"Off Course", by Michael Massing.
Problems with entertainment media really exist everywhere, in each country and each society and it should be covered and discussed more, because of its detrimental effect on every person, but especially on children. The TV shows, movies and popular video games are overfull with cruelty, violence and bloodshed, mostly every modern movie propagandize free sexual relationships and irresponsible behavior. If we take a look on the most popular cartoons, South Park or Simpson’s for example, what do they teach us, which valuable they promote? And the same picture we would see at mass media, where articles about the new boyfriend of Paris Hilton or beautiful girls after plastic surgery take place in every single publication. What kind of persons we are able to rise under the influence of this pop-culture? Cruel, pessimistic and brutal generation – is that what we are looking for? Of course, not. And mass media should be responsible for this influence, because, as Michael Messing said in the article, children mimic the behavior they see on TV, and what they see there is totally opposite to the behavior their parents want them to have. And this problem is not only about children. People of different age are influenced by media, we sometimes just copy everything we watch or read, even not realizing that. We try to look and act like our cult figures on TV, who are killing, stilling and having sex with different partners at the same time. But I think that prohibition to watch TV or read magazines is not a way out from this situation, because in this case you only try to hide your children, but you don’t solve the problem. We all should try to change this situation, because it’s not only a problem of mass media, but the problem of the whole society. We should protest against this rules, we should not buy these products and don’t let our children be influenced by this modern “pop-culture”. We should propagandize real values, such as family, kindness and sympathy, although it sounds too romantic. We can control the Mass Media, because their job is to give us what we want, and our job is to show them what we really want…
"The agenda-setting role of Mass media in the shaping of public opinion"
- Mass media in every country is thought to be the fourth authority in the state. It means that mass media can influence on peoples life in the same way as government does and sometimes it even can influence on the fact of existence of the government. All we know in our life, the way we find out about the surrounding events is what we see on TV, read in news papers or listen on the radio. Mass media forms our opinion about everything, it even influence on the level of our education and knowledge about the world because “What we know about the world is
largely based on what the media decide to tell us”.
- But even though mass media has a big influence on our opinion, it doesn’t mean that we follow all the instructions it gives us. It depends first of all on the kind of person and the level of need for orientation. Secondly, it depends on the way that person perceives the information and react on it. There is a great expression between journalists “the objectivity is an asymptote” and it means that there never will be a real objectivity in any newspaper or TV station, because people, who work there are not objective as they are people, but not robots. So, if somebody wants to find the truth, he should observe all kinds of available information about the event, analyze it and only after that find still subjective, but his own opinion. ("Rather than engaging in a
comprehensive analysis based on their total store of information, citizens routinely draw
upon those bits of information that are particularly salient at the time judgment must be
rendered.").
- Mass media really forms people’s opinion about mostly everything. The main topics of conversations at the street or at home are often the same that were given by mass media. That’s why it is so important to understand that journalist have a huge power in their hands and they can influence on different kinds of decisions of the society, which are tought to be independent and objective. There are so many examples of the influence of Mass Media, especially when there is a time for election a government in the country. Peoples opinion about politics directly connected with the tone journalists were talking about them. One more thing Ive noticed in different countries is that peoples opinion about events in the world (Georgia for example) are formed by mass media, which has a huge influence on the way people think about everything.
But there is still a way to avoid such influence and to be as more objective as you can. It depends only on your own efforts. Being objective means trying to get as more different information as possible from different kind of Mass Media in different countries and than analyze it and come to your own decision.
"A year in the News"
- Old media (newspapers and network) have broader and more diverse news, radio and cable news take 1 0r 2 hottest stories and magnify them over the airwaves - The press, unlike TV and radio, really gives bigger spectrum of different subjects in the news-papers. There are some reasons:First of all, press cant use visual influence on people (video) which often helps TV to retain attention of audience with pictures, instead of sense, and thats why Press needs to give more information about the event. The Press specialises on analytical articles which demand deep understanding, wide disclosing of a theme, while TV and radio are more entertaining, than informative.
- Education, religion, vital factors in our life are slow-moving trends, even though it is very important for people. Also, news that breaks, such as car crashes or explosions are more immediat news and its easier to keep peoples attention on it. Researches have shown that media doesnt always correspond to the interests of a society. On the foreground there are time events, accidents, failures,etc. Such events do not demand deeply theme studying or analysis so they are much easier for describing.
- International news cover only about 2% of all the News in the USA, and main theme depends on the own interests of the country.The War in Afganistan and Iraq is nowadays not so popular in mass-media and one of the main reasons is that many journalist spent a lot of their energy for the past 5 years to describe these events and political aspects. In 2007 "no country might have commanded as much regular media attention as China, whose growing economy makes it the energing growing power" - It confirms circumstance that the mass-media represents interests of the country on a political and economic platform.
- Only newspapers include business articles,health and medical stories among their top prioritets.Newspapers are indeed take more attention at serious subjects, they are counted mainly on businessmen, well-educated people and offer to their reader audience deep analytical articles.
- Web sites displayed the most interast in the world news and the least in covering US domestic politics.Web sites become more popular with every year, they are very comfortable in using, they quickly react on events and give plenty of information about events in the whole world.Inernet gives different kind of information,such as analytical, informative, or news articles.
- There are so many "one-week" stories in mass-media, which vanish in few days. People are interested in them only throughout several days, than interest vanishes and journalists start looking for another event. Mainly these articles are about explosions, catastrophes, fires et cetera.Instead of initiating discussions about the problems which resulted in catastrophes and searching ways of decision of these problems, the mass-media just describes an event and after losing interest, simply forgets it.
- Any way, the mass-media accomplishes errors often, pulling out on the first plan a subject, quite uninteresting to a reader (spectator, listener). Frequently the kick-up articles about the stars of show-business oust information about a worldwide policy or problems of economy.One of the main reasons is an inability of mass-media to analysis, to the search of new, interesting themes for society.In fact it is much more easier to come into the notice of public with next article about a new fellow of Peris Hilton, than to analyse the market of sales in economy or relation of countries on a world political arena. But also there are a lot of material aspects of these problems, because deep business or economic articles require much more resources than newsroom can afford.
- Anyway, mass-media nowadays is changing very fast. Many news-papers have been closed because more and more people prefer to search news online. That doesn’t mean that press is died, because for example in Ukraine, people don’t trust web sites, newspapers are thought to be the most informative and truthful.Also. in future newspapers will definitely find out how to earn money from their online versions. In any case, it is very important to understand, that mass-media is not just entertainment, but first of all, it is the fourth authority in each state. Culture and a level of mass-media depends not only on a freedom of speech, but also it depends on subjects of events and its conformity to interests of society.
"What is wrong with that?"
As I was the only one student who answered “nothing” on that question about what was wrong with taking 3 themes from the whole story and printing them on the first page of the news-paper, I would like to explain my point of view. Of course every person deserves to know the whole truth about the events in the world and inside the country, but what does this true mean? We want to read objective articles and objective information, although we know that there is no pure objectivity at all, it just doesn’t exist. Every reporter or journalist is subjective just because he is a human and even if he would like to write an objective story he couldn’t do that because he will represent his own opinion in any case. The part of the event which seems to be the most important for one person (in our case journalist) doesn’t mean that the same part of the event is the most important for all the readers. But at the same time it doesn’t mean that journalist wanted to falsify the event, he just wrote about that part, which seems the most interesting and important for him. So, I think there is nothing wrong if you just take some parts of the story and represent it as the whole story, if you think it’s the main idea of what really happened. And I think that it is not about journalist, who can’t be objective, but it’s about a reader, who doesn’t want to read more information from different sources to find his own opinion and his own objectivity.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
International Comminications
"The End of History" Francis Fukuyama.
- Triumph of the West - total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to West liberalism.(Fukuyama)
- The first concept of history as a dialectical process - Georg Wihelm Hegel. (Men - is a product of historical and social environment, what is realle true, because society has its huge influence on our lives from the very begining, and sometimes society makes descisions instead of us, even though we are sure that we make it by ourselves).
- Ideology by Hegel includes not only political ideas, but also religion, culture, comple[ of moral values. Ideology is deffinetly something more than just promisses of the Government or politicans, it includes common to all mankind principles and ambushs.
- All human behavior in the material world is rooted in a prior state of consciousness(Hegel), thats why our behaviour in material world depends on our principles and consciousness.
- HEGEL refutes the common opinion "the more ypu get money, the more you work".He leads an example of people who start working slowly because they lost their need in getting money to survive.
- One of the main ideas of materialism - dont pay attention on culture and consciousness.
- Ideology of Hegel - the world has ended its development a long time ago - on the ideas of French Revolution.
- Liberalism (as the end of societies development) had two barrier - fasim and nationalism. Fasim died not because of material problems (Germany had enough equipment), but because of the whole idea died (sustained Defeat).
- A lot of our problems, including problems in liberalism, as a system, came to us frpm the past, and influenced on our lives. It doesnt mean that the system is unperfect, it just means that our nowaday life depends on our history.(great example - is a problem of Afro-Americans from the past, when they were slaves - it is not a fault of liberalism - it is teilings from the past).
- There are some countries in the world, which decide desteny of the whole world. Systems in these countries are differenr, and because of that, liberalism havent become the end of the history yet. Japan played a great role in a distribution of "consumption" culture and investigation a political liberalism.
- China - like alternative ideology is tought be Fukuyama as a threat for liberalism.
- Liberalism cant be the end of the history or at least a perfect system because of two problems - fasism and nationalism.
- Nationalism is not an ideology, but it may really become it (between liberalism in USA, and post-komunism in USSR). It can become a huge problem, if one nation will proclaim itselve as the best and the last in history development.
- And the main question in talking about the end of history is Third world. It will be a terrain of conflict, which can reach the other side of the world (like USA). And we cant ignore these countries, because they also have a big influence on the development of worlds history.
- The end of History doesnt seem to be so perfect, because Fukuyama also noticed that in this case "courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems".There will be no art, no place for individuality and unusual way of thinking. In other words, such succession of events will result to materialism which puts money above all other values.And can we assert that materialism is an ideal system and the end of History? deffinetly not.
- This article had been written by Francis Fukuyama pretty long time ago and the main situation has been already changed in the world and especially in Third World. The Soviet union has broken up a long time ago and comunism has become obsolete. Now these countries are independent, they try to construct democracy. But even though there are a lot of changes, such countries as Russia and USA still cant find common language in political questions, we can really see the opposite situation, when the New Cold War is coming. Russia will never become a liberal country as The USA, because of historical aspects, traditions, culture and of course mentality of russian people and espacially politicans. Russia resists to the USA on a world scene, tries to expand the influence on the countries of the post Soviet Union to increase the power and to stop the distribution of American liberalism.
-These countries (The USA and Russia) aspire more to an antagonism and an establishment of their power over all other world, than to a consensus. Therefore, in my opinion, it is impossible to consider liberalism as the end of the history because the society develops not in one, but in several directions which have no things in common.
-
Samuel Huntington "The Clash of Civilizations?"
"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural." - there are a lot of reasons to agree with his poin of view, because in the modern world, with its technologies and opportunities, culture becomes more and more important, people identify themselves as a part of their own civilization, they find a lot of differences between civilizations, which are becoming the main problem of misunderstanding. Ideology is not so important nowadays, we don’t have a lot of different political systems now, as we had in the past, mostly all developed countries have democracy now or the system, which is closed to democracy. So, the difference in political systems doesn’t affect people nowadays, and what really matters now is what civilization you belong to, who you are and where are you from.
- People always have to DIFFERENTIATE each other, nobody wants to be the same as all other people in the world and the only one way to do it is to identify yourself as a part of your civilization. It is impossible to create the only one culture, the only one civilization in the world, which everyone could accept. There are too many differences between cultures and civilizations that will not let people to come to the consensus. The main problems are historical aspects and of course mentality – thing we are not able to change in our life. (" First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. ").
- So, in modern world we have a real possibility for a new war, which will be based not on ideology, but on the differences of civilizations. But there is also a possibility of a war between the members of the same group, the same civilization. And mostly it can happen because of historical aspects, especially between countries of the Soviet Union and Russia. Because of the influence of the U.S. and Europe, such countries as Ukraine or Moldova are now divided into two parts - pro-American and pro-Russian. This situation provokes a lot of problems between neighbor countries, because Russia still doesn’t want these countries to be independent, because in this case, Russia ould not be able to control the situation in these countries.
- Religion aspect is also one of the most important in the clash of civilizations. The way we see our world, the way we understand it and our faith are so opposite that it has a really big influence on our life, behavior and mind. That’s why we cant understand people from other civilizations, and even if we can understand, we definitely cant accept those differences. That’s why Americans cant historically perceive Muslims, because religions are so different that it effects their life and attitude to everything that happens around.
- Also, I think there are much more possibilities for fighting between the members of the same civilization. The countries of the post Soviet Union are great examples. If we analyze the history of Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Moldova and other countries we will see that mostly they all were fighting between each other. Even during The World War II, in Ukraine a lot of people were killed by Russian soldiers, even though they were fighting together against Germany. Nowadays, we can see the situation when many small countries would rather unit with the U.S than with Russia.
- In word, being a part of civilization nowadays is even more important than being a citizen of your country (because of historical aspects), because civilization is the only one thing in our life that couldn’t be changed, it was given you with your birth and it is the main opportunity for each person to identify himself and to find himself in time of globalization in the world. You can choose country, wife or even the shape of your nose, but you cant choose the shape of your heart, the shape of your soul…
-
"The coming Anarchy" and "The rise of Illiberal Democracy"
- Nowadays people more and more start thinking about future, but not only about their own future, but about the future of the whole planet. With impetuous development of West and Europe, and unbelievable poverty of countries in Africa it is difficult to forecast the situation in the world in 50 years. Even though most countries now are trying to establish democracy which is thought to bring riches and happiness to everyone, the number of poor and suffering people rises and exceeds the number of successful people in many times. And “the problems will not only persist but get worse”. Diseases and fatal illnesses might apply to all people in the world. Also, there is a big opportunity of a new world war, if suffering people would decide to start it. I absolutely agree that even though the whole world is thought to become more and more developed, at the same time poor countries (as in Africa for example) are still under the “poor line”. The number of these people increases with a huge number of diseases at the same time.They don’t have anything to loose, in the 21 century they don’t even have banal phones or computers, while people in The U.S or European Union don’t even pay attention on this facility. For these people the war is not a step down, but a step up. The other reason to start the war is overpopulation, which is unavoidable. There will be no more place for people, and the only one way to solve this problem is to start the world war.I a
- Illiberal democracy is one of the possible shapes of pure democracy, in other word it is just a variation of ideal democracy (as there are variations of capitalism).So, is it possible to build a pure democracy at all, does this “ideal American” democracy exist? The answer is, surely, not. There is no ideal system in the whole world, and even if there was one, it wouldn’t be right for all the countries because of the differences in mentality, way of thinking and historical aspects.Democracy means fair and free election, but it doesn’t mean that elected person would establish democracy and build a democratic system. Who can be sure that majority has enough information, education knowledge to elect the right person? And if they don’t, the person they elected can lead a country or the whole world to the war, as it was in Germany, where election was democratic and free.
Another big problem is different understanding of democracy among politicians. For example, Russian election of ex-president Putin, can definitely be called democratic and free, although people didn’t really have a choice because the pre-election campaign was completely oriented on the one person. The election in this year in Russia showed that such kind of democracy established in this country and I hardly believe there is going to be change in future. Democracy is a sweeping generalization of all existent forms of this system. There is no ideal democracy, pure democracy is only in books and theory, but definitely not on practice.
"Development Journalism"
Development journalism was very popular among dictatorship, because according to this system government can control Media and can’t be criticized by it. It means that Mass Media can only promote government’s decisions and never analyze them. In this case people don’t get the truth they want, they don’t get objective information about their country and it means that Media just doesn’t do its job. But at the same time there are some advantages in this kind of journalism. First of all in development journalism Mass Media promotes national media and also pay more attention to humanitarian needs of population, as we said in class. But its not that kind of democracy, which most people in the world are trying to achieve, although sometimes democracy in Media can lead to just criticizing everything all the time without any reasons for that. This situation we have now in Ukraine. After the Orange Revolution 2004 we have got a lot of changes in our society, especially in Mass Media. It became free and independent from our new government, but in fact we didn’t finally get democratic journalism, that we expected to have. Because what journalists do now is only criticizing totally everything, without explanations or argument. Now they feel free, but they were not ready for this freedom and they don’t know what to do with it and how to use this freedom. Ana according to my opinion, the happy medium is what we now should try to reach. That midst between abandoned freedom and total control, the midst, when Mass Media would not only use their freedom to criticize, but more to analyze.
"Globalization: Good or Evil?"
First of all, globalization is the fact and we can’t ignore it, but I think this process is not so fast and not so perfect as Freedman considers. The whole world is never going to become international village; there are too many differences between cultures, which won’t let us become a global village. Every culture has its own language, traditions and what is really important – its own mentality. Although English becomes more and more used everywhere and undoubtedly it has already become an international language and language of technologies, at the same time people use it only for business and it will never become their native language. But globalization really exists, we can notice its influence on business, technologies and entertainment. And I think it’s not an Evil because it gives a lot of opportunities for people around the world to travel, communicate, get to know more about different cultures and even get a job wherever they want. The only one problem about globalization is that people can loose their own identity, their own culture and become just grey masses. As for me, the solution of this problem is a golden mean, where globalization would work for business and would give people opportunities but at the same time it wouldn’t prevent the development of each culture and each society in its own way.Globalization is a process, which should help poor countries to develop, to reach the success of developed countries (The U.S, European countries) and in this case it is definitely positive process, but at the same time globalozation shouldn’t absorb another, more weak cultures, because each culture is a treasure of every nation.
Mass Media in Russia (interview)
Mass Media in Russia is a really difficult question to discuss. Officially, this country has a freedom of speech, as it is thought to be a democratic country. Sometimes you really can hear some criticism about government and the president, but it takes about 10% of all the coverage of media in Russia. Mostly all channels support government all the time, Russian news sound very propagandistic. But what is true, that Russia didn’t really feel freedom of speech and didn’t enjoy it, so people don’t really care about it and many even think they have democracy and freedom of speech nowadays. In comparison with situation in Soviet Union, where journalism wasn’t even a journalism, but propagandistic method of popularizing the ideology, Russia nowadays has more democratic mass media, but it still doesn’t have a freedom of speech in western understanding of it. And maybe Russia will never have such democracy in Media, just because people don’t need it, they care about economy, oil and gas prices, anything, but not freedom of speech. Maybe Russia is just so different, that Western democracy just cant survive in this country, and in fact, there is no need for this kind of democracy. Nowadays people all over the world are able to watch international news online, to compare their media with foreign. And if they still don’t want to protest, don’t want to change the system they have in Russia, if they don’t really care about it so much, maybe United States and other countries should also stop thinking about providing their democracy to this country.
- Triumph of the West - total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to West liberalism.(Fukuyama)
- The first concept of history as a dialectical process - Georg Wihelm Hegel. (Men - is a product of historical and social environment, what is realle true, because society has its huge influence on our lives from the very begining, and sometimes society makes descisions instead of us, even though we are sure that we make it by ourselves).
- Ideology by Hegel includes not only political ideas, but also religion, culture, comple[ of moral values. Ideology is deffinetly something more than just promisses of the Government or politicans, it includes common to all mankind principles and ambushs.
- All human behavior in the material world is rooted in a prior state of consciousness(Hegel), thats why our behaviour in material world depends on our principles and consciousness.
- HEGEL refutes the common opinion "the more ypu get money, the more you work".He leads an example of people who start working slowly because they lost their need in getting money to survive.
- One of the main ideas of materialism - dont pay attention on culture and consciousness.
- Ideology of Hegel - the world has ended its development a long time ago - on the ideas of French Revolution.
- Liberalism (as the end of societies development) had two barrier - fasim and nationalism. Fasim died not because of material problems (Germany had enough equipment), but because of the whole idea died (sustained Defeat).
- A lot of our problems, including problems in liberalism, as a system, came to us frpm the past, and influenced on our lives. It doesnt mean that the system is unperfect, it just means that our nowaday life depends on our history.(great example - is a problem of Afro-Americans from the past, when they were slaves - it is not a fault of liberalism - it is teilings from the past).
- There are some countries in the world, which decide desteny of the whole world. Systems in these countries are differenr, and because of that, liberalism havent become the end of the history yet. Japan played a great role in a distribution of "consumption" culture and investigation a political liberalism.
- China - like alternative ideology is tought be Fukuyama as a threat for liberalism.
- Liberalism cant be the end of the history or at least a perfect system because of two problems - fasism and nationalism.
- Nationalism is not an ideology, but it may really become it (between liberalism in USA, and post-komunism in USSR). It can become a huge problem, if one nation will proclaim itselve as the best and the last in history development.
- And the main question in talking about the end of history is Third world. It will be a terrain of conflict, which can reach the other side of the world (like USA). And we cant ignore these countries, because they also have a big influence on the development of worlds history.
- The end of History doesnt seem to be so perfect, because Fukuyama also noticed that in this case "courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems".There will be no art, no place for individuality and unusual way of thinking. In other words, such succession of events will result to materialism which puts money above all other values.And can we assert that materialism is an ideal system and the end of History? deffinetly not.
- This article had been written by Francis Fukuyama pretty long time ago and the main situation has been already changed in the world and especially in Third World. The Soviet union has broken up a long time ago and comunism has become obsolete. Now these countries are independent, they try to construct democracy. But even though there are a lot of changes, such countries as Russia and USA still cant find common language in political questions, we can really see the opposite situation, when the New Cold War is coming. Russia will never become a liberal country as The USA, because of historical aspects, traditions, culture and of course mentality of russian people and espacially politicans. Russia resists to the USA on a world scene, tries to expand the influence on the countries of the post Soviet Union to increase the power and to stop the distribution of American liberalism.
-These countries (The USA and Russia) aspire more to an antagonism and an establishment of their power over all other world, than to a consensus. Therefore, in my opinion, it is impossible to consider liberalism as the end of the history because the society develops not in one, but in several directions which have no things in common.
-
Samuel Huntington "The Clash of Civilizations?"
"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural." - there are a lot of reasons to agree with his poin of view, because in the modern world, with its technologies and opportunities, culture becomes more and more important, people identify themselves as a part of their own civilization, they find a lot of differences between civilizations, which are becoming the main problem of misunderstanding. Ideology is not so important nowadays, we don’t have a lot of different political systems now, as we had in the past, mostly all developed countries have democracy now or the system, which is closed to democracy. So, the difference in political systems doesn’t affect people nowadays, and what really matters now is what civilization you belong to, who you are and where are you from.
- People always have to DIFFERENTIATE each other, nobody wants to be the same as all other people in the world and the only one way to do it is to identify yourself as a part of your civilization. It is impossible to create the only one culture, the only one civilization in the world, which everyone could accept. There are too many differences between cultures and civilizations that will not let people to come to the consensus. The main problems are historical aspects and of course mentality – thing we are not able to change in our life. (" First, differences among civilizations are not only real; they are basic. Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion. ").
- So, in modern world we have a real possibility for a new war, which will be based not on ideology, but on the differences of civilizations. But there is also a possibility of a war between the members of the same group, the same civilization. And mostly it can happen because of historical aspects, especially between countries of the Soviet Union and Russia. Because of the influence of the U.S. and Europe, such countries as Ukraine or Moldova are now divided into two parts - pro-American and pro-Russian. This situation provokes a lot of problems between neighbor countries, because Russia still doesn’t want these countries to be independent, because in this case, Russia ould not be able to control the situation in these countries.
- Religion aspect is also one of the most important in the clash of civilizations. The way we see our world, the way we understand it and our faith are so opposite that it has a really big influence on our life, behavior and mind. That’s why we cant understand people from other civilizations, and even if we can understand, we definitely cant accept those differences. That’s why Americans cant historically perceive Muslims, because religions are so different that it effects their life and attitude to everything that happens around.
- Also, I think there are much more possibilities for fighting between the members of the same civilization. The countries of the post Soviet Union are great examples. If we analyze the history of Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Moldova and other countries we will see that mostly they all were fighting between each other. Even during The World War II, in Ukraine a lot of people were killed by Russian soldiers, even though they were fighting together against Germany. Nowadays, we can see the situation when many small countries would rather unit with the U.S than with Russia.
- In word, being a part of civilization nowadays is even more important than being a citizen of your country (because of historical aspects), because civilization is the only one thing in our life that couldn’t be changed, it was given you with your birth and it is the main opportunity for each person to identify himself and to find himself in time of globalization in the world. You can choose country, wife or even the shape of your nose, but you cant choose the shape of your heart, the shape of your soul…
-
"The coming Anarchy" and "The rise of Illiberal Democracy"
- Nowadays people more and more start thinking about future, but not only about their own future, but about the future of the whole planet. With impetuous development of West and Europe, and unbelievable poverty of countries in Africa it is difficult to forecast the situation in the world in 50 years. Even though most countries now are trying to establish democracy which is thought to bring riches and happiness to everyone, the number of poor and suffering people rises and exceeds the number of successful people in many times. And “the problems will not only persist but get worse”. Diseases and fatal illnesses might apply to all people in the world. Also, there is a big opportunity of a new world war, if suffering people would decide to start it. I absolutely agree that even though the whole world is thought to become more and more developed, at the same time poor countries (as in Africa for example) are still under the “poor line”. The number of these people increases with a huge number of diseases at the same time.They don’t have anything to loose, in the 21 century they don’t even have banal phones or computers, while people in The U.S or European Union don’t even pay attention on this facility. For these people the war is not a step down, but a step up. The other reason to start the war is overpopulation, which is unavoidable. There will be no more place for people, and the only one way to solve this problem is to start the world war.I a
- Illiberal democracy is one of the possible shapes of pure democracy, in other word it is just a variation of ideal democracy (as there are variations of capitalism).So, is it possible to build a pure democracy at all, does this “ideal American” democracy exist? The answer is, surely, not. There is no ideal system in the whole world, and even if there was one, it wouldn’t be right for all the countries because of the differences in mentality, way of thinking and historical aspects.Democracy means fair and free election, but it doesn’t mean that elected person would establish democracy and build a democratic system. Who can be sure that majority has enough information, education knowledge to elect the right person? And if they don’t, the person they elected can lead a country or the whole world to the war, as it was in Germany, where election was democratic and free.
Another big problem is different understanding of democracy among politicians. For example, Russian election of ex-president Putin, can definitely be called democratic and free, although people didn’t really have a choice because the pre-election campaign was completely oriented on the one person. The election in this year in Russia showed that such kind of democracy established in this country and I hardly believe there is going to be change in future. Democracy is a sweeping generalization of all existent forms of this system. There is no ideal democracy, pure democracy is only in books and theory, but definitely not on practice.
"Development Journalism"
Development journalism was very popular among dictatorship, because according to this system government can control Media and can’t be criticized by it. It means that Mass Media can only promote government’s decisions and never analyze them. In this case people don’t get the truth they want, they don’t get objective information about their country and it means that Media just doesn’t do its job. But at the same time there are some advantages in this kind of journalism. First of all in development journalism Mass Media promotes national media and also pay more attention to humanitarian needs of population, as we said in class. But its not that kind of democracy, which most people in the world are trying to achieve, although sometimes democracy in Media can lead to just criticizing everything all the time without any reasons for that. This situation we have now in Ukraine. After the Orange Revolution 2004 we have got a lot of changes in our society, especially in Mass Media. It became free and independent from our new government, but in fact we didn’t finally get democratic journalism, that we expected to have. Because what journalists do now is only criticizing totally everything, without explanations or argument. Now they feel free, but they were not ready for this freedom and they don’t know what to do with it and how to use this freedom. Ana according to my opinion, the happy medium is what we now should try to reach. That midst between abandoned freedom and total control, the midst, when Mass Media would not only use their freedom to criticize, but more to analyze.
"Globalization: Good or Evil?"
First of all, globalization is the fact and we can’t ignore it, but I think this process is not so fast and not so perfect as Freedman considers. The whole world is never going to become international village; there are too many differences between cultures, which won’t let us become a global village. Every culture has its own language, traditions and what is really important – its own mentality. Although English becomes more and more used everywhere and undoubtedly it has already become an international language and language of technologies, at the same time people use it only for business and it will never become their native language. But globalization really exists, we can notice its influence on business, technologies and entertainment. And I think it’s not an Evil because it gives a lot of opportunities for people around the world to travel, communicate, get to know more about different cultures and even get a job wherever they want. The only one problem about globalization is that people can loose their own identity, their own culture and become just grey masses. As for me, the solution of this problem is a golden mean, where globalization would work for business and would give people opportunities but at the same time it wouldn’t prevent the development of each culture and each society in its own way.Globalization is a process, which should help poor countries to develop, to reach the success of developed countries (The U.S, European countries) and in this case it is definitely positive process, but at the same time globalozation shouldn’t absorb another, more weak cultures, because each culture is a treasure of every nation.
Mass Media in Russia (interview)
Mass Media in Russia is a really difficult question to discuss. Officially, this country has a freedom of speech, as it is thought to be a democratic country. Sometimes you really can hear some criticism about government and the president, but it takes about 10% of all the coverage of media in Russia. Mostly all channels support government all the time, Russian news sound very propagandistic. But what is true, that Russia didn’t really feel freedom of speech and didn’t enjoy it, so people don’t really care about it and many even think they have democracy and freedom of speech nowadays. In comparison with situation in Soviet Union, where journalism wasn’t even a journalism, but propagandistic method of popularizing the ideology, Russia nowadays has more democratic mass media, but it still doesn’t have a freedom of speech in western understanding of it. And maybe Russia will never have such democracy in Media, just because people don’t need it, they care about economy, oil and gas prices, anything, but not freedom of speech. Maybe Russia is just so different, that Western democracy just cant survive in this country, and in fact, there is no need for this kind of democracy. Nowadays people all over the world are able to watch international news online, to compare their media with foreign. And if they still don’t want to protest, don’t want to change the system they have in Russia, if they don’t really care about it so much, maybe United States and other countries should also stop thinking about providing their democracy to this country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
