Had the Vietnam Conflict taken place during a time in which participants could almost immediately upload their own images of the war to a global network of information to be viewed by thousands, public opinion probably would not have needed the more organized news media in order to turn against the war. The streamlined nature of modern information sharing is enough to circumvent the close relationship between the news media and the military that existed during the first part of the war in Iraq. Candid videos depicting the US Armed Forces as a bunch of Duke lacrosse players and the enemy as an unseen collective can turn public support before established news stations begin to question the practices of the military.
Censorship is not a factor (mostly, on Youtube; completely almost everywhere else on the Internet) when uploading videos. Images presented on the Internet can be almost guaranteed to be beyond those which are allowed to be broadcast on television (without some sort of take-your-children-out-of-the-room warning), so they naturally can have a deeper impact on the viewer. While the military can tell the public to ignore these videos, they cannot censor them or stop them from being disemminated (as long as the Net stays Neutral), and any warning that comes from the military about the validity of Youtube videos would likely be transmitted through the mainstream media. If user-created content becomes more credible than the stuff you see on TV, what authority is there to tell you not to take independently obtained information seriously? The military could prohibit soldiers from sending photos and videos over the Internet, but if the aim of all of the suppression is to stop materials that would hurt public support for the war, then their outlawing of independent material hurts them just as much.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
4/16/08 forgot to renumber the endnotes
The North American media have the ability to control which information is disseminated to the people. Any bias that’s present in the media is instilled in viewers to affect their own preconceptions. Whenever the media collectively display a story in a certain light, the skewed version of the truth they broadcast changes they way viewers (arguably the people who will also end up making the news at some point in time) act and think. In the Duke lacrosse rape debacle, the way the media typically handles issues of race, class and gender altered the way society saw the case.
The facts of the case were already well suited to the sensational media. What the accuser described was a team of white, male, upper-class college athletes raping and abusing a black, female, lower-class exotic dancer. The media was quick to hint that the underpriveleged minority as a victimx, when in fact the lacrosse team was innocent. The story presented the lucrative opportunity to cover violent sexism, racism and/or elitism and subsequently enrage viewers.
Unestablished news programs such as Nancy Grace were especially ruthless in creating controversy. By requiring that the titular characterx to rudely cut off anybody presenting evidence of the accused's innocence, the Nancy Grace show angered audiences and hopefully got them to side with the hostx. More successful and respected programs such as 60 Minutes, however, could afford to avoid a possible rise in ratings by presenting factsx.
It would be ideal if the media were able to present nothing but the truth to an audience. One would like to think that it'd be widely appreciated if the media could refrain from reaching any conclusions before the authoritiesx, but the fact that the media require money to survive and provide any information at all requires that they create news that is entertaining enough to get people to keep watching and supporting them. A completely objective media, free of all societal influences and preconceptions, would be boring to the majority of viewers and wind up being as popular as Justin's blog.
x Similarly to Missing White Woman Syndrome, only instead of exploiting the perception that white women are easy to kidnap, rape and kill, exploiting the perception that the majority abuses minority groups.
x You know because she's fake.
x Or alternatively getting them angry at the fact that such an exploitative show called itself journalistic and prompting them to watch more out of morbid curiosity*.
*Because it is commonly accepted that there is no such thing as Bad Publicity.
x Consider, however, that 60 Minutes could have been just presenting information contrary to that covered on Nancy Grace to appear more credible and appeal to a less easily agitated audience. There was less yelling, though.
x Another problem with this is that if the media were to refrain from this, their position as a watchdog would be nonexistant. It's whether or not the educated viewer* would prefer an inquisitive media that sometimes make mistakes or a media that transmit only what the higher-ups want them to**.
*One that doesn't believe in moderation, or something.
**Which they arguably already do.
The facts of the case were already well suited to the sensational media. What the accuser described was a team of white, male, upper-class college athletes raping and abusing a black, female, lower-class exotic dancer. The media was quick to hint that the underpriveleged minority as a victimx, when in fact the lacrosse team was innocent. The story presented the lucrative opportunity to cover violent sexism, racism and/or elitism and subsequently enrage viewers.
Unestablished news programs such as Nancy Grace were especially ruthless in creating controversy. By requiring that the titular characterx to rudely cut off anybody presenting evidence of the accused's innocence, the Nancy Grace show angered audiences and hopefully got them to side with the hostx. More successful and respected programs such as 60 Minutes, however, could afford to avoid a possible rise in ratings by presenting factsx.
It would be ideal if the media were able to present nothing but the truth to an audience. One would like to think that it'd be widely appreciated if the media could refrain from reaching any conclusions before the authoritiesx, but the fact that the media require money to survive and provide any information at all requires that they create news that is entertaining enough to get people to keep watching and supporting them. A completely objective media, free of all societal influences and preconceptions, would be boring to the majority of viewers and wind up being as popular as Justin's blog.
x Similarly to Missing White Woman Syndrome, only instead of exploiting the perception that white women are easy to kidnap, rape and kill, exploiting the perception that the majority abuses minority groups.
x You know because she's fake.
x Or alternatively getting them angry at the fact that such an exploitative show called itself journalistic and prompting them to watch more out of morbid curiosity*.
*Because it is commonly accepted that there is no such thing as Bad Publicity.
x Consider, however, that 60 Minutes could have been just presenting information contrary to that covered on Nancy Grace to appear more credible and appeal to a less easily agitated audience. There was less yelling, though.
x Another problem with this is that if the media were to refrain from this, their position as a watchdog would be nonexistant. It's whether or not the educated viewer* would prefer an inquisitive media that sometimes make mistakes or a media that transmit only what the higher-ups want them to**.
*One that doesn't believe in moderation, or something.
**Which they arguably already do.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The Photograph That Ought to Inspire Fear of Falling Past The Event Horizon That Awaits Mankind
Try to imagine this mofo firing subatomic particles at each other at speeds you
can't even begin to imagine. If you can't tell, that's a guy standing in that thing.
This photo, of the ATLAS detector under construction at the Large Hadron Collider1, was published in May of 2006 in a press release by STMicroelectronics. ATLAS is a particle detector experiment being built at the LHC in order to determine the invisible things that make up our universe and how they came about. The image, once widely disseminated, will raise public awareness of the sheer scale of the LHC and its experiments. The ATLAS weighs around 7,000 tons and will be used to detect a very broad spectrum of energy that may be produced.
The LHC poses many theoretical threats to human existence. While the public is largely unaware of them, particles such as a Micro Black Hole2 or strangelet3 could be created during experiments carried out at the facility. The photograph's illustration of the size of the project is potent enough to concern everybody aware of the risks. It's great enough to make man wary of technology, in the way that roller coasters or really big spaceships can.
The LHC poses many theoretical threats to human existence. While the public is largely unaware of them, particles such as a Micro Black Hole2 or strangelet3 could be created during experiments carried out at the facility. The photograph's illustration of the size of the project is potent enough to concern everybody aware of the risks. It's great enough to make man wary of technology, in the way that roller coasters or really big spaceships can.
Arthur Sasse/AFP-Getty Images
1The Large Hadron Collider (hereafter LHC) is a particle accelerator in Switzerland and France that serves to provide proof of the theoretical Higgs Boson, a very important subatomic particle. Once activated, it will be the largest and most powerful (and most dangerous) particle accelerator on Earth.
2This is like a regular black hole that you hear about. It is an infinitely massive singularity with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing can escape. They can theoretically decay in the form of Hawking Radiation, but the phenomenon is completely untested.
3A strangelet is a type of strange matter containing an equal amount of up, down, and strange quarks. If a strangelet were created, it could possibly catalyze a runaway fusion process that would turn every nucleus in the planet into strange matter.
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