Strategically Communicating

Is it wrong to feel hopeless?  Is it wrong to believe that one vote does not make a difference?  I feel this way often.  I find myself feeling this way after reading McChesney.  I am an optimist though and I believe that society can make a difference.

The problem is that big business keeps getting bigger.  They’re money and influence is buying up everything including governments.  Therefore, they become government.  I don’t believe society likes that idea, but that’s what’s going on.  They influence the way policies are shaped and therefore how power is distributed.  Big business is in effect attempting to buy up democracy and turn it into a capitalist venture.  Soon we may have to pay for our vote.

The internet is an equalizing platform where people can have access to unbiased information and news.  A place where they can mobilize and keep democracy intact as well as equalize capitalist opportunities.  There is hope in that as society becomes more internet savvy they can compete with big business.  They can be the journalist that writes stories as they see them.  They can post any information they want onto their blogs and sites.  They can create communities of other likeminded people. These types of activities can take back much of the power big business has taken.

I want to keep going but am out of space.

My discussion questions are:

Is it possible to convince people that they can make a difference and to actually take action to make a difference?

Considering that most people are sheeple, does society really care that they are being controlled through the media they consume?

At this point in reading McChesney, we are all painfully aware of our society’s dysfunction specifically in relationship to our media system. Still, McChesney raises a valid and provocative question.

Why is discourse and debate about media missing from our dialogue? If you want to answer that we, as Americans, don’t care: guess again. McChesney asserts that, “apathy, cynicism, and ignorance that have typified U.S. politics can hardly be explained as some aspect of ‘human nature’ or the innate ‘American’ instinct.” I agree.

McChesney outlines three hypotheses to address this question:

1. Criticism of capitalism in general is off-limits in our political system.
2. Media cultivation of the idea that the status-quo is the best and only option.
3. Media corporations are such a powerful and privileged Behemoths, no one can challenge them.

McChesney concludes that “the centerpiece of any viable political movement in the U.S. must be the shared belief that contemporary capitalism is working effectively for only a minority of the citizenry and, moreover, that its core tendencies are frequently at odds with democratic ideals.”

This is happening now with the Occupy Movement.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

—The Wizard, The Wizard of Oz

McChesney’s work is built on the foundations of democracy, where in the political realm, power is exercised and shared equally among all citizens. Decisions are not left to the experts but to the users, the citizen body. Access to unbiased information is essential and ensures that citizens make responsible, informed choices and that elected representatives uphold their oaths of office. It is my belief that McChesney would agree that these conditions are not met by today’s representative democracy and that political democracy should be without internal influence.

 The same holds true for the corruption of mass media where pervasive corporate influence has led to a failure to adequately inform people of their own role and interest in important topics. In effect, the mass media advance the economic interests of the wealthy few at the cost of the interests, and values, of the majority. McChesney argues that reform is necessary in order to fully realize a true political democracy but is short in offering any real solutions.

Media reform should move us from a media that is directed by government and private interests to one that is more open and serves the public interest. If the media is to have any meaningful role in democracy, then reform should include developing a range of diverse channels and voices that are credible, and to build a sector that promotes such outlets. While, the Internet may be a strong conduit for editorial independence, it will always be marginalized as long as corporate and government interaction prevails.

The following questions might help stimulate the kind of solutions that McChesney failed to offer:

• How do we create supportive objective news and information channels so that people can make informed decisions and counter controlled media
• How do we cultivate alternative media, so that multiple voices and opinions will be heard?

After 15 chapters of critiquing the media system past and present, McChesney finally landed on the future in chapter 16—though he doesn’t completely embrace it as such. McChesney cites “new technologies” (Internet, mobile devices, social media, etc.) as both “functioning anarchy” and a “communication revolution.” I concur on both counts, though I feel he underplays the revolutionary potential.

It’s hard to underestimate how much communication technology has changed in the last decade. I didn’t own a cell phone 10 years ago. Back then, I barely used the Internet for anything more than email. Dial-up access for my laptop seemed revolutionary. Twitter was still something only birds did.

I’ve been slow to adopt many new communication advances but I recognize the power of those technologies. In some ways, the Internet is true democracy in action. And the picture isn’t always pretty.

Still, the prevalence of Internet access (and all the functions, like social networking, it provides) worldwide provides the masses with the theoretical ability to supersede political impotence (chapter 17) and undercut the media stranglehold of global conglomerates (chapter 18).

Whether we use that power to provide our acquaintances with unsolicited details about the funny thing our cat did today or as a catalyst for igniting social change is another matter altogether. But for all the many faults to be found with the medium, it’s hard to imagine social movements like Occupy or the Arab Spring gaining the traction (or media attention) they did without these “new technologies.”

Discussion questions
In terms of fostering democratic involvement, how has the Internet “communication revolution” succeeded and failed?

Does the “commercialization” of the Internet (akin to what McChesney describes happening with radio, television and print journalism) threaten the democratic potential of the medium?

Which of the three hypotheses described by McChesney in chapter 15 would you say has had the most impact on the “lack of legitimate debate” about U.S. media ownership, structure and control?

As McChesney argues throughout this book, the corporate control of our media outlets has a substantial impact on the content that the public is exposed to. In general, I agree with McChesney on this point. I also agree that corporate control of media is just as dangerous online. However, there are fundamental differences in the two forms of media. Online content is both easier to produce and available to a wider audience. More importantly, there are relatively few barriers to entry into the online media market.

Indeed, corporate media has a large presence on the web, and there is pressure for more independent media organizations to monetize their content. However, there are plenty of “news” organizations that are holding their own without backing from corporations. Funded from private donations, websites such as Wikileaks.org and Truthdig.com are attracting a large volume of visitors, and are producing content that would never be posted by corporate media.  In my opinion, the wild and unregulated nature of the Internet serves the democratic purpose of media.

What makes an online source credible?

What can we do to encourage the public to seek media that is not controlled by corporate interests?

Maybe it’s because I am an eternal optimist. Or maybe it’s because I am an advocate for myself and others like me (a person with a disability) that I still believe in the trans-formative powers of media- especially participatory media namely the Internet. McChesney seems to want to believe in it too, but the current path of media as a tool for supporting and protecting people as members of a democracy with an equal voice does not look promising to him. This week while working I came across a wonderful example of how media can make complex topics available and accessible to those most in need and interested in the subject at hand.

Research to Practice in Self Determination Issue I came out last week. This journal seeks to research, write about and discuss the best practices to promote and support self determination for individuals with disabilities, particularly those living with developmental disabilities.  To make the articles in this journal accessible to all interested parties the publishing organization produces the content of each article into short videos covering the most salient points in the voice of a self advocate for whom the topics are very real and relevant.

So my questions:

1.How do we convince corporate media, big business and our government that using media in this manner- to educate and encourage participation by everyone is in the long haul best for everyone?

2. How do we as a society move from the acquisition of the dollar as the end all goal and move to a real society wherein everyone is better off for having participated?

Sure, we may not always thrive and in fact, we might suffer for our decisions, but maybe we are just too busy to act until it becomes a real threat to our safety or our comfort. Try to deprive an American of something they feel they rightfully deserve and then they will be motivated to act and to change.  Unfortunately, the media crisis is slowly robbing Americans through the backdoor and they are too busy to notice the missing items.

Once I went to see The Vagina Monologues at PCC.  In an effort to motivate the audience to act on behalf of women’s rights movements in Africa, they tagged on an extra hour of monologues devoted to women’s suffering in Africa.  Tales of rape, mutilation and murder over and over again sent me into a hopeless state of mind.  I was more motivated to have a beer and drown the Weltschmerz than I was to donate time or money to African women.

Personally, I do see the media crisis as an important debate to have.  It keeps us aware of how things are changing and forces us to think about where we are headed.  But, in motivating an audience to action we must not cross that threshold where sensitivity to the cause is lost, hope disappears and apathy sets in.  Frankly, McChesney has done that for me.  I could have used some solution-making about 10 chapters ago.

As long as the Internet remains a forum for free speech and free press and as long as there is universal access to the Internet, is this debate necessary?

Or as TV becomes an outdated medium, will the conglomerates find a way to capitalize and monopolize the Internet, keeping the debate relevant?