Strength in Number Through Twitters

This post is for an assignment for my Media and War class.

Strength in Numbers Through Twitter

The era of bombs and bullets as the only means to reform governments is rapidly fading. The Internet is the new weapon of choice. Note that the world’s most oppressive governments refuse free access – China, Iran, Syria. Not even the library in ancient Alexandria can compare to the vast amount of information available via the Internet. Even though Iran, for example, has its paid lackeys posting government versions of events, the populace strongly outweighs the misinformed. The multiple versions of history eventually will be synthesized to include far more truths. It becomes a world-unifying phenomenon.

Twitter and Facebook may have helped in organizing the protests, but these are just the tools. The underpinning reasons are pure and simple. Freedom of expression without fear of retribution; justice for all; equal opportunities for social climbing. Some of these regimes are trying to pacify by giving away few hundred or few thousand of dollars, dinars, and riyals to buy loyalties, while they steal billions, hoping that these problems will disappear. Each country has its own unique problem and circumstances. It all depends on their will and desire, how far they are willing to go, and how much stamina they have to sustain the struggle going. It is better that they accomplish their goals on their own without any help from the outside world.

In the context of massive social upheaval, protest and violence confusion is rife. Where information was previously difficult to obtain “on the ground,” instant eyewitness accounts fill the gaps for our 24-hour-news-obsessed culture. However useful some of this information was in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the fact is that it was activists, citizens moved to action, not re-tweeters who woke up for weeks in a row to force their governments out. Of course, some combined the two roles but nothing, no technology – no app can replace people power.

Nonetheless, 20 years ago an uprising like Egypt’s could have been quarantined and quashed by the regime in days, and the rulers would have been free to dictate the story to the press after the event. As Mubarak found, this is impossible to do when you have thousands of phones, cameras and laptops on the ground beaming every detail to the wider world. One of the key factors in encouraging a person to head to the streets and start protest is convincing him or her that there will be enough people that that the risk to them is pretty small. However, it is much harder for any police force to suppress a crowd of 100,000 people. This is the reason why the expression “strength in numbers” exists. Facebook and Twitter’s role has been organizing the protests, and communicating to huge numbers of people can say something that 100,000 people can hear. When news spreads from word of worth it is much slower and riskier. Social networks did not make the revolution, people power did. What the social networks did was galvanize a disenchanted group of people sitting around into a motivated mass marching at a pace that nothing else bar conventional mass-media could inspire.

Regardless, any form of communication has always mattered even before social media. We have learned to do that in so many ways before the last half-decade with the popularity of social networks. When prompted, humans will use every means within our disposal. So let’s hear it for the smoke-signal, the photocopier, the mobile phone, the nod that’s as good as a wink, the email, the speech that stirred everyone in the hall, the primitive paintings on the walls of caves, the radio signal, the phone-in, etc.

“Every revolution has multiple narratives - from city blocks to city halls, from the streets and from the state. But what tends to survive is the official version - often shaped by whatever state or government either survives or is formed after the dust has settled.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/25/twitter-facebook-uprisings-arab-libya

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Posted 1 month ago

Oppa Kim Jong-Un Style

This post is for an assignment for my Media and War class.

North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship of 23 million people, most of whom live in grinding poverty, where loudspeakers pump out propaganda on the streets. Those who fall foul of the regime – and treasons include listening to South Korean radio, attempting to flee to China to avoid starvation, or failing to praise the dear leader sufficiently – are thrown into one of six vast labor camps holding some 200,000 people, where torture and starvation are rife.

Despite North Korea’s increasing threats of using nuclear rockets against the world – denizens of the World Wide Web are mockingly questioning in return, “Launch? Are you sure you didn’t say lunch?” The Internet is not kind to Kim Jung-Un, “supreme ruler” of the world’s last communist dynasty. But why should it be nice when dealing with a dynasty that is unaccountable for its own people, having starved thousands of them and then sought to shield its shame from the eyes of the world? The control of propaganda and information that his father enjoyed is rapidly diminishing for Kim Jong-un. In the first year of his reign, mobile phone subscribers in North Korea increased from 950,000 to 1.7 million. Citizens can’t access the Internet or call overseas, but they can pass information more quickly within North Korea. More information is trickling in about the outside world. All of this gnaws at the regime’s total control of what North Koreans see and hear.

And if only they could see and hear what the rest of the world is saying about their leader. His rather rotund face is the constant butt of jokes on social media sites through various videos (draw my life) and memes. Perhaps Kim Jung-Un can inspire revelry within his own oppressed country, but his iron-fist only reaches as far as North Korea’s borders. He’s a leader, a dictator and the head of a notorious regime. So in effect, the Internet is laughing at the face of terrorism. It is as if someone completely vaporized the doom of nuclear destruction at the end of the Cold War.

In previous international conflicts, the US government worked as a master propaganda machine in producing endless fliers, posters, and clips in order to rile up a fervent loyalty amongst Americans against the evil brute of their enemy. This time around, full reigns have been given to anyone with an Internet connection and a little Photoshop know-how. However, this generation’s type of propaganda does not encourage a passion for warfare but rather a sarcastic attitude for anyone willing to mess with the US. Is the United States too arrogant for its own good? Or is there a real impending danger that is being ignored?

According to a March 2013 article by The Telegraph – no. “Despite the increasingly belligerent rhetoric and new images emerging from the North Korean regime, analysts believe its missiles are not capable of striking targets as far away as the US mainland and are not, as yet, capable of delivering a nuclear payload”

Unfortunately, why the US may be too far away – North Korea has many closer targets. North Korea has tens of thousands of artillery pieces and missile launchers pointed at Seoul, which lies only 60 miles south of the internal border.Such threats are seen as a grandiose attempt by North Korea to scare foreigners into pressing their governments to pressure the United States and South Korea to change their policies toward Pyongyang. Kim Jong-Un is playing the game of tit for tat with the United States in the hopes of consolidating his military credentials domestically and potentially wrangle more aid out of the global community. And while all threats are taken seriously, the internet has made a joke of it.

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Posted 1 month ago

Hey, Hey LBJ - How Many Kids You Gonna Kill Today?

This post is for an assignment for my Media and War class.

A distinguishing factor that set the Vietnam War apart from any war in history was the role of the American media. Before the 1960’s and the escalation of the war, news coverage of military action was limited heavily by the government and was directed in the interest of Government policy. The Vietnam War changed all this by bringing the war into the homes of the American citizen. The events that occurred in Vietnam could be captured on television, which was a relative first for wartime activity. The Vietnam War was the first war that allowed the media to report without censorship resulting in images and accounts of gruesome events that served to shape public opinion of the war like nothing that had been seen before. The media has also fell blame by many for the result of the war, as it is widely believed that the war could not have been won under the scrutiny that came from the American people as a result of the media coverage.

The Vietnam War was a Cold War conflict that officially started on the first of November, 1955. The larger strategy of the war was the containment of communism. Started as a Russian revolution, the Soviets had started spreading Communism throughout the world. The escalated conflict, which turned into a full-scale war was fought between North Vietnam and its Communist allies and South Vietnam supported by anti-communist nations. Although the war technically started in 1955, it wasn’t until the early 1960s that US troop levels began to grow rapidly. In 1968, the US launched the infamous Tet Offensive, an operation in which there were many casualties on both sides. The Tet Offensive marked the period in which approval for the war started to rapidly decline.

Between 1967 until the end of the war, the tone began to shift from neutrality to hesitancy. Reporting of the Vietnam War began to follow that of the ordinary combat soldier: How long would this war last? Could the Johnson administration really do anything about it? The war and the fighting however was beginning to seem more and more hopeless however, and inconclusive. Although veterans sharing their experiences of war happened in any previous war, the Vietnam War was exposed much more through new technology such as television, and personal audio recorders. When footage of the Tet Offensive started coming out in early 1968, the dominant view that ‘the war was just’ was quickly flip-flopped. Most importantly, the footage of the My Lai massacre acted as a main example of why peace needed to be established. Later on, the media focused on domestic anti-war movements, which further exemplified how the Vietnam War was unjust.

Coverage of the Vietnam War was not limited to just TV or news articles, it had also entered popular culture in the form of entertainment, such as movies. Hollywood often pictured the Vietnam War as glorious and heroic. Movies such as the Green Berets pictured the courageous and perfect American hero. By making war glorious, Hollywood tried to sell citizens exaggerated information. Although it was made purely for entertainment purposes, they were heavily criticized. This excessive media attention spread the counter-culture even further, spreading its ideas across the United States. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated every year to bring American troops back home.

Throughout America’s history, the United States has won the majority of all of its major conflicts. Up until the Vietnam War, America was seen as invincible and unbeatable. At the time, television and personal audio recorders were becoming more mainstream. News by television was growing - for the first time, people were turning to TV rather than the newspaper or radio to learn about current events. The news was uncensored, and citizens, for the first time, were able to view the reality of war. Although the Vietnam War initially had the public’s full support, uncensored anti-war news coverage on the newly developed commercial television influenced Hollywood and popular music artists, which in turn led people to protest the war; the protests combined with the major losses and defeats in the conflict prompted the government to withdraw from Vietnam.

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Posted 1 month ago

The Mickey Mafia Against Nazi-Germany

This post is for an assignment for my Media and War class.

The use of propaganda through political cartoons is an unavoidable topic in the studies of WWII. Though the propaganda against Jews is a cliché assumption, the use against Nazis prevailed in many ways of its own. Both played key points in the war, from brainwashing to fairytales and cartoon war to tombstones, few subjects were used as a fighting force made from pencil and paper.

In America, political cartoons were used widely as motivational statement for troops. The leading man in this was Walt Disney and Disney Studios. His logo, depicting a mosquito holding a torpedo, for the new fleet of “mosquito boats” was so well received, army bases across America asked for some of his cartoons for their crafts as well. Though no Disney character in particular was more popular than the others, it eventually came to a strong, satirical result. That is when Donald Duck waged war on Hitler. In a political cartoon, Donald Duck is seen dressed as a Nazi and marching with other Nazis or “Nutzi”. He suffers in an assembly line screwing war munitions together. He eventually goes insane from shouting “Heil Hitler” and whirling his hands impossibly fast. He wakes up from the dream and says “Oh boy, am I glad to be a citizen of the United States of America!” “Der Fuehrer’s Face” got much notice and even won the Oscar for best animated short film. In another short, “The Spirit of ‘43,” Donald showed Americans that they need to save money in order to pay for their taxes fully and on time. Walt Disney studio was undoubtedly the most active in American propaganda of Germany. But the sense of hope it gave Americans powered through ages. Even though many of the cartoons were shelved for a very long time the impact they left was not to be forgotten.

But to understand the political propaganda that was going on in Germany is to understand propaganda itself. Propaganda is the art of persuasion and Hitler would not let it go to waste. He grew up and learned to embrace propaganda and blames Germanys’ loss in WWI as a lack of propaganda. He even dedicated two chapters to it in his book Mein Kampf. When WWII started he appointed Dr. Joseph Goebbels as the person in charge of the propaganda His official rank was the Minister of Enlightenment. He worked with SS and Gestapo, who hunted down anyone who would make articles against the Nazis in Germany. He set up the Reich Chamber of Commerce, which dealt with literature, art, newspaper, film, and cartoons. To produce any of the aforementioned subjects you would need to be a member of the Commerce and of course believe in Nazi ideas. This strong censorship never allowed any of Disney’s cartoons to reach Germany.

The way political cartoons were used against Jews and Germans alike during WWII differs in nearly every way. American propaganda against Germans was more for encourage the people to pitch in and help with the war. It also delivered it in a brilliant way; by showing the cartoons, which are normally happy and humorous, become dark and evil things. This effectively convinced Americans that staying positive and doing all they can was the best thing they can do. Germans on the other hand used nation-wide brainwashing, mass censorship, and harsh images to scare the German population into Nazism, thinking it was the only way to be safe. It also glorified Hitler as an amazing leader, whereas American cartoons portrayed Hitler as skinny, angry, and incompetent. Though the situation of Hitler was a situation of evil the views that propaganda can cause are undeniably powerful. Hitler’s power would not have been as mighty without propaganda and the ability to portray him as evil and receive assistance for the war would have been far more difficult.

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Posted 1 month ago

The War On French Food

This post is for an assignment for my Media and War class.

After leaving in France for three years, I can safely say that I had never before encountered such a nationalistic group of people. They are proud of their food. They are proud of their language. They are proud of anything related to their roots – or as the French broadly describe it – their terroir. While most countries around the world appear to be embracing globalization, the French are staunchly against their beloved homeland being molested by foreign products or ideas. But while one cannot stop the world from changing, one man can stop the construction of a McDonalds in the countryside of France.

In the BBC News article, “France’s farm crusader” by Justin Pearce, we meet José Bové – a bushy faced farmer who is immediately described as “a peasant Robin Hood” for his work as the underdog against a big, bad American fast food corporation. In 2000, Bové was caught attacking the site building site of a new McDonald’s in the Tarn valley of southern France. Although the destruction was not all too serious, it was the media’s reaction his actions that created the most fire. Bové became an international figure, often referred as a modern day Asterix for his spunky French spirit and his rather prominent handlebar mustache.

His story struck such a large chord because it was around that time when globalization truly started becoming relevant topic for companies and governments around the world. The real enemy was the United States, which had long ago begun to infiltrate foreign countries through Hollywood films and shows. For me, personally, it was interesting to read this article from over a decade past and compare it to the France I see today. In discussing the topic with a French friend of mine (over a dinner of MacDo, no less!), he nodded solemnly and proceeded to list out all the American series he had ever seen – beginning in the ‘80s with Little House on the Prairie and Dallas (to which he even hummed the theme song to). In all honesty, I had ever even heard of the show Dallas until last year when I took a course on Media Globalization here at AUP. However, according to my professor who hails from South-Korea, the show was an American phenomenon that had people around the world glued to their TV screens.

Although English is increasingly becoming the “world’s language,” France sees otherwise and continually seeks to protect their own beloved language from outside influence. This refers back to the idea of “terroir,” which is a term that is incredibly difficult to define outside of a French context. In the article, the author explains why American-style fast food is such a threat in France while it is somewhat more readily embraced in other countries.

“Eating is not a neutral act,” he [Bové] told reporters - a remark which embodies a uniquely French take on philosophy and food.

Whether looked at in relation to geography, soil or locality, terroir is a vital keyword in the study of food, especially in France, where much of the nation’s ideology is firmly rooted in the image of a farmer. Terroir describes the sensory evidence of the plants, animals, and region from which they are produced. Since such traces transcend our most obvious means of perceiving food through taste, in France, terroir encompasses a cultural knowledge that is passed down through generations

Essentially, this is why Bové’s fight attracted such media attention. Asterix, or Vercingetorix (whom the cartoon was actually based upon), was famous for his loyalty in defending his country against imperialistic invaders. While Bové’s protest was not violent, it appeared to be more of a war of ideology and how one country should combat foreign interests in order to preserve a type of self-dignity.

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Posted 1 month ago

Americans Studying in US vs Paris

This is a video of an interview I had with a student broadcast journalist named Virgilia Hess.

Despite studying at Brooklyn College in New York, Hess, herself is a French national with bilingual capabilities. In April, she went back to her homeland to sit down with four AUP Americans studying long-term in Paris and to discuss the differences between French and American: academics, food, fashion, and nightlife.

As a current, part-time student at l’Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), I was able to provide a brief glimpse of my experience there. But more importantly.. I was quoted about food. Surprise, surprise!

Posted 1 month ago

2 notes

Tags: american university of paris, aup, brooklyn college, study abroad, paris, france, united states,

The intimidating reason why I disabled the “Ask Me Anything!” button for a year.

.. And of course, within 30 minutes of turning it back on - I get a question that I’ve pretty much already answered before. So anyone who does ask me something, please do me a favor and look through my blog first. I know it’s a lot of pages, but I go in-depth for a reason. Also, please ask me something that can’t be easily answered through Google.

Posted 1 month ago

Q: If you are from Claremont, why didn't you apply to Claremont Mckenna, Pitzer, Scripps or Harvey Mudd? It's just so confusing. You could have taken French and a year abroad at AUP or something. AUP really seemed appealing to me but when I got accepted and received financial aid package which only covered half of the costs, I was like WHAT. What am I doing. Paying so much for education and place which isn't even ranked high. Maybe it's a great experience but I'd go to US college anyways.

A:
I did apply to Scripps, but I was rejected. Plain and simple, mais c’est la vie. I still remember the rejection letter they sent me - it went along the lines of: “Just because you were’t accepted here doesn’t mean you won’t go on to do great things elsewhere.”

I could have done a lot of things differently, but I decided to go to AUP. Living in France for the past three years has been undeniably expensive; however, in my eyes, it’s a small price to pay for the knowledge, connections, and experience that I’ve gained along the way.

We all have different decisions in life and no decision is ever bad unless you don’t learn from it. AUP may not be the most renowned university, but rankings and GPA aren’t always everything. It’s the connections that you make and what you make of your education that counts the most.

On Traveling Alone

Studying Abroad in Paris vs Living Abroad in Paris

Posted 1 month ago

4 notes

A Quick Update

So I recently noticed that a link to my blog was shared on a Facebook group for incoming AUP students.

It made me feel guilty.

I haven’t posted in 6 months and even then it was one lousy photo with absolutely no context to it whatsoever. “Huh. Loraine is in Lebanon?”

And even before that, I hadn’t really posted anything except for a few homework entries for one of my classes.

So, for you lurkers who stumbled upon my page.. Here’s my promise to you. Even though I don’t have much time left in Paris, I will make the most of these last months and update my blog again regularly. I’ll write about what the hell happened to me in the past couple years. I’ll answer your questions. I’ll even make videos.

I started off this blog so strongly that even though I stopped over time, I believe it deserves a proper ending.

…. And in the mean time, you should definitely AUP’s online magazine, the7eme.com. It’s where this small time blogger made the transition to a proper writer.. or should I say Editor-in-Chief. ;)