Comparing the Media Strategies Employed by Green Organizations - Essay Example

In Media Geographies: In comparing the media strategies employed by green organizations and destination promoters to emotionalize and affect people's perception of environmental issues and cities, an aspect worth noting is the use of techniques that appeal to the general public with green and sustainable life of individuals and the community. Through the media the green organizations and city destination supporters built up a good public image of environmental expertise (Fung 1994). Many similar promotional programs are carried out under the themes of: paper saving and recycling, bring your own bag- use fewer plastics, organic farming which allows people to have a taste green life, organizing eco-tours to rain forests, vegetarianism -avoid feeding on wild animals, polluters paying principles (green tax) on certain consumable items, collaboration with religious to promote greener lifestyles, green concerts as well as promotions and bazaars of green products. These two opposing sides also formulate creative ways of blending green thinking with daily life. As such organized talks and seminars on alternative medicine, life stresses and green and safe offices through relating the green philosophy with stress and office safety they public consciousness about the importance of green thinking in everyday life. The green organizations as opposed to the city destination propounders push for the indigenization of environmentalism and ecological ideas, blending them with traditional ways of consumption and cosmology. they strive to develop a non confrontational strategy of mobilization, seeking to work within existing parameters while the city destination promoters strive to do away with the existing forms and replace the with modern technologies. The green organizations and the city destination promoters consensually are both entrenched on environmental consciousness rising with the support of the two full fledged environmental education programs are now part of the extra-curricular activities in school, civic education topics in the community and themes of television and radio programs all these owe their success to intensive media exposure. QUESTION 2 Communications, Not Technology Colin Delany in an online article titled Learning from Obama's Campaign Structure: How to Organize for Success writes that "Structure isn't sexy -- [and] to talk about the critical online tools of 2008 without discussing the framework that governed their use would be missing the most important part of the story." Delany is purporting that not every Tom, Dick and Harry could employ (most of) the technology that the Obama Campaign recruited, but very few internet based communicators have ever accomplished such a task as effectively or on such a scale. One important lesson from Obama: the tools don't matter as much as how you use them. Fundraising Sarah Lai Stirland on Wired.com writes that "in fundraising, Obama followed in the footsteps of Howard Dean's 2004 bid by regularly soliciting small donations online from a wide swath of voters, raising record amounts online by federal filing deadlines." The Illinois senator then employed this funds for more traditional campaigning - for example, flooding cable markets in strategic states with television advertising. Obama spent a record-shattering $293 million on TV ads between January 1, 2007, and October 29, 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. McCain spent $132 million during the same period. Integrated Online Communication Obama's technological savvy reiterated itself with a sharp disagreement with the conventional arrangement in many other campaigns and advocacy groups. Conventionally the web personnel are always buried in a basement and are implicitly expected to know how to amend faulty technological machinery as well as to understand how to use the internet as a modern political mobilization tool. Most of the time often being excluded from the communications planning process until the last possible moment, rendering the online element an afterthought with a stunted chance at real success. Obama's campaign managers employed a completely different model -- for them, the internet was as central to a modern political campaign as the traditional tools of direct mail, field organizing, advertising and the like. Good and consistent branding As a result of a heightened desire to design websites and other online imagery, the Obamas campaign gained another rare advantage for political communicators: good and consistent branding. Obama's technologically savvy team included talented and experienced designers, who created a logo and a brand name that the campaign deployed with a rigor most corporate brand experts would envy. From online ads to print materials, yard signs and wraparound graphics for buses, the new media team turned out most of the visual material used across the country, saving some $10 million on outside consulting fees while also helping to build the clear and identifiable brand "Obama." An indicator of how good a job they did. QUESTION 3 One fundamental issue that still makes the government state authority to reign supreme despite technological advances of the internet that makes it possible for it-internet- to overrule state authority is as a result of several millennia of dynasties that have continued to flourish, in one regard: rigid control of information. A case in mind is China. In china Just as the emperors ruled by issuing edicts to the masses below and ensured obedience by keeping them ill-informed, today's mandarins also keep a tight grip on the flow of information, making transparency and government accountability nearly impossible. One other aspect that is agitating against the internet is the declining trust in reliability of online content. For the past four years of tracking user reaction, users have questioned the authenticity of online material. Only a fraction of internet users are for the internet being trust worthy, with non-user even dismissing the internet as harshly. When internet users are asked about the various online content they overwhelmingly articulate their trust in information on government websites more than any other kind of online information. Another aspect that works against the internet is Worries about the pitfalls of internet use. Online subscribers are of the opinion that internet use could lead to several nasty effects: Approximately a majority of more that half are of the opinion that internet users could easily become addicts to the internet, with the same number holding the view that users could easily be affected by online adult content. slightly less that a half, potent the internet as capable of enticing users into making the wrong kind of friends, and another 40% said internet use easily presented risks to personal or private information. With such factors agitating against the internet it could not fair on favorably against the government. A barrage of worries from the press, particularly about children is another factor that is agitating strongly against the internet in its arm wrestling with the government. Guo Liang, writes that during the five years of surveying internet use in China, "media reports about negative aspects of the internet have increased both in scope and number." Indeed, reports linking the internet to unfortunate or unsavory events abound. Many are personal, heavy with human interest and include names, hometowns, and photos. QUESTION 3 The internet almost in the entirety of its existence has been perceived as a great democratizing force, a place where online browsers need to know not whom they are dealing with regard to borders, culture, and language among many other factors that define different people of the world. Yet in the recent times this belief has begun to shift. States and business enterprise increasingly try to define boundaries around what used to be a no-border affair Internet to deal with legal, commercial and terrorism concerns. One way is by simply restricting who has access to computers and gateways to the Internet whereas other websites upon access make all communications pass through filters that seek to weed out objectionable content, such as adult content or information that is perceived as dangerous to the states security. Another method that is tentatively gaining popularity is use of software that attempts to match a computer's unique Internet address with a general geographic location, a methodology that is becoming more precise every day. Charles Bernstein writes that Language reproduction technology - from the alphabet to the printing press to our current systems of photoelectronic reproduction - has a history of democratizing social space while at the same time not democratizing it enough. Bernstein is agitating strongly for the role of Language reproduction technology in promoting democracy while warning that language cannot play alone in democratizing web space The automation of language reproduction and exchange possible with the Internet is very alluring as it seems to save so much labor-intensive work in comparison to print publications or letters; ultimately, this is illusory since the labor of selection, editing, and involving participants/readers is still the essential ingredient, while the technical work of site and list formation and maintenance are themselves relatively complex and time consuming tasks. The disastrous attacks of September 11 The entertainment industry's response to 9/11 can be described as the result of a culture rooted in a love of cruel and torturous media and consumptive habit that is uniquely American. When former Mayor of New York City and President Bush influenced the national psyche in the weeks following the attacks, Americans were urged to remain staunch in the face of terrorism in part by going out and going shopping. Americans have effectively turned 9/11 into a kind of commodity for consumption through the film industry. A very vehement trend that is observable among Americans is the trend rock and Roll is taking following 9/11. As such rock music and rocking are increasingly associated with asserting American pride and power, through skillful portrayal of them as favorable and absolutely moral. A scene in the docudrama "The Road to Guantanamo" in which heavy metal is used to torture prisoners, amounting to "a parody of American disco." is a case in point. As a verb, he said, "rocking" at once edifies troops and threatens American enemies, adding an element of pop to the vocabulary of the War on Terror. September 11 evoked the American consciousness of the Middle East so vehemently; there is now a constant but rapidly growing movement to the study of the region, as well as Islam more broadly. In the same way that the Cold War whetted an academic appetite in students for all things Russian, students today are interested in subjects made popular by contemporary issues. It can be rightfully asserted that no element of the entertainment industry responded to the mass murders of 9/11 with an inquisitive mind and bold presence - except hip-hop. The 9/11 Truth Movement which commenced as a web-based research community documenting the inconsistencies in the official government version of what happened on 9/11. As they collected more evidence, some in the movement have taken the view that there were certain personel within the U.S. government and military complicit in the attacks. Others argue the government's official story as presented in the 9/11 commission report simply doesn't add up, and more investigation is needed before any conclusions can be made. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 if perceived in the ongoing atmosphere have traumatized the artistic and show-business sectors into an odd silence that has persisted - dwindling only gradually - into quite nearly the present day. Michael H. Price in Hollywood's 9/11 Response: Delayed but Intensifying writes that "So shaken, apparently, was the American confidence by the events of that date we have codified as 9/11, that a set of nagging questions took the place of spontaneous artistic and literary response" This was as a result of the media questioning the American Publics emotional disposition's capability to sustain re-enactment of brutality through visual-audio means. A case in point is- On Sept. 12, 2001, the intended Oct. 5 release date of an Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller called Collateral Damage was postponed, and the film's promotional campaign was altered to remove this slogan: "The War Hits Home!" At around this same time, a coming-attractions trailer for Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was withdrawn in light of its depiction of the World Trade Center as a landmark. References "The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama's Social Media Toolkit," Edelman Digital Public Affairs, January 2009 Baudrillard, Jean. "The Ecstasy of Communication" in The Anti-Aesthetic. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay P, 1983. 126-34. Transparency of Evil. NY: Verso, 1993. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. Cixous, Hlne. The Third Body. Trans. Keith Cohen. Evanston: Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1999. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. Trans. Sarah Cornell and Susan Sellers. NY: Columbia UP, 1993. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: The UP, 1977. Heidegger, Martin. On Time and Being. NY: Harper, 1972. What is Called Thinking NY: Harper and Row, 1968. Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994. Leibniz, G. W. Theodicy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951. Lyotard, Jean-Franois. Libidinal Economy. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993. Mann, Paul. Masocriticism. Albany: SUNY, 1999. Marx, Karl. Capital I. Trans. Ben Fowkes. NY: Viking, 1977. Read More