Chapter 12: Global Advertising and Public Relations

Brief history of advertising and public relations worldwide:

Laypeople in the United States oftentimes associate advertising and public relations solely as Western if not U.S in origin and corporate in purpose that is representing primarily wealthy abd powerful corporations. They associate both advertising and public relations as manipulative in their role, function, and intent.

Western in Origin?
Campbell and Fabos note that advertising has existed in the Middle East since 3000 B.C. mainly this is sown when Babylomian shop owners began hanging signs outside their stores. Adding to this, they associated adv with Egyptian criers. However, Mallinson notes that U.S public relations was exported to post- World War II in Europe, so adv PR flourished after this period.
Advertising if not global in its commonality of strategies and tactics and in the availability of like media worldwide. Effective advertising today must operate in a multicultural world that is unforgiving of market’s cultural insensitivity to and lack of understanding of cultures other than their own.

Corporate in Purpose?
Public relation has not been restricted to primarily supporting corporations that sell products and services. Indeed, while both advertising and public relations historically have been widely used by corporations. U.S governmental and nongovernmental organizations have long used advertising, as well as public relations. Political campaigning and agendas throughout the world, both in democratic and totalitarian countries, have included both advertising and public relations techniques.
Some scholars argue that a set of principles must be developed to overcome the problem of a possible imbalance in power between clients of public relations practitioners and the publics with whom they communicate.
Manipulative in their Role, Function, and Design?
Manipulation is a pejorative word, but there is little question that advertising both consumer advertising to sell products and services, and public relations oriented institutional advertising to sell ideas or to garner support for an organization is most commonly persuasive to sell in nature. The role, function, and design of public relations, however, are more complex.
Democratic in Tradition?
Both advertising and public relations are highly democratic in tradition, the former because advertising by its nature suggest the availability of consumer choice, that is a marketplace democracy and the ultimate consumer determination of the relative benefits of these choices and the latter because of an inherent supposition of the importance and value of public opinion within democratic forms of government.
Environmental challenges, population growth, poverty and hunger, war
Kennedy notes not only new and increasingly critical environmental challenges but also a corresponding increase in the world’s population. He observes “ from the viewpoint of environmentalist ---the earth is under a twofold attack from human beings-the excessive demands and wasteful habits of affluent populations of developed countries, and the billions of new mouths born in the developing countries world who (very naturally) aspire to increase their own consumption levels”(p. 33). Nevertheless, advertising and public relations practitioners can help address social problems that will occur through practitioner’s expertise. In India, we have an advertising billboard reminding “a baby boom is the nation’s doom”.
Past versus Future
Traditional Societies
Modern Societies
Pluralism: beliefs are consensual and communication.
This society is highly pluralist: beliefs are up for gabs and communication is used to create shared constructions or consensus
Egalitarianism: society is hierarchical rather than egalitarian
Egalitarianism: unequal social power

Advertising and public relations are hardly a panacea for the social and global problems in the 21st c., but both can be used effectively to ameliorate some of the problems that we face. However, powerfully persuasive and informative processes advertising and public relations affect people of the world in many ways. Still, both advertising and public relations should operate collaboratively with social, political, economic, and global organizations according to democratic principles and in tune with traditional value of a given society.

chapter 11: Global Communication and Propaganda

1. Propaganda
It is one of the oldest that we associate with global communication. With advances in technologies, propaganda has become important even dangerous in this modern world. It has to do with the use of communication channels, through known persuasive or manipulative techniques, in an attempt to shape or alter public opinion. Propaganda is use d through three ways
· First: government leaders with intent to mold public opinion on international issues that have bearing on a country and its people and its people often use its techniques.
· Second: the use of propaganda is an attempt to influence matters abroad, normally to reinforce perceptions of a country, its citizens, or its reputation among individuals.
· Finally, nongovernmental entities may seek access to global communication channels in order to sway public opinion or affect public policy formation.
Propaganda is associated with deceiving, campaign of lies, intimidation, manipulating and brainwash the publics. People like Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin come to mind when we talk about propaganda. Propaganda is not easy to define today, activities traditionally referred to as propaganda as public relations efforts, image consulting, the news, and information sharing by organizational spin doctors. The purpose of propaganda is to persuade and convert by using intentionally selective and biased information.
1. Origins of Propaganda
The origin of the term may be traced to the 17th century, at that time many people were leaving the church. The purpose was to supply a unifying effort over the church’s foreign mission activities and doctrine. Within a century, the term was used in condemnation of clandestine organizations that attempted to undermine or influence foreign affairs. It was not used to refer to communication media until the 20th century. Propaganda is thought of negatively in that it involves a determination of what degree of truth shall be shared. Propaganda come later to the USA and was use to recruit the large armies necessary for fighting in World War 1. After the war, communications researchers such as Walter Lippmann and Harold Lasswell pioneered the study pf propaganda techniques. they suggest that manipulation in propaganda is necessary for managing individuals in democratic societies.
2. Seeking a Definition
Doob concluded “Propaganda can be called the attempt to affect the personalities and to control behavior of individuals toward ends considered unscientific or of doubtful value in a society at a particular time”. Propaganda has to do with the use of communication channels, though known persuasive or manipulative techniques, in an attempt to shape or alter public opinion.
· Propaganda and Public Relations
Instead of propaganda, many prefer to use terms such as public relations, publicity, promotion, marketing, public affairs, and advertising. A great deal of confusion has emerged over that exactly comprises a propagandistic campaign. The germane philosopher Hegel was among the first to demonstrate the even democratic societies might be controlled through hidden persuaders are manipulators.
· Public Diplomacy
One area of government communication campaigns that raises questions today is that referred to as public diplomacy. It is called also truthful propaganda. The term first appeared in 1960’s and was use by then Dean Edward. Propaganda has been related to negative connotation, public diplomacy becomes very closely with activities emanating from the united state information agency (USAI) since it used the term when describing its mission. Its activities include production of informational and educational films plus international interactions, including academic exchanges such as Fulbright.
Research in Persuasion
Propaganda research originated near the end of the First World War and was concerned with understanding the effects of mass media propaganda upon populations subjected to it. One important finding was that prolonged and repeated exposure to specific forms of propaganda might have a marked effect on basis core values held by subjects.
Wartime Propaganda
The use of propaganda was fairly simple; according to Lasswell propaganda was important to mobilize hatred of the enemy, preserve friendship of allies, procure the cooperation of neutral nations, and demoralizes the enemy.
· Strategies of Propaganda Campaign
The year 1937 saw the creation of the Institute for propaganda, performing analysis headed by Edward Filence and designed to educate Americans about propaganda techniques, particularly the dangers and persuasiveness of political propaganda.
1. Name Calling: involves the use of labels to project an idea in a favorable or unfavorable light. Its purpose is to discourage individuals from examining substantive evidence on an issue. One frequent use of name calling comes when stereotyping is employed to paint a negative image of the opposition or enemy.
2. Glittering Generality: the tendency to associate an issue or image with a noble or virtuous term is know as glittering generalities. The use of vague terms with high moral connotations.
3. Image Transfer: when one takes the power, respect, or good reputation bestowed on an existing entity or concept, and then attempts to share these positive qualities through association with a product, individual, group, position, program, the perpetrator is hoping to benefit through the phenomenon known as image transfer.
4. Testimonial: it is when a distinguished or recognized but highly unpopular person is used to cast a product, individual, group, or position, in either a positive or negative light.
5. Plain Folks: the use comes when a communicator whishes to convince other that they or their ideas are good or valid since they are similar to everyone else, just everyday ordinary people.
6. Card Staking: it occurs when a presentation uses a selection of facts and distortions, elucidations and confusions, and both logical and illogical statements.
7. Bandwagon Approach: it involves utilization of a notion that everybody is doing it or we are all doing it so that the group members are encouraged to just join or follow that crowd.

Reflections on Online Assign 3 "Bridging Africa's digital divide"

The article discussed an important issue concerning the introduction of technology. More importantly, the author focused on training people. I strongly agree with this idea of training people because it is crucial in manipulating the learning materials and the way by which this technology would be used.I think that having technology is an affordable thing, but having trained and professional people is something challenging. Adding to this, the article, discussed the use of technology for development. this use is crucial since technology can change and shape the lives of people in the developing countries. The only problem of this introduction lies in the government of the developing countries. For instance, in mots Arab countries, leaders and heads of governments have different agendas. Leaders give an alibi of providing the necessary stuff for the population like water, health, and others than introducing technology. I personally think that we (in Arab countries) are more reluctant to change, still we need to think of introducing technology to follow the crowd.

Chapter 10: The Politics of Global Communication

Since the mid 19th century, global communication has developed into an important concern on the agenda of the international community. Technological development has added new dimensions to the communication issues. In the area of telecommunication, the main issues continue to involve accessibility, allocation, and confidentiality. Global communication in the 1990s confronted the world political arena with complex and controversial policy that demanded resolution through multilateral bargaining.
The Beginning
Telecommunication : Heinrich von Stephan, an official in the postal administration of north German Confederation prepared a proposal for an international postal union. It guaranteed freedom of transit within the territory of the union and the standardization of charges to be collected by each country for letter post items addressed to any part of the union s territory. The international telegraphy union was created to secure telegraphy traffic the advantage of simple and reduced tariffs, to improve the conditions of international telegraphy, and to establish a permanent cooperation among the states.
Intellectual Property: the treaty entitled Convention Establishing a General Union for the Protection of the Rights of Authors in their Literary and Artistic Works emphases that each author shall enjoy in other countries for their work whether published or not.
Mass Media: serious concerns about the social impact of the mass communication emerged. Constructive contribution of the media to peaceful international relations generated considerable excitement. However, moral and educational concern was expressed regarding the spread of obscene publications across borders. Concern about the negative impact of the mass media also arose from the increasing use of the mass media in the course of the 19th century as instruments of foreign diplomacy. Adding to this, the recognition of the need to prevent, through rules established by common agreements, the use of broadcasting in a manner prejudicial to good international understanding.
The New Multilateral Institutions: with the creation of the united nations, a crucial group of institutions for multilateral policy evolution entered the international system. Many specialized agencies and non-governmental organizations influence the policymaking process.
Over the past decade, the arena of global communication politics has seen major changes. Among the most important ones are the following:
Today global governance system largely determines supranational the space that national governments have for independent policy making.
Global communication politics is increasingly defined by trade and market standards and eve less by political consideration with a noticeable shift from a predominantly political discourse to a largely economic trade discourse.
The World Trade Organization: the WTO was established as one of the outcomes of the GATT Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations completed in December 1993.
The WTO is generally more favorable to the trading interests of the major industrial countries than are other intergovernmental bodies.
Today s global communication market generates more than 1.6 trillion annually. This implies that the rules of free trade are applied to the three main components of the world communication market: the manufacturing of hardware, the production and distribution of software {computer programs and contents}, and the operation of networks and their services.
Current Practices: the Domain of Telecommunication
The prevailing pattern of thought that guides global politics in relation to telecommunication infrastructures is based on the following assumptions:
Telecommunication infrastructures are essential to development
The installation and upgrading of infrastructures is expensive
Private funding is needed
To attract private funding, countries will have to liberalize their telecommunication markets and adopt pro competition regulatory measures.
· For national and global telecommunication markets, the new policy implied privatization and liberation. The key policy principles for global telecommunication are liberalization of the markets to private commercial and competitive forces does not necessarily lead to accessibility and affordability of telecommunication infrastructures.
· The ITU s World Telecommunication Development Report 1997 observes: some as an opportunity, for example, will view market access, while others that are attempting to develop their own domestic telecommunication service industry might see it as a challenge and a threat to nascent local operators. ITU stated that their will be winners and losers.
· Liberalization can be defined as the opening up of markets to competition, privatization refers to the transfer of state owned institutions or assets to various degrees of private ownership. These two may be in conflict. Liberalization may clash with the desire of governments to get the highest price for their monopoly and privatization may conflict with market liberalization when the incoming operators want monopoly control for an initial period.
· One of the results of privatization is the expansion of telecommunication network.
Global Communication Politics Today: current global communication politics is dominated by a set of eight essential issues that will largely shape the future of global communication.
· Access: neoliberal agenda perceive people primarily as consumers and aspires to provide them with access to communication infrastructure. Humanitarian perceive people as citizens
· Knowledge: neoliberal agenda perceive knowledge as a commodity versus humanitarian perceive it as a public good
· Global adv:
· Privacy
· Intellectual property rights
· Trade in culture
· Concentration
· The commons