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.

Class reveiew ending friday the 27th, 2008

USA has become the power center of the world economy. This power is exercised thanks to the american cultural invasion that we can see in our everyday life.
Globalization of the telecommunication
Thanks to Reagan' startegy of "OPEN SKIES", we assit today to the 3 global trends that revolutionized the international communication:

• Liberalization: private operators are allowed to operate in the national telecommunication arena.
• Deregulation: Regulate to deregulate.
• Privatization:state owned business were offered to private investors.

In 1984, Reagan broke the ublic monopolies and allowed private telecommunication networks to operate in the american telecommunication arena. In 1995, the UK followed. European countries followed but at a slow pace.

Free trade in communication was also encouraged by the WTO. It argued that dissiminating barriers to the free flow of information was essential to the economic development.

Regional satellite services

In the arab world, ArabSat was created in 1976 by the arab league. It was used only in 1990 (time of the end of communism).

As the power is exercised through th emonopolization of th information pipelines, Saudia Arabia, Qatar, and UAE distinguished themselves as leaders in the telecommunication industry.

Who benefits from the liberalization and privatization of the telecommunication sector?

It is the transnational companies and gloabl players dominating global trade that do.

Who are the leaders in the intenational television news brodcasting?

CNN(USA), BBC(UK), France 24(FRANCE), Al Jazeera(ARAB WORLD). Each "core" wants to braodcast teh news according to its interest and perspective.

Who are the heavy international news agencies today?

1.Reuters (UK)

2.Associated Press (USA)

3.AFP(agence france presse)

Then comes united press international (USA), ITAR TASS (Russia), Kinhua news agency (China).

To all those news agencies, we can associate a media regime.

The arab satellite media:

Ahmed 3ayach divided the history of satellite TV in 3 phases:

Formative phase (1954-1975)

National expansion phase (1976-1990)

Regional and global expansion phase. As an example, we can cite Al Jazeera. It was created in 1996 by a Qatari Emir and was a state owned channel.

Globalization of western culture

It mainly deals with the economic dimensions at the expense of the the cultural aspects of th einteraction between and among world people. People argue that the globalization of culture in Americanization of this later.

Hibridity: it refers to how global genres are adapted to suit the mixture of cultures. Example of Spanglish or Hinglish are very illustartive.

Lingua Franca: it is the global english that emergerd 200 year sago as the global commerce and communication language.

To protect their cultural goods, European states adopted several strategies. These startegies are quotas, subsidies and grants, regional alliances (creation of joint ventures), and resistance.

To overcome this resistance, the US led regionalziation (example of CNN arabia), localization, or global popular.

Important concepts

Embedded journalism: refering to a journalist who is attached to a military unit involved in an armed conflict.

CNN effect: real time communication technology that provokes major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to global events. It has the ability to affect the conduct of US diplomacy and foreign policy.

Foreign policy: policies of a government directed to matters beyond national borders, especially relations with other countries.

Media coverage: when media report son a specific event and present it to the audience.

Priming: enhancing the effects of themedia by offering the audience a prior context that will be used to interpret subsequent communication

Framing: provide meaning through selective simplification, by filtering people's perceptions and providing them with a field of vision for a problem.

Frame analysis: it consists of examining the ways experience is organized for individuals and gives meaning to events in life.

Content analysis: it is a quantitative method that is used to make inferences by systematically and objectively identifying special characteristics of messages.

Discourse analysis: set of methods and theories for investigating language in use and language in social contexts.

Conversation analysis: examines the methods people use to make sense of their everyday social world.

Sociolinguistics: treat language as a set of precise rules which must be adhered to in order to facilitate efficient communication.

comment on Bill GATES' view of the chinese expansion

Bill Gates is certainely one of the most known person on earth. He built his reputation thanks to the success he achieved in the software industry.
After watching the video referred to in the blog and also reading the text in relation with the acts that Bill Gates is leading in China with regard to the extensive use of computers and the internet, we can say that this very famous person is also playing a major role in the application of the commodification of culture and cultural hegemony. Bill Gates is spending a lot of money to make computers and the internet accessible to a huge number of chinese. By doing so, he is aiming at achieving several goals. It is not a secret anymore: china is the most interesting market for any business because of the large population in the country which constitutes a market in which we have mass consumption. Then, by providing computers and access to internet to the chinese, Bill Gates is preparing that market to receive _maybe_ an innovation that he will create.
Another perspective to consider is the team work and the global vision that he focuses on. He claims that he did not innovate and get engaged in his field to keep it for himself. the notion of sharing is at the essence of his acts. By doing so, he is giving to the chinese the opportunity to use his knowledge to create more and more innovations that will benefit to the whole world.
He is encouraging chinese to innovate, making them -unconsciously- believe in capitalism - an ideology that has been disapproved in china for decades.
From those perspectives, we can see all the changes that we can introduce to the arab/moroccan behavior that would help us expand our ideology and culture. If all of us could have been innovative, engaged, and ambitious as Bill Gates, we would believe in our selves and be able to criticize our selves to get over our mistakes. By doing so, we would encourage team work achievements and plan to have a global vision allowing us to have access to broader markets with broader distribution channels.
If we behave the way Bill Gates did ,as did many other "Bill gates" in favor of the US and western countries, we would also have the opportunity to exercise hegemony and to stick and spread our culture and _one day_ a unified vision and ideology.

Important books cited in class until friday the 20th 2008

The death of gography and distance by Marshall Mc Luhan in 1962
The death of distance by Caincross Frances in 1997
Imagined communities by Benedict Anderson
Passing of teh traditional society by Daniel Lerner in 1958
Mass media and national development by Wilbour Schramm in 1964
Small media. bid revolution by Annabelle Srebeny in 1994
Mass communication and American empire By Herbert Schiller
Journal of peace research by Johan Gaitung in 1971
The modern world system by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974The ethics of capitalism by Max Weber in 1904Selections from the prison note books by Antonio Gramsci in 1971
The coming of the post industrial society by Daniell Bell in 1973
Trilogy: the information age by Manuell Castells in 1996
World risk society by Ulrick Beck in 1986