Blog 13: Conflict and Peace/War Journalism in Asia

*In this week, we focused on media in international conflicts. Related with this topic, I learned about Peace Journalism , which would help to avoid media conflicts. Through reading, I recognized how Peace Journalism helps the less-conflict in the international media. Of course, I don't mean to that Peace Journalism is everything that avoids conflicts between countries, but at least it helps a lot for right judgement, not to slant in one side. I think the power of domestic TV is still huge. Now has a lot of ways of getting information. Especially internet and SNS include a lot of people or organization's opinion and view points, so it seems the information is expanded more than before and selected media is of course. However, I want to say that there are still people who get information only from TV news or radio, which are relatively expanded more than internet. Internet and SNS are really active selecting of media, so we should know that there are also passive audiences. If we focus on these people, the War Journalism on TV or News papers is really dangerous, which leads to misunderstanding and conflicts so easily. During the discussion, I was thinking about the conflicts and Peace Journalism in Asia, so in this blog, I want to show some aspects of these.

-Thinking about Peace or War Journalism, in my sense the number of War Journalism is more than Peace Journalism. As one element for War Journalism, zero-sum game was picked up in our discussion, and reflecting my media experiences, zero-sum game is everywhere. "War or Peace Journalism? Asian Newspaper Coverage of Conflicts" did the survey that is based on a content analysis of 1,338 newspaper stories from 10 English-Language daily newspapers from the 5 Asian countries involved in the 4 regional conflicts: India, Pakistan, The Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. Of the 1,338 stories, 1,018(76.1%)were "hard" news stories; 134(10.0%)were features; 121(9.0%)were opinion pieces including editorials; and 65(4.9%) were others that included letters to editor and speech transcripts. Only a small number of stories-137(10.2%)- were produced by foreign wire services such as AP, CNN, BBC, Reuters, and AFP. That  the majority(1,201 or 89.8%) were produced by local sources was unsurprisingly given the conflicts' local nature. As it says, the majority of news included War Journalism aspect and there is no ending of conflicts between these countries.

-Now, shift eyes just a little bit to East. Japan and South Korea has a huge conflict called DOKDO(Korean name)/TAKESHIMA island(Japanese name) problem, which both countries claim that island as their sovereign territory.  According to FAR EAST PEACE? JAPAN, KOREA MEDIA CONFLICT & DOKDO/TAKESHIMA ISLANDS, each countries always tell a story from own country side. In other words, both countries insist that my country is right and another is wrong, which is definitely leading a zero-sum game or War Journalism. There are a lot of things that is not covered by Japan or South Korea to justify themselves. This shows perfect example that news creates some slanted perception to the people. War Journalism is so dangerous, but actually everywhere in the world.
-There are a lot of causes of many amounts of War Journalism, and in the discussion, we came up with the idea that zero-sum game is so simple that people can understand easily, that's why it happens. In addition that, I think that Media Free also leads such a journalism. Of course, because of Media Free, people can tell and know many kinds of information, but at the same time Media Free means easiness to be controlled by journalists, media persons, or even country itself. Everyone likes own country, hope own happiness, and believe their justice. If they were said that Media is free, and they can say anything they want, they definitely would claim that my country is justice and right. According to Conflict, Terrorism and media in Asia, in the freer media in the region, the origins of this failure, or deliberate bias, are also a result of deficiencies in media practice. In particular, reporters often fail to question and assess the material that they receive from official sources.(P120) It indicates that Media Free's weak point and one of causes of War Journalism, I guess.
-In sum up, present international media world is still filled with War journalism. But it is also true that Peace Journalism exists and many people are trying to construct it. Only some decades ago, our world had actual war everywhere, and now it is occurred in the media world. Now is just a beginning, it should be taking a time for Peace Journalism to be expanded everywhere, such as actual Peace. However, Globalization would help this Peace Journalism movement, because it means cooperate between countries. At least I believe it and hope, after some decades, Peace Journalism will be of course in the world.

Blog 12: US news in East Asia

* This week, I learned about the US news in other countries. The video, which is  people from all over the world are interviewed about the image of America, was really interesting. Of course, the perception is really different from each people, but as I learned in class, I agree with that the main image of America is powerful, military based or violence. And I think, these images are created from news a lot. I cannot say all of images, but still a lot of parts of images were born from news' reports. For discussion, I looked up US news in  East Asia from Watching America. I didn't know there is the web site that every countries' news about US are translated in English, but I think it is really US peculiar thing because enough news are needed to make such a page from all over the world. I tried to search the same kind of web page in Japanese, but I couldn't find out. In my opinion, the reason why so many countries have US news is that US definitely has a lot of strong connections with each country, economically and politically. That's why the topic related with government is more than culture. And the relationship with US influences people around the world, because the relevant with people is huge reason why international news are dealt with, as I mentioned in Blog 11. In this blog, I did a little more research about the relationship between US and East Asia.

- I looked up 5 news from Watching America, which are 2 from South Korea, 2 from China, and 1 from Japan. The interesting thing was that each countries mentioned about the power relation between US and China. Right now, the superpower of China is a big topic, especially in Asia. I saw an article saying even "China is a new leader of global economy." I guess the reason why South Korea and Japan picked up this same topic, even though they are not related with directly,  is that these countries have many connections with each China and US. So the tension between China and US influences South Korea and Japan a lot.

-From South Korea: They say that we are in the middle, neither US nor China stand. Their biggest anxious is the issue of Korean Peninsula. The good relation with both of US and China is important for protect themselves. They don't want to be against the superpowers, because if South Korea choose one side, it means creating huge enemy. They need to focus on North Korea's power so they hope stable relations with both countries.
-From Japan: Japan is relatively standing US side. If you see Pew Research Center's report, it is accurate that the view of US in Japan is positive, like 85% people said favorable US in 2011. Also Japan's stand point is calmness, like not slanted to neither US nor China. China states that their superpower is new and US is old, but Japan insists that China's economic development or political value are still old style so US doesn't need new slogan toward China.
- Pew Research Center article provides interesting survey about "How Americans and Chinese view each other". It says " Over the past year, public opinion survey in US and China have shown evidence of rising tensions between the two countries on a host of issues." Some research shows each negative perception of economic and trade policies, which creates the difference of conveying news in each country.

- As I expected, the relationship between countries are affecting the way of conveying the news about US in each country. These differences have danger of leading misunderstanding about country or people. We have a lot of choices and ways to get information, so we need to be careful not to misunderstand from only one source or slanted view point.

Blog 11: International news in the US

* In this week, we learned and discussed about international news in the US. This topic was really interesting for me because I had never watched the news with such a view point. But once I payed attention about the international news here in US, I noticed some trends. I have a lot of ideas and interesting about this topic, but I cannot tell everything here so I will focus on the question, " Why is there a difference of the amount of information depend on the regions?"

-In the class discussion, many classmates suggested the answer that relevance or potential involvement influence the difference. I really agreed with that, because generally saying, the reason why people are trying to get news informations, included both of domestic and international, is that they need to know these informations in order to avoid the danger, which is a human nature to survive. Thus, people tend to seek the informations that relate with them directly or indirectly.  For the discussion, I was going through the NBC international news wed page, and counted the number of countries dealt in this page. Not only NBC, but also another main news networks' web sites have the trend that the news about Europe or Middle East are much more than other regions, such as Asia, Oceania, Africa or even Latin America.
-Why was it happened? Because the amount of relationship is really different depend on the regions. I think there are some elements to decide the quantity of relationship with US.  First of all, the physical distance influences a lot. So the Europe news in US is huge and Asia and Oceania are a little. Next suggestion about the element of difference of international news is the weight difference of influence to the US. Latin America and Africa are less information, even though their physical distance are near enough. This suggestion explain the reason, I think. At first, I felt weird about the less news of latin America and Africa because these places are near to US and I guessed there is a relevant enough. But then, I listened to other's opinion and the reason why I could understand this situation was because these regions is not against US a lot, which means less danger to US people, and these countries are still developing and there are not so much influence to US. This element shows the less involvement, so it did make sense of a little information of Latin America and Africa in US. Finally, I want to inform about the reason why many news of Middle East is happened in US, even though the physical distance is big like Asia or Oceania. I researched and found the interesting suggestion. Global Connection. U.S. Foreign policy explains the reason of strong connection between Middle East and US. It says "For most of 20th century and now into the 21st, the US has had global interests and a global reach to match. In the Middle East, the US has made itself a key player by using its diplomatic, economic, and military power in support of its national interests" Following this explanation, there are a lot of proofs of historical and cultural connection. This is the final element about relationship that I want to mention in this blog. Middle East and US are connected strongly by some cultural backgrounds so naturally news about Middle East are getting bigger. In sum up, US is physically near to Europe and culturally near to Middle East, therefore the international news about these regions are relatively more than other places.

-As the proof that it isn't happen only in US, I looked up Japanese news network, NHK's international news page, and watched how different between countries. The news of US is the most followed by China, South Korea, Iran and Myanmar. Almost the Asia dominants the international news in Japan, which is because these are physically near and historically have many relations as well. The biggest number of news is about US, and this is because Japan has strong historical or cultural connection with US, such as ally of US, even though there is a long distance.

-Of course, these trends were found out from only one day's news, but I guess these trend would apply generally because at least people pay attention to the news of countries that have strong relation with own countries, just like I mentioned earlier in this blog.

Blog 10: Colombia's public Relations

* In this week, I learned about Latin America media. My image of Latin America is just cheerful countries. Of course, the place is near to America, which has a lot of kinds of huge powers, so the influence from US is big.  But, throughout the reading, I was impressed by the power of public relations in Colombia inside. I learned from reading that public relations influence not only inside of country but also outside of it. If the public relation toward the international would be successful, it means also the domestic market would be benefit from that. I think this is really important dimension of public relations. So in this blog, I will continue to talk about the circumstances of Colombia's public relations.

- I did a small research about public relations in Colombia, and I was surprised about huge amounts of materials. As reading saids, for Colombia, the public relations is a key word especially to gain the trust from civilizations or even from the world. Colombia's public relations problem article says, "At a recent show the British library in London showcasing pre-Colombian gold, a Colombian diplomat noted that his countrymen were "very concerned about their image and public relations." Until decades ago, Colombia was mostly associated with guerrillas and drug kingpins such as Pablo Escobar. All of that has changed. " Like it says, public relation in Colombia is necessary for changing Colombia's bad image and also get the trust from Colombians.

-I was wondered that actually what is the problem related with public relations in Colombia. Global Public Relation  says that high levels of poverty and illiteracy affect the types of messages publics may receive and  a lack of trust in organization and apathy toward civil engagement following the failures of previous government administrations. (P 214) Throughout these reading, the biggest problem is a lack of trustworthy from civilizations. I think the trustworthy about product or market itself is necessary for country's growth. If people can fully trust about their own products and even proud of that, these are exported to the world and also these can get authentic from the world too. What the label of "made in Japan" or "made in America" are guaranteed high quality is good ( A little extreme but easy to imagine)  example of that. The people are proud of their own countries' products and they guarantee the quality, and then Japan or America are actually huge economic countries. To get worldwide trustworthy, at first domestic authentic is needed. Thus public relation in Colombia is very big deal.

-Just like David Public Relation, there are a lot of public relation companies to help Colombian products. In reading discussion class, there was a question that if the public relation campaign of Juan Valdez coffee helps Colombia itself or not. In my opinion, I think it helps Colombia. Actually it is difficult to judge it, but at least it helps to gain the domestic trust about Colombian company. The way of campaign is a little too much, but the quality of Colombian brand coffee is trustworthy. The long run of campaign is quite the proof for that.
I think Colombia has a lot of possibility of world market and the public relation would help these development a lot.

Blog9: Germany's powerful media

* In this week, I learned about West European media world. Though I don't need to mention that because everyone knows, the West Europe has huge influence to all over the world. Historically, the countries in West Europe had great powers one by one and colonized around the world. Throughout every class of MMC4302, I really feel about the power of language and actually their languages, such as English, French or Spanish, are spoken in a lot of countries because of colonialism history. I really knew the fact that their power toward outside, but I didn't know the West Europe's inside media influence. The big feature of West Europe itself is of course EU, which is the official connection between countries. EU works for not only Economic but also politic. So , by this week's reading about Germany media, I really understand the influence to media from other countries. For this blog, I will focus on some questions about Germany media by reading.

-First of all, I was really surprised about print media, especially newspaper, is still having a  big power in Germany. After economic crisis in US, Germany also experienced the decline of print media but still the number of readers is as same as online readers, which is really surprised for me because I understand that decline of print media and increasing of electronic media is developed worlds' trend. Inter nation web page says, "Although German newspapers come in an extraordinarily large and diverse number of titles, they are currently going through hard times. Owing to strong competition from TV and online media, German newspapers have been pressing and selling lower and lower numbers for the past couple of decades." Like it says actually Germany newspapers are getting decreasing but it is yet leading Germany media, such as 23 million newspapers are sold everyday and newspapers reach an audience of about 70% of population older than 14 years old. According to Com Score web page, Germany's 12.9 million online newspaper readers spent a combined total of 4.9 million hours reading content on online newspaper sites in April 2009. And with 13 million monthly readers, online newspapers currency attract one-third of the total German internet audience. These facts show that Germany people's behavior toward newspaper and online-news sites. Actually, number of newspaper readers are decreasing and online users are increasing, which is the same trend with other countries. However, the different point in Germany is its trend doesn't illustrate the online news's exchange with newspapers. In Germany, newspapers have taken an important role from long time ago, and I think people are proud of their history of newspapers and more familiar with paper news forms than online version. I guess that the coexistence of print newspapers and online news site prevents newspapers from drastic decline of readers.

-So I really understand how print media has huge impact in Germany and then , as usual, I was curious about how about Germany electronic media? Does it also have a power somehow? I did small research and I felt TV or radio have more entertainment aspects than information providing.  The German Language and the real world indicates some points about electronic media in Germany. It says electronic media makes the distance between countries closer(P 348) and includes many entertainment elements, like "Reality TV", which is human everyday lives etc, is broadcasted in prime time. (P 350) This is actually what I was looking for because I felt why there is no mention about electronic news media in Germany, because it is always compared with print media and online media. The reason why electronic media didn't appear in reading is because of the different role. In Germany, print or online media take a role of information providing and electronic media takes a role of entertainment.
-Throughout all information about Germany, I feel the coexistence of many shapes of media is a big characteristic in Germany. Each form of media has each role and people are using  any kinds of media along with their needs. And also I guess newspapers in Germany would keep their power because nothing can be alternative media with their long history and strong power.

Blog 8: Ukraine frustrated between Russia and West

* Ukraine, where located between Russia and other European countries, is frustrated between Russia and West. Throughout this week's reading, it is accurate that Ukraine has a lot of connections with Russia even after dismantlement of Soviet union. But also unlike post-Russian traditional trend, Ukraine is going ahead toward West world. Therefore, inside of Ukraine, there are still both supporters of Russia and West. I have heard about the problem between Ukraine and Russia sometimes before, so I was wondered that now what's going on inside of Ukraine related with Russia and West countries, and then I researched a little about Newspaper in Ukraine because the reading talked about Ukraine and Russian's TV today a lot and I wanted to focus on other aspect of media.

- I didn't know about Ukraine a lot actually, like I even didn't know where the Ukraine is. But I have heard about conflict between Ukraine and Russia. It is easy to coming up problems between neighbor countries, such as Japan and Korea, because they usually have connection historically and these harness is difficult to remove at all. As we read for reading discussion, soon after dismantlement of Soviet, Ukraine tended to relay on Russian media. It was surprised for me, because they supposed to hope independent from Soviet( past-Russia), but in fact they couldn't independent at all from their leader country, Russia. But it is also said that throughout 2000s, Ukraine started going forward to more global and more West side media format. Then I was curious about what's going on Ukraine and found the word of " Ukraine Crisis ". This site shows the timeline of Ukraine Crisis, and it started in November 2013 and still goes on right now. The main cause of this is conflict between government who were failed to sign trade deal with EU acting, and protesters who are support of Westernize. A lot of victims were born from Ukraine Crisis and it is going to continue from now on. Also Foreign Affairs' article says Ukraine Crisis is the West's fault. It says " United State and its European Allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central elements of larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia 's orbit and integrate it into the west. " So NATO and west side of Europe are try to get rid of Ukraine from Russian orbit. I feel this crisis was happened because both of Russia and NATO(West) want to get Ukraine, as if the  reproduction of Cold War.

- So about the Newspaper in Ukraine, I was wondered that which language is used a lot in the newspaper because there are a lot of outside impacts. Wikipedia says newspapers include three kinds of languages, Russian, Ukraine, and English. I think it really describes the frustration of Ukraine. This site shows top 20 newspaper in Ukraine, and many sites of this are using Russian or Ukraine. Some papers are only Russian or Ukraine, so the impact of Russia is still huge. Their history of one parts of Soviet where is Russian speaking country in the past reflects a lot to today's media in Ukraine.

- In my opinion, Ukraine needs more time to decide their standing point. The foreign influence toward Ukraine is too huge to being controlled by Ukraine itself. The relation is really complicated still, so government should have more communication with a lot of civilizations' voice.

Blog 7: Brief of Ghana's media

*In this week, I learned about African media. For me, African continent itself is not familiar with myself, and I noticed my stereotype-image about African Media. Actually, I was surprised about the freedom of media in Africa. Especially last week I learned a lot about media limitation in the Middle East so I was more surprised about free media in Africa, even though both countries have a history of colonialism from European countries. In addition to my stereotypical image about Africa, a lot of African countries  are still developing countries and have many poor people so media access is not as big deal as other areas. However, for real, it was wrong, rather their lives are improving along with the media developing. Throughout the reading, I feel such  a strong power of language. I had no idea about that, because I have never felt such a power of language in Japan, where there is almost only one ethnicity. Also, in the class of reading discussion, the guest speaker, Naa from Ghana, told us a lot of interesting facts in her country. Then I was interested in some points about Ghana media, in this blog I want to show the brief of media facts in Ghana and media power there.

- According to GHANA EMBASSY HP, Ghana has 75 different ethnic groups. About the language, the official language is English but school uses both English and nine other local languages. The most widely spoken local languages are Ga, Dagomba, Akan and Ewe. In terms of education, Primary and secondary school are free and compulsory between the age of 6 to 14. In 1996, 76% of primary-school aged children were enrolled, but only 31% of secondary-school aged children entered school. Higher education is provided by University of Ghana etc.
- I think these facts relate with media developing in Ghana. Ghana is the country which has media diversity, such as broadcasting TV, Radio, print media, and internet. As Naa said in the class, getting internet access is not as expensive as we think. So I think the biggest influence for media diversity is education level. When people try to get information from print media, they have to being able to read and understand English, which is common thing with internet but Education is needed. However, in terms of TV or radio, which is almost run by local, people can get information even if they can only understand local African languages, which Education is not necessarily. In fact, the rates of radio owning is highest in Ghana. And then, it was really making sense that Naa said in even university, internet is not big deal because it is not indispensable for people. Their lives' central media is radio or TVs rather than internet. I think this is really good trend because easy radio access make more and more people possible to get information and it connects to Ghana itself's development. If you see this Modern Ghana HP, you can tell how their online-media is developed and expanded. It shows the level of people who are taking advantage of internet because it should fulfill the demand of users who are educated.

-From the Press reference HP, I learned how important for Ghana's developing the media influence is.  The head of article says "Ghana has vibrant press that plays a key role in political discourse, national identity, and popular culture. " in 19th century, the media worked as civilization's voice and this role is still continuing now. It helped the developing democracy in Ghana. Throughout entire statement inside this homepage, media takes an important role at every aspects of Ghana development.
-I could know media is indispensable element for Ghana. Media helped a lot of changing such as democracy acting or  campaign for independent. I didn't know these facts before this week's lecture, discussion and my small research. Because of my stereotyping, I was blind about rapid changing in Ghana or other African countries. Now I really know in the near future African countries would have big powers because they have a media free, which promotes the countries development, or more media free is necessarily for countries' growth.