MEDIA IMPERIALISM 2

And I would like to mention in this field another example of media imperialism. What happened in Iraq.

Jorge w. bush convince the whole world through the media that Iraq is a very dangerous country and that they own or make a lot of Internationally prohibited weapons and so on. But actually, when they occupied Iraq, they found nothing. This is just a form of what can be achieved from misleading media. And there weren’t any other news channels in U.S. which opposed this idea. One of the reasons that the Analysts think that they occupied Iraq for, was because they have the petroleum and god knows what else.

 

MEDIA IMPERIALISM

Like it is obvious from what we learn in the media culture lecture that media IMPERIALISM is a Monopoly of information for institutions, governments or corporations belong in the end to only one owner who has control over the content of the media and usually hides what he want or fabricates it to serve his own needs. For example the documentary movie (The Power of Nightmares - The Shadows in the Cave 3) shows that this kind of media limits our view in the concept of terrorism and al-Qaeda. American government tried to convince the world that Osama Bin Laden is hidden in the mountains in Afghanistan and they spend millions and used the latest weapons to blow up the region. Although all the ex-soldiers conform that there is no trace of any one there, they just arrest any one just look like Arabs without providing any evidence. and also Donald Rumsfeld (United States Secretary of Defense ) affirmed that al-Qeada had a secret base containing bed rooms, offices, secret exits, ventilation system, computer system , telephone system, ……etc however none of these basements were ever found. Mostly, the word (Terrorism) was used only to achieve political interests. All the Accusations that made against young men whose name were listed in the terrorists list or in the news and those who have imprisoned in Guantanamo, all of which happened without evidence. Yet they were accused like they did in 9/11. The terrorism as idea exists but as an organization is not, and that is so far because of the media imperialism.

The Power of Nightmares - The Shadows in the Cave 3

Tetrad of Internet

        Using Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad concept, I found it very useful to describe any media and analyze its behavior and effects on societies. I choose the Internet as a media to analyze using this tetrad technique:

 §  Enhancement:the Internet amplifies world wide communication and information access instantly

§  Obsolescenc:the Internet reduced the importance of prints, radios, books and even TVs.

§  Retrieval:the Internet returned direct communication.

§  Reversal:the Internet flips the world into one city.

 

"Tetrad of media effects"Definition

Generally speaking, a tetrad is any set of four things. In Laws of Media (1988) and The Global Village (1989), published posthumously,Marshall McLuhan summarized his ideas about media in a concise tetrad of media effects. The tetrad is a means of examining the effects on society of any technology/medium (put another way: a means of explaining the social processes underlying the adoption of a technology/medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium:

1. What does the medium enhance?
2. What does the medium make obsolete?
3. What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
4. What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?

The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departs from his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.

Visually, a tetrad can be depicted as four diamonds forming an X, with the name of a medium in the center. The two diamonds on the left of a tetrad are the Enhancement and Retrieval qualities of the medium, both Figure qualities. The two diamonds on the right of a tetrad are theObsolescence and Reversal qualities, both Ground qualities.

Obscene, Pornography and Indecent

Despite the definitions of these terms and despite which is worse, they are all unacceptable and mean media. It represents a corrupted society where their person grows on an uncivilized and problematic life. It is the kind of a media that can destroy a culture and prevents ant improvement to the society. Sometimes, the intention of it could just be to distract teenagers and make them unable carry responsibility and become unaware of real life problems wither in politics or any other area. This could build in the future a kind of an ignorant nation that is controlled by undirected desires. We hope that we students or responsible people to fight this kind of media and build a successful and beneficial media that represent us as a civilized nation.

 

The difference between Obscene, Pornography and Indecent

• Obscene :
  
• Designed to incite to indecency or lust; "the dance often becomes flagrantly obscene"-Margaret Mead
• Abhorrent: offensive to the mind; "an abhorrent deed"; "the obscene massacre at Wounded Knee"; "morally repugnant customs"; "repulsive behavior"; "the most repulsive character in recent novels"
• lewd: suggestive of or tending to moral looseness; "lewd whisperings of a dirty old man"; "an indecent gesture"; "obscene telephone calls"; "salacious limericks" 
• Pornography :
• It’s kind of activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire.
• Indecent :
• Not in keeping with accepted standards of what is right or proper in polite society; "was buried with indecent haste"; "indecorous behavior ...
• Offensive to good taste especially in sexual matters; "an earthy but not indecent story"; "an indecent gesture"
• Offending against sexual mores in conduct or appearance; "a bathing suit considered indecent by local standards"