Class review ending friday the 4th, 2008

Types of communication goals:

• informing
• persuading
• motivating
• nuilding lasting relations

The aim of communication for developemnt is to move from a traditional to a modern society. This development must be sustainable and help decrease poverty.

The definition of poverty has evolved from lack of resources to include also inaccessibility to knowledge with all its constituents.

The stakeholder sof developemnt are the governemnt, the privat esector, the civil institutions and NGOs.

Four strategies of communication for development are identified:

Public awareness campaigns based on mass media communication

Social marketing which refers to the application of commercial marketing to promote and deliver pro-social intervention.

Edutainment embedding pro-social educational messages in popular entairtenment format.

Advocacy which refers to the dissemination of information about the best practices.

Planning phases for implementing a strategy:

1. formative research
2. project design
3. pre-testing
4. implementing
5. monitoring
6. evaluating
7. correction if needed

To progress from traditional to modern societies, Walt Rostow suggested the necessary passage from four stages:

1. Pre-take off
2. Take off
3. Road to maturity
4. Mass consumption

An illustrative example is that of South Corea

1962: take off with th eindustrialization period

1975: Road to maturity thanks to the developement of electronics

1985: mass consumption

Definition of convergence: gathering all forms of human communication in an electronic based, computer driven system. This also referred to as compunication.

Convergence theory sees free flow of information through a communication network shared by those who participate in the process. It predicts that all participants in th eworld system will converge on the average collective pattern of thoughts if communication is not restricted. This is known as homogenization of culture.

Virtual communities provide opportunities for people to access the cultural resources to feel as if they are still part of a cultural group.

Today, we assist to th emergence of new global information society regimes. It is split between:

• Neoliberal / market driven agenda as in the US.
• Humanitarian / social responsible agenda as in western europe.

Regime theory: principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actor's expectations converge in a given issue area.

constructivism: set of ideas and knowledge used by different actors to construct new international frameworks.

Icitization: domestication and adoption of ICTs.

E-readiness: maturity reached for digitalization.

Politics: practice of the art or science of directing and administrating states or other political units.

Today, global communication politics deal with the telecommunication sector, intellectual property rights, and mass media. They are determined by trade and market standards. the dominant discourse is economy

UN was established in 1945 and delt with the resolution of such issues as:

• jamming of braodcasting
• direct satellite jamming
• protection of journalists
• human right aspects of science and technology.

WTO policy is based on the nondiscrimination principle. it supports th eliberalization of market and th euniversal access to services. Free trade in that field is then applied to hardware manufacturing, software production and distribution, and operation of networks.

The ITU organized the WSIS in two phases. The first took place in Geneva in 2003 and th esecond in Tunisia in 2005.

Kinds of divides:

• access
• digital
• conetent
• economic opportunity
• democratic

Best examples of capitalization in ICTs and IT: Ireland, Morocco, Israel, and Costa Rica.

Mindfacturing: in an open inclusive network society, production is led by the mind's creation.

Leapfrogging theory: Usually th epassage from traditional to modern society follows a path going from agricultural societies to industrial and then service based. This theory refers to the bypassing of the industrial socety. The limitation of this theory resides in lack of the necessary infrastructure to reach the service based society.

Infouse: consumption of various ICTs by households, businesses, and governemnt and the intensity of their actual use.

Infodensity: ICT capital and labor stock and their role in the productive capacity of the economy.

Infostate: bifference betweem countries' level of digitalization. It is another name for digital divide.

"Connectivity is productivity" by Quadir

The new form of public diplomacy

The public diplomacy has become one of the major issues that the USA needs to deal with. After the six decades period during with the Israel/palestine conflict in which the USA was involved, the Iraki War and its consequences made the image of the USA in the arab world as worst as never. Karen Hugues -President's Bush adviser- has made considerable efforts to make the international community -and specifically the arabs- change its view on the USA. To implement her strategy, she has focused on three main aspects:

• Change the USA image and makes it shine,
• Marginalizing terrorists' effect on the USA,
• Enhancing communication with the world.

To do so, she did not only increased the budget allocated to public diplomacy, but she also diversified the usual way of dealing with it. She developed local platforms in the Arab and muslim world to counterattack the Arab media when framing the news in accordance with their beliefs and intersts. Also, she introduced an innovative way to dessiminate the american values and principles as being universal principles. She presented famous american figures in the sport's field to expand those values internationally and targeting the youth. Her strategy is very wise: she is targeting the youth as their mind is still uninfluenced. The use of PR to expand the american values as universal values aims at changing the image of the USA.

After watching the video of the interview with Karen Hughues, Gondoleeza Rice, and the famous baseball player, we can identify the strategic behavior that public diplomacy took at the level of the USA. Aiming at "transcending culture and identity" as state by Rice, the use of the baseball player as an unofficial diplomat will be used through the interaction with th einternational community -especially the kids-. As stated by the baseball player, sport is used as a universal language to expand the american values based on responsability, team work, perseverence, and commitment. Through this strategy, the american suceess will be shared with the youth all over the world. He will share life lessons thanks to "planting seeds" in the future generation.

Is this strategy successful or it is just millions of dollars that the USA is loosing? Does the plan help changing the image of the USA in the arab and muslim world or it is percieved as an american propaganda? The departure of Karen Hugues enforces those questions. We may wonder if she is leaving because of a feeling of failure. The discussion is open and no valid answer may be given.

Comment on Nicholas Negroponte perspective of the $100 laptop

Every new idea is generally received with apprehension. With the article in hand, this view is all the more inforced. When Nicholas Negroponte came up with his geneous idea of the computer accessible to all, he received little support from the computer industry geants. This man is a pioner in the information technology sector. He introduced different concept at a time when nobody would have believed that his ideas and innovations would be realized and even successful. As cited in the article, he introduced the idea of the wireless technology before a mobile phone could even be produced.

Starting last decade, the world influencial organizations led by the most educated people knew that information technologies will be The Tool to help every single country in the world to emerge socially and economically. Then the basis for developping countries to evolve at both the social and the economic level in a sustained manner is to develop a solid information technology network that would be accessible to all the population including the poorest.

Once thsi idea was accepted, Negroponte succeeded in gathering the help and collaboration of the industry geants. The aim of this innovation -the $100 laptop- is to make the computer with all its features related to it available and affordable to all social classes. A focus is made on the fact that it would become an educational tool so that the next generation would all become literate. Behind this strategy is to decrease if not completely eliminate the digital divide concept. To be more precise, digital divide refers to the segment of people that is excluded from the information technology accessibilities as well as those that do not have the ability or knowledge to use the information once accessible.

If we were to see the impact of that project on the Moroccan and Arab world, we would realize that if we all have access to that innovation, we will reach a level of access to information technology and hence having a solid basis for building our economic development in the long run.

Intercultural convergence and the internet

After reading the article about Tredor, we can see how he did promote the campaign for peace and gather the huge number of participants to follow him in his action. The most striking point in the article is the age of Tredor.
To relate this article to the intercultural convergence, we saw how Tredor reached so many people. The tool he used to achieve the stated record in article is due the internet. The internet is a source of power that is extremely influencial and that can help exercise power. Tredor used easily accessible tools to lead his peace campaign and succeeded in reaching people that were far away from his location. Most imporatntly, he used visuals so that different obstacles of communication can be bypassed. The fact of using a video film helped him overcome the language problem.
We can clearly distinguish the effect of the video (passed through THE INTERNET) to influence and gather people from different origins, locations, and cultures. The video in this case is qualified of a perfect tool to use to bridge cultures and make people with different backgroounds converge about a action no matter where they are.