whew! what a semester!

it took me a while to blog. this past semester was difficult. i took nine hours and taught two classes. i will do the same thing in the spring. but busting butt now means finishing course work by next fall. i'm anxious to get to the PhD.

for those of you who have perused my blog, it should be evident that i've been interested in kosovo. it actually became the focal point of my fall semester projects. in my development communications class, i worked on what i hope is a good start to a case study exploring how the regulatory and legislative framework promulgated by the UN mission in kosovo facilitated what has become Kosovar Albanians' opportunity to create their own media. this exploration was remarkable for many reasons. first, many of these documents - at least created by Kosovo's provisional government - are available online. second, in flipping through each of the documents, spread out across my floor by date or by agency or some other descriptor that i used in my haphazard filing system, i saw the creation of what many in the tiny province hope will be a country. i make no predictions about what will happen, only to reiterate what i put forth when i spoke with my poli sci professor. i don't think serbia will let the province go easily. and i don't think kosovo will stay easily. this tiny patch of earth should be kept in mind because it signifies an even larger tension between the united states and russia. sometimes i think following some of these events and speculating on what could happen is actually much more fun than watching television.

speaking of television: i'm almost finished with neil postman's "amusing ourselves to death." i highly recommend it.

my second project - for my international relations class - also focused on kosovo. but i took a much different angle. some have indicated that the un took steps in kosovo and east timor that it hadn't taken previously. while it had helped governments rebuild - for instance in cambodia - it didn't actually take over governance as it had in kosovo and east timor. because i think that the american news media help us organize our understanding of the world, i felt a change in un action such as this should be studied, especially how it appeared in the american news media. i struggled with the project to a certain degree. i was in a political science class, and their research methods vary from those used in media research. in the end, i came up with a framing analysis. i would divulge more, but i plan to submit the project to a symposium. i will write more about how it turns out. i am excited about the project, as i really like framing as a theoretical tool. while it isn't all-encompassing, i challenge researchers to find a theoretical tool that is. but i think it offers ways of exploring phenomena that sometimes cannot be explored in other ways.

school is about a week away, and i'm still working diligently with preparing for the courses that i will teach. i hope to contact michael wesch who teaches at kansas state university. he has used some of these web 2.0 tools in remarkable ways, and i'm interested in using these tools not only in the classroom but in my research, as well. i would be interested to hear from journalists globally about different issues, especially information flows; i hope some of these tools could facilitate that. i know few probably consider information flows a viable research consideration any more but i think it's especially pertinent now.

this semester, i'm taking a geography course that will focus on development in the third world, an international news communications course, and media globalization course. i'm really excited about what i will learn and even more excited what research questions i will discover. is anybody else wondering about how we evaluate information now? a brief vignette to illustrate a point before i close down for the evening.

my aunt, whom i love dearly, came to visit twice while i was at home - my original home is oklahoma, my diasporal home is phl - and we gathered around the kitchen table as we talked. my father, mother, aunt, cousin, and i warmly talked about the world and its state of affairs. on her second visit, because each visit she came with different cousins, she made the comment that she didn't know what had happened to the world. the value of human life everywhere seemed to be in decline. and i'm not sure if i said this aloud or only thought this, but it occurred that when she grew up she didn't have the rapid flow of violent images that she probably sees today, nor was the symbolic environment of her youth shaped the way it is today. i made the point, though i think it was lost on my more conservative elders, that we now have access to other sources of information; when i say other sources, i mean of course sources of information from other nations. i wonder how we would evaluate this information. probably, given my company, with skepticism. many studies indicate the flow of images and news content into the united states show "the other" as an exotic place, a violent, unwieldy place that exists in stark contrast to our comfortable, american lives. in other studies, political content is often painted with a nationalistic brush despite which side of the political continuum the news media may reside. what happens when we have access to news sources from beyond our national borders? how do we evaluate that information? would my aunt's world seem so violent? maybe. maybe not. i've lived in philly for the better part of a year and a half, and i have yet to see a drive-by despite the persistent news items in local media about the violence that pervades the city.

Developing a mosaic

As I follow several developments in Iraq, Turkey, and many parts of Africa, as well as Iran, Venezuela, and the United States, I begin to see linearity as almost a slippery slope; each story provides a perspective, and almost like a chicken scratching for food, I follow the various strands flowing from each story. I've always gazed at the larger picture, sometimes completely overlooking the ridges and textures, components and landscapes that reside within the wider view. Often it is difficult not to pursue a more narrowly crafted perspective, but like a glutton for punishment I opt to understand all the forces at work in the human environment. I guess that's why globalization, an intellectual monolith, is so intriguing to me.

Cultural imperialism, globalization, and hybridity represent three theoretical frameworks to examine communications, overlapping but providing distinct tools for understanding communications within the condition of modernity and postmodernity. According to Giddens (1990), "(M)odernity refers to modes of social life and organisation which emerged in Europe from about the 17th Century onwards and which subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence" (p. 3). The distinguishing mark of modernity is threefold: its pace of change, its scope of change, and its nature of modern institutions. According to Giddens, capitalism is the "emergent social order of modernity", and as such, many theorists have explored their concerns about the expansion of this social order, which, throughout it existence, has developed from the West to penetrate lesser developed areas or nation-states. I find the word 'penetration' is lacking in many cases, as the West has also tried to build nation-states, prop them up, or even raze them to the ground.

While some theorists have argued the cultural imperialist critique is fraught with problems (Tomlinson, 1991) or is essentially one-sided (Kellner, 2002), they do not completely dismiss the critique's usefulness. However, they realize these ideas of inequity fit inside a much broader perspective. Globalization is the body of knowledge that seeks to describe the condition of modernity and postmodernity, but vis-a-vis quickly evolving technological advancement, transportation, and an increasingly integrated economic system. Globalization theories are concerned with the increasingly interconnected world, especially where communications are concerned, and they move beyond cultural imperialism, to recognize the unfolding complexity of global reality, the recent developments in communications and technology, as well as their consequences.

This complexity, these developments, and the resultant human environment involve the overlapping categories of economics, politics, and culture. In trying to describe the most recent phase of globalization, many realize prior models and theories simply fail to account for current processes. In fact, Appadurai wrote in 1996 that these processes simply defied description at that time. These developments challenge older ideas of the relevancy of the nation-state and are changing fundamental social organizations, such as familial relationships and identity based on geographic location. Kellner argued in 2002 for a "critical theory of globalization that will will discuss the fundamental transformations of the world economy, politics, and culture in a dialectical framework that distinguishes between progressive and emancipatory features and oppressive and negative attributes" (p. 283). However, the intermingling of positive and negative characteristics is sometimes difficult to separate, and in many cases more difficult to find equilibrium.

Modern transportation allows for migration, and communications allow for constant contact and mediation among individuals at long distances (Appadurai, 1996). These changes lend themselves to the bending of traditional ideas of temporal, spatial, and geographic contexts that the human condition simply has not encountered before. Within this complexity, all levels of the human condition appear: from the individual, to groups, to nation-states, to international organizations, as globalization theorists attempt to map each strand in ever-growing multiplicities of humans existences.

We can view globalization as a multidimensional process, comprised of social, political, and economic interactive levels (Pieterse, 1995). Developments have given rise to new social formations and have challenged the dominant institutions, allowing us to transcend the geographic boundaries of the nation-state. As social formations and culture recede, so too does geographic importance (Waters, 1995). It is precisely this disjuncture that inflames national, religious and ethnic sentiments (Appadurai, 1996). Appadurai argues of a rupture in modernity theory, through which mass mediation and diaspora collude to create new public spheres in a world that he describes as postnational. These global flows of people, media, and finance cannot be easily reconciled; for example, the diaspora exasperates ethnic tensions but could be viewed positively by some with regard to cheap labor.

Moreover, international theories concerning political systems or political economy just simply fail to encompass the complexity of the human condition created by globalization. For example, Wallerstein had envisioned that a pair of mechanisms - the nation and the state - generally evolved to, among others, serve the bourgeois and its newly acquired power. These mechanisms operated in tandem but are now often truncated, depending on the nation-state's level of development, by other nation-states, international organizations, or in most cases corporations. Like other political theories, Wallerstein's world-system theory presupposes a certain arrangement for nation-states in the international system. In this system, it is clear the nation-state plays a role. But in the larger global system, some theorists, like Appadurai, have pondered the utility of the nation-state, arguing that its role might eventually become obsolete. However, he also adds that he is unsure what would take its place; I hope his book, Globalization will shed some light on this.

It's not difficult, then, if you view globalization as a multidimensional process, to see how the international system would come into play, especially with regard to information. Often many perspectives vie for attention, and in many cases, veracious information is obscured by political, social, or economic agendas. For example, while the Iraq War might have global implications and complications, it had inevitably unfolded primarily between two main players, Iraq and the United States. At the time, the dominant idea for the war was Iraq's defiance with its WMD. I ran home from the university because buzz about the war circulated around campus; I wanted to SEE the war for myself, from Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. It would not be the first time that I watched war on television; clips from the first Gulf War were a mainstay on CNN. But more than a decade had passed, and communication technologies had improved. Below are clips obtained from YouTube, from various sources including Australian, American, and Asian news organizations; I believe the actual footage for all three might have derived from Al Jazeera.







At that moment, the Iraq War was disseminated, and globally the cultural, economic, and political processes changed; politically the Bush doctrine solidified and became a reality. If Afghanistan was a meek wake-up call, then Iraq was boiling pot of water saying, "Get your ass out of bed." The economic and cultural ramifications that followed seemed on par with the political discussions: Americans take and invade; we permeate other cultures to secure our own place in the world and to ensure our own cultural, economic, and political supremacy. Televising the Shock and Awe campaign simply gave these perceptions dimensions and validation. Of course, I'm sure a slew of perspectives exist, and many Americans sat glued to the television, subconsciously happy that we have the artillery.

But understanding the problems relies on information. In this case, many Americans justified the idea of obliterating another nation-state's sovereignty - a no-no in the international order for a while - with the idea of WMD. I think eventually other ideas, such as liberation as well as connections to 9/11, began to emerge, morphed from the original context, (or even pretext including securing access to petroleum and stabilizing the Middle East for our economic well-being), for even entering the country. Thus, the problem becomes apparent. The problem with the American news media resides in its flat portrayal and the consequent understanding of the situations that require much deeper comprehension. Many Americans slide back and forth on a continuum, from the acutely informed to the absolutely ignorant. And this flat coverage has wings, misunderstanding and scant comprehension spreads and morphs as it does, like some crazy virus.

Can Americans withdraw from our inextricable position within a hegemony to understand the actualities occurring in these other countries? Or is the postmodern condition too much with us? If we believe we act righteously, how righteous are the outcomes when the reason for acting is found unjust?

It seems strange that while we open our newspapers or turn on the daily news, absorbing information from official sources, people criss-crossing the globe are communicating information that gatekeepers withhold or discard. If Appadurai is correct, many exchange information that might be vital to our understanding, but these walls of identity, a citadel at which sentries stand in wait to turn away information that doesn't quite mesh with our reality, keep us from sharing or even knowing. And as I travel from website to website trying to get a handle on Kurdistan, or Iraq, or Swaziland, or Venezuela, the problem is not the lack of information, but rather the veracity of the information. Do we believe Iran needs to develop an alternative form of energy, such as the energy provided by nuclear power, or do we believe the Bush administration that Iran intends to produce weapons of mass destruction? That term, weapons of mass destruction, has a familiar feel to it. But it seems this time around the idea of weapons is already colluding with other ideas - Iranians want liberation; Iran poses a threat to its neighbors; Iran aids terrorists.

When you look back at the mosaic of news stories, one must dig deeper to gather the multiplicity of perspectives and work hard to piece them together. And as you add the layers of complexity and human interaction - news organizations, reporters, editors, audiences, reedits, reposts, word of mouth all multiplying meaning - the meaning morphs and changes, like the telephone game gone awry. Some are content with the evening news or reading the local newspaper.

But those who search throughout the net, what is the news standard by which the quality of that work or information is judged? Do we judge the international news product by the same gauge that we judge the American news product? There is no universal standard, and to claim there is - or to lay claim to it - just simply smacks of outlandish ego. But we forget, don't we? We forget that information coming from other places was gathered by those with different cultural norms. How do we, then, begin to come outside ourselves, to realize this mosaic to form a more aligned understanding of the human condition?


References
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford University Press.

Kellner, D. (2002). Theorizing Globalization. Sociological Theory. (20)3.

Pieterse, J.N. (1995). Globalization as Hybridization in Global Modernities. In M. Featherstone, S. Lash, & R. Robertson (Eds)., pp. 45-68, Global Modernities. London: Sage.

Tomlinson, J. (1991). Cultural Imperialism. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System I. San Diego: Academic Press.

Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. London: Routledge.

The key word is THINK (RED)

“Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present.” Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 1993

I’m currently working on several research projects, including a project that explores President George W. Bush’s rhetoric concerning the Department of Homeland Security, how violent crime has been covered in Philadelphia, and how AIDS awareness ads have represented both gay men and AIDS. The last thing that I need is another project, right? Wrong. At the end of the spring semester, two of my colleagues said they wanted to pitch a panel for a conference coming to Philadelphia. We opted to look at cause-related marketing campaigns. A friend suggested the Red campaign because of my interest in AIDS and AIDS awareness. My interest in the campaign was double-pronged: first, I am really interested in AIDS awareness, and second, I have listened to U2 since I was 13 years old. Bono is a hero of mine.

Cause-related marketing, campaigns that bring corporations and social causes together to raise money and awareness, is not my area of interest or expertise, but the Web 2.0 environment fascinates me. Social networking and blogging are only two of the many features offered by this evolution in Internet technology. When the paper is finished, I will have examined how Red’s digital platform brought corporations, consumers, and the cause together into one online community.

Those who tout the capabilities of the Web 2.0 environment say these Internet tools can enable social and political change through collaborative knowledge and interaction; on its face, the Red campaign seems like an electronic web of interaction about products, information, and communication from those who’ve joined the fight for the cause. But my optimism about these changes is tempered with the knowledge that often something is lost in translation when American consumerism is brought into the mix.

According to its website, Red is a branding mechanism – a business model - that pairs global corporations with the Global Fund. The model involves corporations like Motorola, The Gap, and iPod, which have created product lines and donate a portion of their profits directly to the Fund. Bono and Bobby Shriver, its founders, hope to establish sustainable revenue through building a community around the issues like HIV/AIDS in Africa. So far, how has it done?

Chasing the Numbers
The campaign began in October 2006. To date, the Red campaign website says the money raised has helped:

*770,000 people with the treatment for HIV and AIDS;
*nearly 9 million people with voluntary HIV testing;
*more than 1 million orphans with care and support;
*2 million people with treatment for tuberculosis;
*more than 22 million people treated for malaria;
*nearly 18 families with insecticides treated mosquito nets.

Co-founder Bobby Shriver wrote not too long ago that the fund has raised $25 million USD. His response countered another article in AdWeek, which claimed that the campaign had only raised $18 million. Shriver argued the Fund has raised 5 times – quadrupled – the funds in one year than it had over the previous four years. His responses, I believe, can be found at Red’s website. While the disputes over how much has been raised are intriguing, I am actually drawn more to the campaign.

The campaign is unfolding in print, in music, in video, and of course, through the Internet. AIM and MySpace are both partners of the campaign. And recently, Vanity Fair released its Africa issue – with 20 separate covers. The MySpace page, of which I am a member, promoted the issue with several bulletins. According to the Vanity Fair media pack, which is available at its website, the UK magazine boasts a readership of 214,000. Red’s MySpace page boasts 630,406 friends, as of July 15. Likewise, Red’s blog has seen 313, 971 visitors since it was launched. The reach of the two Internet sites exceeds the readership of the magazine; I wonder if the Africa issue exceeded any expectations.

Nevertheless, the campaign has caught on; if you visit the MySpace page, you see happy people wearing Red t-shirts or holding up their Red iPods. They are more than willing to let people know what they have purchased, sometimes mentioning they bought for a worthy cause. What worries me is Africa.

Commodity=Simplicity
On the surface, the ability to help people in Africa through the purchase of a product is remarkably simple. Unfortunately, I think more often than not, American consumers reduce issues with exact simplicity: fixing Africa requires throwing money at a problem that simply revolves around disease and poverty. Neither the AIDS epidemic nor the poverty issue should be mitigated; in fact, in a June 4 Reuters’s article, AIDS is viewed as a new threat to African democracy, Bate Felix writes AIDS has had a devastating effect on governance, particularly in Southern Africa.

Poverty and disease have their devastating roles. But they play roles in incredibly complex machinery that predates any of my living relatives. This machinery grew out of now fallen empires that moved into these areas, took what they could, and eventually receded. Their remnants were left behind, and the inhabitants left to pick up the pieces. Two of the countries mentioned on the Product Red website are Swaziland and Rwanda. Let’s take a look at a little bit of history for each.

According to the Swaziland government website, Swaziland is located in Southern Africa between South Africa and Mozambique. The people of Swazi descended from the southern Bantu, and in the 16th and 17th centuries, migrated from central Africa. Swaziland is a former British colony; the British signed a convention recognizing the country’s independence, but “controversial land and mineral rights concessions were made under the authority of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 in terms of which the administration of Swaziland was also placed under that of the then South African Republic.” Long story short, Swaziland finally received its independence from Britain in 1968.

According to the Rwanda government website, Rwanda was once a centralized Tutsi kingdom. Although Rwanda became a colony under German control in 1899, it became a mandate territory of the League of Nations under Belgium control in 1919, following Germany’s defeat in World War I. Under Belgian rule, discrimination based on ethnicity was introduced in 1935, and eventually led to massacres of Batutsi. Rwanda gained its independence in 1962.

The history of both countries is tangled with different Western powers; each is similar insofar as a Western power has tried to make it its own, and different insofar as they are separate entities attempting to exist, like every other nation-state in the world. As Tony Barnett (1997) writes in Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Globalization, communication & the new international order, “The varieties of colonial state influenced the specific organizational form and administrative tradition inherited by the successor post-colonial state. Other factors which affected state formation included the particular circumstances arising from economic developments in each area, as well as forms of resistance to colonialism and, related to these, the forms of political, social and economic organization which had pre-existed colonial rule or developed in relation to its encroachment.”

It’s not simply about buying products. It’s about understanding the history of each nation-state, the struggles of the people, their natural resources, the investment by NGOs and corporations, and their relations with other nation-states. Specifically these are my concerns:

1. As Sut Jhally said in part one in his lecture, Understanding Globalization, a good starting point to understanding globalization is through understanding our relationship vis-a-vis commodities. I have to say the Gap’s website offers detailed information about how it chooses manufacturers and promulgates corporate responsibility. Interestingly, one of the factories producing Gap products is located in Lesotho, one of the countries devastated by AIDS. One way to truly understand how you are helping is to begin with the products that you are purchasing - Get the bigger picture.

2. Along those same lines: What do we understand about AIDS and Africa? Charity with no historical context only serves to perpetuate what we might already think about many around the world. They are helpless and need to be saved. Adding historical context for American consumers is a double-edged sword; in the very least, the truth is not sexy. Some of these governments are struggling to maintain stability, are rife with civil war, or are overwhelmed with corruption. You want to help with AIDS in Africa? Let's start by opening a dialogue about the social, political and economic conditions that led us here to begin with, so that the peoples of each of these countries can work toward their own independence and build their own narratives.

3. Where is the African narrative? While my look over Red’s blog is cursory, the African’s narrative is scant, if it even appears. In the coming weeks, I hope to find people who can shed some light on how the Red campaign is received locally. And there are positive things about many of these countries, their people, and the cultures. Put a human face on the "cause," on the "disaster." I want to hear their voices; I want to know who they are as they see it.

Red’s reach impresses me, and I cannot wait to see how it will fare in the coming years. What seems absent, though, is the substantive understanding by consumers about Africa as well as explanation about Africa from Red. We should not overlook those throughout Africa; after all, the campaign was designed with them in mind. Many of the nation-states in Africa are still struggling, particularly to meet Western guidelines to receive aid. In fact, according to the Swazi Observer, Swaziland has lost $50 million USD in funds from the Global Fund, due to the lack of a patient management system. While we are first-world consumers who can speak with our pocket books, we can also be knowledgeable participants in the global environment. If you choose RED, then the key word here is THINK.

Introduction

In August, I will begin the second year of my PhD program, and I am in the process of discovering my areas of interest. As I have begun to unpack what I have read over the past two semesters - a task that I think is more arduous than actually reading the literature - I realize I have many interests, including how news organizations and their audiences exchange, use, and interpret information. I am also interested in how each of these groups interact and make meaning; finally, I am interested in globalization.

I began as a professional journalist in 1996, working in smaller markets in the midwest. I knew the estimated readership of each of the papers, but I always wondered who was reading and how they used the information. I found out through the course of reporting who read the local paper as well as what they liked or disliked about the stories, the paper, or just people around town. I eventually left newspapers and returned to school. I have been in higher education now for five years, and my growing awareness of globalization reminds me of these questions, though on a much wider scale.

The purpose of this blog, at least initially, is to write about my academic journey, to gain feedback about my research ideas, and share my struggle of being an American learning of new ideas, cultures and people - all of which involve my attempt to understand the complex process of globalization. How does information flow into the United States? What do Americans - average Americans - know about the rest of the world, or at least what do they learn from the news media? What is the cultural logic that colors their perspective of world events? Conversely, how do average people outside of the United States know about us? Is it through lived or mediated experience? Is it that our views, our perspectives are mediated by others? If mediation is key to our knowledge and understanding of one another, who is mediating?

On a personal level, what do I know, and how do I know it? Hence, the title of the blog, stupid American. Learning more and more about the world is sometimes a difficult feat, especially when I might be confused with those clumsy, clueless creatures traveling carelessly through the world, disregarding local culture and upsetting the sensibilities of many. Unfortunately the precedent has been set. The United States government, my government, has enforced its might on both willing and unwilling participants in a U.S.-dominated global environment. And my fellow Americans sometimes serve to reinforce widely held negative perceptions.

Buying into what we see on the surface neglects the complexity of our world and the process of globalization. I want to push through the surface to penetrate this complexity, to shed light on how communication, specifically news media, serves to hinder, inhibit, oppress, elucidate, liberate, or engage. I do not propose to have the answers now, but I invite you to follow me in my path of discovery.