Posts by MohsenGoudarzi:
Accusations; the main approach in Saudi Arabia’s media
October 4th, 2015By Mohsen Goudarzi.
Days ago, many people from different countries died in a terrible event in Saudi Arabia during the Hajj gathering. Based on information released by the Saudi ministry of health which information was deleted very soon from the website of this ministry, near 4,100 people died Mecca’s worst disaster.
Also weeks ago a falling crane caused 107 victims during Hajj. These two accidents in this year show the mismanagement of Saudi Arabia in handling this annual popular religious gathering among Muslims. The professional work of the Saudi Arabia media in covering the news of these events helps us understand them much better.
The Saudi Arabian media do not talk clearly about the reasons of these events. Accusation to victims and other countries should be understood as the main approach of the media in this country. They have avoided from presenting the essential news of these events. They don’t talk about the exact number of killed people.
Moreover, hypocrisy is the other technique of Saudi Arabia media to contain news coverage. They use doubtful interpretations instead of covering the main facts and doing a neutral job of publishing and broadcasting news. They have tried to show these events as a normal accident. On the other hand, they use Arab media experts to present unclear analysis and interpretations about the estimated 5,000 victims.
The media of Saudi Arabia work for royal family and just try to empower the political structure of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, any criticism about internal incompetence of political system is banned. They have stopped normal flowing of information with unprofessionalism. Saudi Arabian media should be categorized as royal quasi-media, something not to be found other parts of the world.
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Media Determinism; From “Hypodermic Needle” to “Slacktivism”
July 16th, 2015
By Mohsen Goudarzi.
Media Determinism simply roots in Technology Determinism, a reductionist theory insisting that a society’s technology drives the development of socio-cultural structures. Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), American sociologist and economist created this term. Moreover, Merritt Roe Smith (1994) in the Does Technology drive history? stated that the first major elaboration of a technological determinist view in socioeconomic development came from Karl Marx.
Anyway, Kunz (2008) clear the goal of technological determinism as showing technical developments, media, or technology as a whole, as the key mover in history and social change. Two main characteristics of technology determinism could be mentioned. First, development of technology follows a predictable, traceable path beyond cultural and political influence. Second, technology has effects on societies that are inherent, rather than socially conditioned.
However, Media Determinism roots in the beginning of emerging the field of Media Studies. At the first, some scholars believed in the extreme power of media effects. For example, Hypodermic Needle Model (also known as the magic bullet theory) is a model of communications suggesting that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The model is rooted in 1930s behaviorism and based on some sort of determinism, which did not accept human and social roles. Although this theory largely considered obsolete today, but media determinism has been extended in media studies history.
Media determinism can be traced after World War II and in the period of Mass Media importance. In this period, the name of Marshal McLuhan has been shining. He is the famous thinker in the field of media studies who can be categorized as a believer of media determinism.
McLuhan’s works about media have got too many attention. He has known because of his specific thoughts concerning communication technologies. McLuhan in Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (1964) proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as “the medium is the message”.
McLuhan insight was that a medium affects society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. He believed that the men have affected by the media. In The Medium is the Massage (1967) insists that all media are “extensions” of our human senses, bodies and minds.
McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. Finally, McLuhan didn’t believe in content of media, but believe in its technology. McLuhan ceased in technological form and wasn’t able to see beyond it.
Such these opinions in media studies are not so popular. Anyway, they have been extended to information age. Nowadays, many scholars are enchanted in new media and exaggerate its power in changing different aspects of the world. They believe new media can bring new era of human life. They also think the real world can be changed by using new media.
“Slacktivism” including the words slacker and activism is usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures in support of an issue or social cause. Slacktivism defines as the act of showing support for a cause but only truly being beneficial to the egos of people participating in this so-called activism. In these days, slacktivism refers to Internet-based activities.
Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter allowing people to easily like, share or tweet about something interesting they saw on the Internet. People can express concerns about different topics including social, cultural or political issues with nothing more than the click of a mouse, when very little thought or effort is required. People who get used to be active in SNSs think they have beneficial activity, which its consequences can be seen in the real world.
Nevertheless, how it can be possible; new media is restricted in social and cultural structures. Although Internet-based media are interactive, ubiquitous, and non-limited, but based on history of media studies, exaggerating power of these media is wrong. The future will much clarify the limitation, inefficiency, and discomfiture (especially in eastern societies) of New Media.
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Phobia and Roots of Phobia in Western Media
May 28th, 2015
By Mohsen Goudarzi.
Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, many scholars have talked about stereotypes of depicting and illustrating the east by the west. Said in this book defined orientalism as the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.” According to Said, Orientalism dates from the period of European Enlightenment and colonization of the Arab World. Orientalism provided a rationalization for European colonialism based on a self-serving history in which “the West” constructed “the East” as extremely different and inferior, and therefore in need of Western intervention or “rescue”.
Actually the west identity has involved in “creating” the east, historically. By making the east as dark “other”, the west legitimized itself for invading eastern countries, the period which called colonialism. After the long time of colonialism and due different political and internal reasons, western countries strategy has shifted to cultural period. The cultural hegemony of those industrialized or economically influential countries, which determine general cultural values and standardize civilizations throughout the world.
In this condition the role of media is outstanding. American media critic Herbert Schiller (1976) uses the term “Media Imperialism” to describe “the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system.” The public media are the foremost example of operating enterprises that are used in the penetrative process. For penetration on a significant scale the media themselves must be captured by the dominating/penetrating power.”
Said not only in Orientalism, but also in Covering Islam (1981) stated the negative frameworks and stereotypes of showing Islamic countries by western media. In recent decades these media have emphasized the threat of the Islam for all around the world. Such a these threatening could be analyzed based on historic Orientalism and Cultural Imperialism. Actually, Islamophobia and other media-created phobia have originated in creating an enemy for surviving western discourses in different fields. The western government and international companies get used to creating and spreading these phobias for hiding their incompetence in solving internal and international problems. Problems which have told might be solved by insisting and persuading western thoughts and structures; something that never happened.
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The Age of Interruption; Specialties and Researching Fields
April 3rd, 2015
By Mohsen Goudarzi.
The Age of Interruption came after Information Age. This age has focused on communication technologies and media with the specific characteristics including Information overload and inattention among media users. In this short essay some research fields of this term has been focused.
In 2006, The New York Times published an essay titled “The Age of Interruption” which caused public spread of the term. That essay has stated “Continuous partial attention is when you are on the Internet, cellphone, or BlackBerry while also watching TV, typing on your computer and answering a question from your kid.
That is, you are multitasking your way through the day, continuously devoting only partial attention to each act or person you encounter.” Therefore, in the age of interruption, the media spread huge amount of information and the users have less cognitive heed to the world.
Recent studies of the age of interruption have focused on learning field. Ellen Rose (2010) did a research concerning the relation between the age of interruption and the youth, people who are facing different information and have less attention to around. She argued teachers should pay attention to multitasking of their students.
The approach of this research is pathological and positive. Other researchers also have done optimistic research about media technologies and multitasking users. For example, Lin (2009) stated that hyperlink structure of the Internet might improve learning process and users’ creativity. In contrast, the age of interruption has a kind of negative perspective, inherently.
Information overload is an internal characteristic of the Interruption age; the aspect which did not get enough researching attention. Alvin Toffler was the first who used the term Information Overload. In this condition, understanding and making decision might be difficult.
Before generalization of the interruption age in 2006, many scholars have worked on information technologies and their role in much more and faster information spreading. Anyway, others have focused on its negative effects; for example, Speier (1999) stated that information technologies would increase the tensions in working place.
Accordingly, Graham (1999) in the book “The Internet: a philosophical inquiry” has argued that in the Information overloading situation, getting correct and credit information could be hard. In this condition credit and correctness of information is doubtful.
In other words, people may find information quickly, but information validity is questionable. Moreover, Kovach (2010) talked about “Information anxiety” because of information overload. Information anxiety means having gap between necessary information and information that we think is necessary.
Therefore, we have passed information age and entered interruption age. Based on aforementioned facts and researches, information overload and inattention users are inherent characteristics of the Interruption age. In this condition, we have learned different information, but we do not know about its correctness and validity. We also never know the real reason of learning these things and information.
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