Does Social Media really leads to democracy? - New Media (1)

Everyone is talking about how New Media is reshaping the world now by giving everybody the freedom to publish his/her opinions and ideas online to be viewed by others. There are millions of blogs on Internet now with people publishing their individual perceptions of different things every minute,while microblogs such as Twitter empowers people to share their minds literally every second.

Social Media is based on the Web, which "offers something for free, it undercuts the authority, and it enables ordinary people to shape knowledge together. In other words, it fulfills the leveling dreams of the webs found fathers."(BBC 2, Virtual Revolution)

However, does the development of Social Media really leads to pure democracy?

According to the documentary film by BBC 2, "Virtual Revolution" finds as the Internet grows, a rather controversial phenomenon emerges.



This is a mathematically calculated map of Internet giants nowadays in the film. As it states: "Each month, we search Google for more than 38 million times, 1/3 of us now has a facebook page, eBay gets 21 million visits a month, Amazon, 16 million. The web has one search engine, one marketplace, one bookshop, and one social network that matter."

If we pay more attention, we'd realized that there is barely a competitor for Facebook or Twitter. And for search engine giant Google, their current rivals in the market, Yahoo! and the rookie Bing are far from competitive.

"When you think about it, it’s odd that there’re no competitors to facebook. There’s competition for everything in a capitalist society. Does that fact demonstrate that in fact internet is a limited place for all the rhetoric about entrepreneurial and culture freedom?" (BBC 2, Virtual Revolution)

In the lecture last Wednesday, there is a concept as "Having a Voice Gives You Power." The typical example is one of most influential blogger on Web, Arianna Huffington and her Huffington Post. Although it looks like democratic as one ordinary person can establish her influence in politics simply using a blog, fewer has realized that for Arianna, having a personal family background of being related & connected to wealth and inside politic loops enables her to have all firs-handed resources for a successful social media platform, in this case it is actually "Power gives you a voice online". And ironically, now Huffington Post looks more like a online version of a traditional newspaper rather than what it was like before--with individuality and originality.

"The very lack of regulation on the web means that those with most resources can shout the loudest, and can impose their brands and their authority." And that's the case with Arianna.

So where does Public Relations Stand in this situation? One thing we know for sure is that Social Media dosent necessarily leads to democracy. There will still be some sort of hierarchy that needs professional communication between different levels and towards different groups. It's true that thousands of voices will speak with different opinions in a more direct way, and Public Relations can use Social Media as a more democratic approach in terms of communications and persuasions, rather than consider social media itself as democracy.

And in that sense, Public Relations is in nowhere near being left behind, the New Media revolution just makes PR more necessary than ever before.

Refrences:
Virtual Revolution BBC 2
Public Relations on the Net by Shel Holtz
Huffington Post Arianna Huffington
The Myth of Control in New Media Brian Solis
Are Blogs Credible News Sources?

Never underestimate the influence of Hollywood-War Propaganda(2)

The beginning of War Spin is the famous story of "Saving the Private Lynch". The video showing how American soldiers rescuing Private Jessica Lynch looked extremely familiar to some Hollywood films. In fact, one of the biggest Hollywood producer Jake Bruckheimer and fellow producer Bertram van Munster have been associated with this story in all kinds of later reports as they share a good relationship with Pentagon. During this film, the video was used to compare with the famous film "Black Hawk Down" which was also produced by Bruckheimer and shared the same "rescue" plot,and even the camera shooting looked similar.

According to John Kampfne from the Guardian:"Back in 2001, the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer, had visited the Pentagon to pitch an idea. Bruckheimer and fellow producer Bertram van Munster, who masterminded the reality show Cops, suggested Profiles from the Front Line, a primetime television series following US forces in Afghanistan. They were after human stories told through the eyes of the soldiers. Van Munster's aim was to get close and personal. He said: 'You can only get accepted by these people through chemistry. You have to have a bond with somebody. Only then will they let you in. What these guys are doing out there, these men and women, is just extraordinary. If you're a cheerleader of our point of view - that we deserve peace and that we deal with human dignity - then these guys are really going out on a limb and risking their own lives.'

It was perfect reality TV, made with the active cooperation of Donald Rumsfeld and aired just before the Iraqi war. The Pentagon liked what it saw. That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq."

Now most opinions tend to believe there's a big twist in Jessica Lynch story. While at that time, when this video was first released by Pentagon, almost everyone believed the story without even a blink. The Hollywood way of telling and selling a story was perfect. Even when later journalists and reporters went to Iraq to discover the truth behind it, the doctor being interviewed said: "It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors." An Iraqi doctor used Hollywood film to describe a real happening scene, that's a good proof of how deeply rooted this "style" and way of value is among almost everywhere in this planet. And that's exactly where Hollywood's influential power lies in. It's no longer just a wonderland for making big money out of chic-flick movies, or it never was.

Back to WWII, Hollywood already played an important role in the war propaganda as "A strong aspect of American culture then as now was a fascination with celebrities...Hollywood studios also went all-out for the war effort, as studios allowed their major stars to enlist, and also created propaganda films to remind American moviegoers of their heritage. Many of the finest films of the era are about the war, such as Casablanca, Mrs. Miniver, and Going My Way, while others, such as Yankee Doodle Dandy, focused on patriotism." (WiKi,United States home front during World War II: Propaganda and Culture).

Movies always tend to be a most direct and involving way to sell s story(Of course that's what movies are supposed to do)and promote certain opinions, and that's why it's also one of Hitler's favourite propaganda tools. Nowadays, as Hollywood basically takes over every big screen all over the world, as a perfect propaganda resource, it cant be underestimated both on and off screen.

Another example is Dalai Lama.He is excellent in using Hollywood influence to emplanting his opinion about Tibet issue into almost the whole western society. He spends a lot of time in Hollywood and make friends with all the celebrities. Then there are movies made, celebrities speaking out, his ideas and opinions were constantly broadcasted by the largest movie making industry in the world.

However, you need to be more careful and stay behind when it comes to using Hollywood power as Hollywood itself is about nothing but high exposure and being scrutinied 24/7. Pentagon was quite low key in Jessica Lynch story, but still didnt make it to the last and the whole thing turned into a ridiculous joke.

Keep A Certain Distance Between Media & the Truth- War Propaganda(1)

As Winston Churchill once said: "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Truth and lies are so close to each other that one key element to control media in a propaganda is to control the distance between media and the truth.

In the film made by BBC 2, "War Spin", there were generally two ways to control the media in Iraq War:
1. Get media close & personal;
2. Keep media at a certain distance to make sure what they get is a prepared sitcom instead of the truth.

For the first part, embedded journalists were used by Pentagon and UK armies. Based on the film, those journalists admitted themselves that being involved directly in the frontier, it was difficult to keep objective positions as they were supposed to. Some even got a bit carried away by wearing military uniforms and joining the fights. Under such situations, the perceptions from these embedded reporters of the military and the war itself would tend to be positive and supportive. Media people are always keen on first-hand facts. Therefore, to make themselves believe that they are "close and personal" to the "facts" is usually effective regarding media control.

The second part is to set up a "media center" miles away from the real battlefield and put all the journalists and reporters in the media center, feed them everyday with a planned & prepared brief meeting,in which all the information comes from the military. The media people were geographically close to the war, but far far away from "what's really happening". Although doubts and question would be raised eventually, it was quite handy in terms of controlling the media for a quite long time at the beginning.

War is one specific field for propaganda. More generally these methods can be applied to broader areas, such as politics. When seeing the scene of daily brief meetings from military filled with reporters raising their hands all the time, it reminded me instantly of the unforgettable May in 2008 for China.

Only an hour after the Earthquake, Prime Minster Wen was already in the helicopter to the stricken area, with the order of transferring troops for help at the same time. It was said to be one of the fastest military reaction in history. However, the restraining of foreign reporters coming to the quake area in the first couple of days created quite negative impact on the central government (as similar as issues before). Because the media cant get close and personal to the story, doubts and negative feedback were created---"What on earth is going on there that you don't want us to see?" Later on the disaster actually turned out to inspire numerous stories about humanity and love as more and more media was allowed in.

Lessons were learned when Xin Jiang Incident happened in 2009. The government gave an unprecedented quick & open gesture to brief and invite all major foreign medias to Urumqi at the first moment. Western reporters got the news even earlier than local newspapers. Meanwhile, daily briefing was also held. Therefore the media people could feel they "are at the frontier to face the truth", which helped the reports and features to be more neutral and even supportive.

So to control the media in a propaganda, distance matters. The worst would be completely shut the media away, which would only push the media to a confronting position, with no where near being controllable but skeptical. On the other hand, embedding the media into the incident at real time would gain their support much easier as reporters can hardly escape the influence of getting involved. As one of the BBC reporter said in War Spin: " Of course you should try to be as objective as you can. But do bear in mind they(British Army) feed you and they protect you."