Coverage Differences between Japan and South Korean Media

While I was reading The symbolic power of transnational media of Chouliaraki, it reminds me of the article that comparing the differences in the way how statelite news portrays between Korea and Japan when the Tsunami insident happened in Japan in 2011. In terms of symbolic power of media, it is significantly influensive to its audience. While Chouliaraki comparing the views from western transnational media influence, I would like to examine how different it was to transmit the crisis news to the public accordiance to cultural differences.

Emotion vs. Facts
The Korean broadcasting news showed the video that evoke people's emotion. For instance, a Japanese that cries in the village into ruins due to the tsunami. Most of the news contents were also emotionally expressive rather than showing the facts. When an anouncer conveyed the news, the anouncer says "Tsunami completely devasted Japan" rather than "Tsunami devasted Japan." or describing the Tsunami as to "a total deadlock." Comparing to this, Japanese media showed the scene focusing the whole rather than individuals' loss. They keep transmitting the people maintaining public order even when the crisis happened. The media rarely use the extreme expression for describing the incidents. Japanese news televised how damage they got and what is the governments' response on the crisis trying to air the facts on the incident.

Cultural Differences
This differece would mainly due to the cultural differences as well as the degree of broadcasting autonomousy. While south Koreans focus more on emotions comparing to Japanese who tend to reveal their emotions. Interestingly, most Korean media has adopted to the Japanese media system for last decades. Korean newspapers even use the Japanese words like urakia and nawabari for their broadcasting terminology. However, in terms of dealing with the contents as well as broadcasting it is different as we can see the example above.

The Korean media coverage brought Koreans to donate tremendous amount of money and suppliers of emergence aid to Japan. Koreans emotionally felt pity on what happened in Japan and spontaneously started to fundraise for Japan. However, Koreans get angered when Japan brought the delicated and complex territorial conflict issue between Japan and Korea and Japan insisted that is belonged to Japan. Koreans were even get angrier because it was right after Koreans donated and fundraised for Japan and Koreans expected that Japan would be appreciated to Korean and be friendly to the terrotorial issue in the response to the Korean "hospitalities." Japan, however, regards those matters are completly different.

Engagement to Governments
How much the broadcasting companies are engaged to the government is the other aspects that result the different news between Korean and Japanese broadcasting. According to Kim Yongho who researched on the differences on Japanese and South Korean media coverage of foreign and security affairs, the autonomousy of the Japanese media is much stronger than Korean media. Kim reveals that the ratio of parliamentary members who were journalists is much greater in South Korea and this illustrates the tight relationship between government and media in Korea comparing the Japanese.

New Media Technology: A Help or Hindrance?

Media technologies that utilize network theory to become successful gain a network power or authority. Forget everything you read in my last post about the role of the individual in these technologies, this time we're talking about the powerhouse organizations themselves and what they can have influence over.

Sangeet Kumar gave a fantastic example of this in his article about Google Earth. To briefly summarize his work, he asserts that Google's international use of its Maps and Earth features have had heavy hands in international conflicts, serving as a tool of warfare in both India and Israel-Palestine. The 2008 bombings in Mumbai were strategically placed with the help of these Google tools, according to an article in The Telegraph. And we thought it was worrisome that Google may be peeping on us in the shower (although that has its fair share of concern too). This is on another level entirely.

While reading this piece I cannot help but think back to the Public Diplomacy Forum at George Washington University that our class attended. In particular, I recall hearing former Foreign Service Officers in Bahrain and Iraq speaking of media technologies and their use in these still hostile areas. These workers operated Facebook pages that became vital sources of information for locals, who could then interact with one another. However, they could not control the arguments and slurs that would eventually develop between parties and were displayed publicly for all to see. Even if the embassies did decide to exercise their power to remove certain rabble-rousers, what is to stop more from flooding in?

I think these two instances are connected in that Google and Facebook are what could be considered new, supra-national entities that sometimes can function like another form of nation-state, as Kumar notes. These technologies can pull significant and self-sustaining profits, organize a digitally connected citizenry and employ the ability to spur political debate and action...it certainly seems like a recipe for its own nation. This becomes troublesome because these "nation-states" are governed under the principles of business, not democracy or any other system we've discussed in a sixth-grade civics course. Regulation of these bodies is becoming less and less rigid, especially when governments themselves are relying upon these technologies to do international outreach and development. I can recall the conference mentioning the use of everything from iPads to mobile devices to spread diplomacy around the world.

As these technologies become the bread and butter of connecting our world, are we even going to think of regulating it?

I hate to ruminate on this positively, but I think there is something to be said when a nation-state does reaffirm its authority over some of these supra-national technologies, if anything to keep them from monopolizing. China has opted out of using Google. Yes, China is poor example because of its restrictive media policies and government authoritarianism, but regardless, it is a state exercising power over a supra-national entity, which I think is important to note. This struggle is more evident in the Kumar article. He mentions a host of countries that protested the invasion of Google's satellites and cameras into their cities. Not too long ago, Germany opted out of Google Maps for pure privacy reasons, with many other countries thinking the same way.

I think it will be interesting to see where this power struggle will head. As these technologies become more important and even alluded to as nation-states in their own right, I'd like to see how sovereign states respond. It is very much a conflict of interest because these corporations are so widely used and are quite useful, but with these high rewards come high costs. You can't censor a street map for a terrorist and un-censor it for a traveling couple. In this all-or-nothing battle, there truly is not clear winner as of yet.

Social Media in Public Diplomacy

This week’s Public Diplomacy conference at GW, The Last Three Feet, was a really interesting way to consider some of the theories and methods we have been discussing in class. One thing that was mentioned over and over was diplomacy as an act of understanding. Many of the panelists and Thomas Shannon, the ambassador to Brazil, said diplomacy is not just about talking and emoting communication. They said it’s also about receiving communication, which means hearing, listening and responding.

I was surprised by how much the talk revolved around social networking as an official Public Diplomacy method. Obviously the internet and new media have become an important tool for anyone in any sort of communications role, such as someone in public diplomacy. But I was surprised to find how much they used Facebook and Twitter on an extremely regular basis. They also had a few small, but detailed and creative ideas to make social networking more personal. Aaron Snipes, the Deputy Director for the press and Public Diplomacy and Spokesperson for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said that when he and his team posted things on their Facebook page, they would always sign it as “Facebook team.” It made people feel like they were communicating with a real person instead of a nameless, faceless government actor. Some other innovative ideas included Apps4Africa and the use of Facebook and Twitter in China even though it’s blocked.

There was actually less focus on traditional Public Diplomacy tactics. It was all about the hypable and exciting ideas. The @American storefront in Indonesia that Dr. Michael Anderson spoke about is something very innovative and easy to promote, whether it works or not. The same applies to the Youth Filmmaker program in Turkey. While it was great to hear about these innovative ideas, there was little to no mention of what else fills the days of a Foreign Service officer in Public Diplomacy… because I can hardly imagine they spend the entire day on Facebook! 

Public Diplomacy and Noopolitik

The panelists at the Public Diplomacy Council event spoke about their initiatives with new media. The diversity of countries represented was impressive, although most of the speakers seemed to be tied to the U.S. State Department. Their comments were interesting in regards to Arquilla Ronfeldt’s essay on the noopolitik. Noopolitik, as Ronfeldt describes, “requires governments to learn to work conjointly with civil-society NGOs that are engaged in building transnational networks and coaltions.” The panelists on Thursday did not mention any work with local NGOs in their countries of assignment. Instead, they praised partnerships with the private sector. For example, Dr. Michael Anderson spoke about @america’s use of Google Liquid Galaxy technology in Jakarta, Indonesia.  

A lot of what diplomats and foreign service officers do comes down to funding, which many of the panelists acknowledged. Therefore, it makes sense for them to seek partnerships with wealthy corporations like Google. But global, although it does business on a global scale, is really an American corporation. Its values are 100 percent American. They have often run into trouble when expanding their efforts overseas. An idea that gets rave reviews in the U.S. might not always go over well on the other side of the world. When a friend of mine first showed me Google Earth, my reaction was “That’s awesome.” But as Sangeet Kumar recounts in “Google Earth and the nation state,” many countries had serious problems with the invasive technology. I wonder how these nation states will react to Google Liquid Galaxy, which is the basically the same thing, only cooler (or more dangerous, depending on your point of view).

Much of what the panelists said reflected the utopianism associated with social media. There are many benefits to engaging in dialogue on Facebook or on Twitter including real-time communication and interactivity. But technology does not solve all the world’s problems. In my opinion, technology reflects some of the worst stereotypes about Americans. We are wealthy, greedy, and terribly materialistic. In addition, not everyone has embraced social media or even the Internet as much as Americans have. Successful public diplomacy depends on the kind of work that Walter Douglas spoke about in Pakistan. Understanding is key. His team analyzed Urdu conversations happening in the most popular medium in Pakistan – television.

It seems that diplomacy gets underway with a government-mandated agenda. If the government wants the embassy to tweet, that’s what the embassy will do. But I think that more attention should be given to the kind of work that Douglas does. What works for Americans is not always best. Diplomats should adapt to the culture around them and also collaborate with other actors like global NGOs. 

The Multiple Brands of the 'Networked' Self

I have a LinkedIn profile. I have a Facebook profile. I have a Twitter profile. I have a Google Plus profile. I have an e-mail address.

It's hard to manage all those Corey Allan Smiths running around out there in cyberspace. Creating and maintaining profiles on social or professional networks is a time consuming process, especially when you have to think about your audience, which can vary from profile to profile.

This is where our course discussion on network theory comes heavily into play. Why do we create multiple profiles of ourselves online as opposed to just one? As Manuel Castells iterated, increasingly our social livelihoods are dependent upon the connections we forge with others through networks, or an interconnected system of nodes having some form of relationship. Many of us belong to layer upon layer of networks like family, friends, work colleagues, those within our career field, age range, hobbies and interests or other defining social characteristics.

So, we need profiles to fit each one of these trajectories, right?

LinkedIn is purely about self-branding and is used as a virtual resume where any potential employer can view your career or educational background. Hence the reason career networking is so popular for this website. The whole point of LinkedIn is to connect with your colleagues so you can see who else is in your network that may be of use to you. We admire those with hundreds of LinkedIn connections because they appear to have more influence, depending upon their field. I know that I have a few people I am connected to on LinkedIn that have led me to other organizations and work contacts that I never knew would have had any relation to each other.

Facebook has less of a push to connect with others, but chooses to focus on interacting with others using their interface. Facebook is more socially acceptable, as it enables the user to integrate with photos, video, text, games and other interactive features. The networking that comes out of this is more of a way to maintain already forged relationships in a new, online environment.

Twitter seems to be the least networked, as many project their tweets into the twitter-sphere where they may just float in existence forever, but it is still a way of networking. The use of Twitter as an aggregate of information allows the user to network by searching topics that are trending or by hashtags, thereby connecting them to others within their network surrounding a particular notion. Response and feedback from others is also welcomed warmly on Twitter with the use of the @ symbol.

Google Plus is attempting to make a stab at being the champion of all of these socially-based networks. With a Google Plus account, one can manage their various network memberships and tailor their appearance to the various users that interact with their profile. In this singular profile, a user can present a potential employer with a comprehensive, professional looking type of account that does not detail their summer vacation in Europe whereas a close friend may be privy to such information and more.

What is the point of balancing all of these networks? They are all online projections of self, and, no matter if you use a social network for putting up pictures of your cat or are displaying all of your career work, you are self-branding to any others in your network that have access to you. As Castells pointed out, being at a certain level of involvement within a network enables power and influence within that network - either if you began the network or if you are a gatekeeper and are a moderator of the norms within that network, you are given authority.

To that end, perhaps that is why we seek to have many Facebook friends, link to tons of connections on LinkedIn and follow ten million others on Twitter - because quantity can sometimes translate into authoritative power and reverence from others. I would like to explore how these topics are transnational in that networks know no national boundaries, especially when they form in an online environment, but would welcome any practical examples as well.