the public sphere being addressed. A majority of Canadians, for example, belong to at least one social network. More than 25 million Canadians have Internet access. So, in theory, we have unprecedented power to make our voices heard, if not alone then at least in aggregate.

We are at the dawn of the digital public sphere. This is a space where traditional brokers of information – governments, corporations, mainstream media – no longer have a monopoly on sharing information, and influencing perceptions, of the mass audience.

The new rules of the digital public sphere came into sharp focus for me when I read about the ouster of Brendan Eich,the CEO of Mozilla; a California company that makes open-source software, including the Firefox browser.

Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla

Eich had only been named CEO of the company a few weeks ago. A controversy soon erupted because Eich had donated money to support “Proposition 8”, a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage. The online dating site OKCupid soon blocked people on the Firefox browser from using the site, pointing to Eich’s intolerance and suggesting they use another browser. This captured the media and public’s interest and soon Eich was forced to resign.

What was interesting in this case is that it was not the traditional “actors” like the media or even special interest groups who discovered and propagated the story. It was actually social media users and a separate company who took a moral position. The media were laggards, following what others had done, as is often the case today.

It is a story that likely would not have taken place five years ago. It raises interesting questions about the role of social media in policing the behavior of business leaders. It is also interesting that a business would take such a strong moral stance on an issue that many still view as contentious.

Poster (1995) argues that the symmetrical relations in a homogenous space envisioned by Habermas is ill suited for the Internet, writing that, “This model, I contend, is systematically denied in the arenas of electronic politics. We are advised then to abandon Habermas’ concept of the public sphere in assessing the Internet as a political domain” (P. 8).

In effect, Poster is flat out wrong. Social media use and Internet access is pervasive in North America. The Internet has fuelled the rise of the digital public sphere. It has tremendous political power. We can see that a small movement like Occupy Wall Street can leverage social media to generate a much broader public conversation, or that NSA leaker Edward Snowden can change the global geopolitics in ways that mainstream media never could because they are co-opted by state governments.

The Internet and social media have given fresh life to Habermas’s theories and changed who can have influence and how that influence is used. We are entering a time of increased transparency and accountability and where individuals and groups have collective power that has otherwise never existed.

References

Fraser, N. (1990) “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, No. 25/26, (1990), pp. 56-80.

Poster, M. (1995) “CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere.” University of California, Irvine.

Framing Democracy

Issue framing as found in news media is best understood as a type of editing. At one extreme there is raw, unedited public reality. As we move closer towards a recognizable issue, countless limits, cuts and pastes, orderings, definitions, positions and judgements are introduced that limit reality down to a highly consumable, specific product.

“To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described”(Entman, 1993, p. 52). The product is textual, and works through identifiably textual means, including “the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements” (p. 52).

This description makes issue framing sound anonymous, as though it was done by some faceless entity. But the entity in question is not faceless at all: it is the political apparatus we have collectively voted into power to represent out best interests.

Clearly the nature of politics is not merely to represent constituents, but to survive. In this view, politics begins to look parasitic: it feeds off public opinion for its own survival, yet is given its resources from the public (its host) to shape that public opinion through issue framing. Thus we are collectively persuaded to maintain a political arrangement that ultimately guarantees only one thing: partial truth.
Donald Savoie says (2010):
Media, communications, and spin specialists are now key elements, not only of election campaigns but also of the political and policy processes within governments. This involves attempts to shape tomorrow’s news headlines rather than simply reacting to them. In brief, one must always be at the ready with effective sound bites, instant rebuttal capacity, public opinion surveys, and competent media spin specialists to promote political success. (p. 94)

Political success here is itself a frame that we should all be wary of: democracy. Democracy becomes dangerous when issue framing predetermines what we want rather than us.
The people have chosen, but have they really?

 

 

Entman, R. (1993). Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43[4], 51-58.
Savoie, D. (2010). Power: Where is it? Montreal: McGill & Queen’s University Press.

Does participatory media make actors of us all?

Although the beginning of Grusin’s article was difficult to navigate, he raises some poignant points about the news media that resonated with me, especially his thoughts of the “participatory sense of today’s networked media” (2004, p. 24). Nothing could be truer. In December of last year, a well-known blogger and web-radio personality in Baltimore by the name of James MacArthur perpetuated a five-hour standoff with police in order to gain listeners to his radio show and followers to his twitter page. He was wanted on an outstanding weapon’s warrant, and decided perpetuating a stand-off with police (which included the SWAT team and hostage negotiator, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars) was a great way to gain publicity for his cause.

During the incident, he tweeted using his Twitter name Agitator in Chief, “Anyone trying to capture me, ur gonna [sic] have to kill me, before I kill you. I’m a nice guy, but I’m a bad, bad man.” Dangerous us [sic], so don’t try” (Simpson, 2012). He openly admitted that he timed his surrender to coincide with the 11:00 o’clock news after airing the entire incident on his web-based radio show, including airing his more than two-hour-long discussion with the Baltimore Police hostage negotiator (Fentin & Walker, 2012).

As a result, he completely coerced the news media and police to be actors in his show; just as Grusin explained in the Beltway sniper case, the social media creator made ‘actors’ of the police, and in this case, traditional media. This coincides with the rise in the activity of “SWATting”, where people call police and make up a story about someone being held hostage or someone being killed with an active shooter; and in some cases videotape the incident to post on YouTube or other sites (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013). This extremely dangerous new ‘pastime’ of hackers and pranksters seeking attention has resulted in officers being injured. It also can result in a SWAT team not being able to deploy on a real emergency, not to mention the cost to taxpayers. Makes one wonder about how we are being used by some social and traditional media directors to create the story, rather than cover it.

References
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2013, August 3). The Crime of “Swatting”. Retrieved from FBI.gov: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/september/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences
Fentin, J., & Walker, A. K. (2012, December 2). Local blogger surrenders to police after live broadcasting standoff. Retrieved from The Baltimore Sun: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-12-02/news/bs-md-ci-waverly-barricade-20121201_1_social-media-swat-team-police-officials
Grusin, R. (2004). Premeditation. Criticism, 17-37.
Jansen, S. (2002). Critical Communication Theory: Power, Media, Gender and Technology. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Simpson, C. (2012, December 2). Baltimore Blogger Live Broadcasts Standoff with Police. Retrieved from The Wire: http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/12/baltimore-blogger-live-broadcasts-strandoff-police/59529/

Roper and Symmetrical Communications: Cynical Much??

So, for the first time, in some of the final readings of the final module for this course, I finally find myself totally disagreeing with an author.  I generally either agree with the perspectives being put forward or, to be perfectly honest, don’t care enough to get worked up about it.  But there was something about the Roper writing (Symmetrical Communication: Excellent Public Relations or a Strategy for Hegemony) that definitely peaked my interest.  And got me a little hot under the collar.

What I took from her writing was that she sees the efforts of corporations to engage in stakeholder relations (i.e. symmetrical communications with key audiences) as “making sufficient concession to deflect the more wide reaching opposition” (Roper, 2009, p. 82). On the one hand, I see what she means.  It does appear that many corporations give up just enough to their critics in order to prevent major opposition to the business activity they wish to promote. On the other hand, I believe she’s wrong in thinking that’s ALL there is to it.

And right up front, I must state my considerable bias. For the past number of years, I have worked for  companies where community relations (stakeholder, community investment, outreach, etc) is a major component of what I do.  It’s true that many of these activities have a bottom line implication: corporations don’t just spend money or make concessions out of the goodness of their hearts.  They’re answerable to their shareholders for spending money responsibly.  But, I have also made the case (successfully) that community outreach and stakeholder relations are good for business.  And, at least with the companies I’ve been working for, they genuinely want to do the right thing for the communities where they operate.  There is perceived value, real value, in being a good corporate citizen, an employer of choice and a responsible member of the community.

Symmetrical communication is at the heart of good stakeholder relations.  If any organization, be it a private company or government department, rolled into a community without consultation to do something controversial, the protest would indeed slow progress.  When governments make unilateral decisions without appropriate public consultation, it generally fails.  One example that comes to mind?  The NL government in last year’s budget drastically reduced the workforce of the legal aid commission.  The outrage was immediate.  Fast forward to this year?  Almost all those budget decisions have been reversed.

Roper would, I’m sure, characterize any consultation and concession as not real ethical communications but rather giving just enough to quiet the criticism.  But, in my experience, that’s what stakeholder relations and good communications are all about!  She says that “…we need to examine the extent of the concessions made to external stakeholders.  Are they ‘just enough’ to quiet public criticism, allowing essentially a business as usual strategy to remain in force?’ (Roper, 2009, p.83).  Here’s where I disagree.  It’s not business as usual – it’s listening to key publics and stakeholders, and reaching compromises where both parties feel they have a win.

Perhaps I’m “Pollyanna-ing” this up a bit – unusual for me because I can be quite cynical.  I know that there are corporations out there who do the bare minimum of engagement in order to maintain the appearance of good corporate citizen.  But, for those of us in the profession who work for organizations that aren’t like that, I think the article does us a bit of a disservice.

Roper, J. (2009). Symmetrical communication: excellent public relations or a strategy for hegemony? Journal of Public Relations Research, 17(1), p. 69-86.