don't you think that US is the greatest exporters in media world?? (7th entry, 8th week topic)

Reference:

-       Michael Jackson’s death 2009 June 26^th

-       The Jakarta Post; Friday, June 26^th 2009 (Indonesian English Newspaper)
Michael Jackson dies in LA hospital (Copied from The Associated Press, Los Angeles, US)

-       MTV Asia (Entertainment TV in Asia)

 

As had been known, Michael Jackson is the “King of Pop.” He had been knows even from generations to generations. He died when he was 50 because of the cardiac attacked, that is believed was told by the doctor because when Michael Jackson reached the hospital, there was nothing much that the doctors in emergency unit could do. Songs lovers, especially pop music lovers, should be pretty shocked and sad about the lost of worldwide “King of Pop.” (2009)

This is a shocking news currently especially for the music mania, where the news is spread all around the world. This example is taken from the concern of the Globalization of Mass Media. Basically Globalization of Mass Media can also means that issues can be send to another countries because the emerging of mass media. It is also can be referred as competitive process by which media companies attempt to acquire a larger share of the profits available in the international market, that can be expressed with what The Jakarta Post (Indonesian Newspaper in English language) in the article of “Michael Jackson dies in LA hospital “that is posted in June 26^th 2009 edition, that is basically copied by the article from The Associated Press, Los Angeles, US. This can be happened because of the contract that is usually done for some period of times by both of the parties; therefore, whenever there is news that can be copied, both parties will help each other thus one party can have the same news as the other party in different country. Even just hours after the news was knew publicly, MTV Asia already broadcast the sad news in today’s (June 26, 2009) news.

 

There are some limitations in the global media export industry, because of the difference in cultural background, language, and government restriction (politics, economics); thus government plays a crucial role to limit and control what is flow to the country. Nevertheless there is also censorship agent in a country to see what is acceptable to be shown publicly and what is not; this censorship will depends with the culture of the country, background and history of the country itself too. In Michael Jackson’s death issue, there is no issue that needs to be censored from public; thus we can still know and well informed about the news.

 

The US has been the most dominant country to export media towards other countries. This can be shown with the success of Michael Jackson, the African American “King of Pop.” Although Asian has the fastest growing of media, especially in India with all the serials they have, but that does not take US position to be the most exporters. We already know Michael Jackson since we were young, even when he was still had the black skin color and his original African American face. This also still happens in nowadays condition; models, actresses, actors, singers from the US are usually easier to reach Asian market rather than Asian public figure(s) get accepted in the US.

The globalization of mass media also affects me because most of the films I watch come from the US, no matter whether it is a serial TV series and also all the movies. Although we already have our local channels and serial TVs and movies, I still watch those TV series and movies that are produced in the US although some of them cannot be accepted, if we want to base it with our cultural background. What about your view for it? Do you have other view for this issue?

mass media communication (6th entry, 7th week topic)

This very common poster “Stop the Horror with Soap and Water!” is posted almost all around Singapore. You can see this message in public places, not just in public toilets but also at bus stops and the train stations. This poster, by the Health Promotion Board of Singapore, is an example of a mass media communication because it targets the general population – our large and heterogeneous and anonymous audiences created by institutional sources. Their message is simply serves as a reminder for everyone to maintain a certain level of hygiene by washing their hands regularly.

In this poster, we can see some characteristics of the media messages, such as the institutional sources, which show that the complex product is composed of individuals who performed specialized functions that created great expenses, in this case these specialized people who are designing the poster to convey the message. Another characteristic is the invisible receiver – the large, heterogeneous and anonymous target audiences. Two other characteristics in the poster are the interposed channels and last but not least the non-exclusivity and temporal. Interposed channels are basically about the different media employs different technology to transmit and/or receive messages and it requires some technologies and skills to encode and decode the message. This poster uses easy medium to send the message; people do not need a computer, television or buy the newspaper just to see this poster. This is non-exclusive and temporal because the messages are transmitted publicity and it takes time to reach most audience members.

There are some functions of the media indentified by Charles W., which are surveillance, correlation, cultural transmission and entertainment. For this kind of poster, the media can only perform a surveillance function to basically inform people and cultural transmission that help to educate the audiences.

The media communication theories are basically to explain the effect of mass communication to the audience, how people use the mass media, and explaining the role of mass media itself. Through this poster, we cannot see the whole theories applied here but there are some theories that are related to it. This poster shows the limited effects theory (1950s/1960s) where the media has limited power rather than the audience because the basic of this message is only to educate and inform. The audiences are active to resist the media message(s). As audiences, they might consume it when they see it that can benefits them, but if the audiences think it does not have any benefit for them, they might just ignore the message.

Another theory is the Agent Setting Function where it keeps repeating the news coverage to increase the society’s awareness towards the issue. This agenda setting function is set by the gatekeepers; which refers to the people involved in the media such as the media owners, the producers, the editor of the media and even the political groups. Therefore in this poster, Singapore government is the gatekeeper who keeps informs and reminds the public to be clean through this poster.

Mass Media Communication can be a very effective way to communicate and send messages to the public. It largely depends on the purpose of communication, the information in the messages and the methods of communication. For me, this poster has great influence because it is usually posted in public toilets thus it always remind me to wash and be clean towards my body.

People might not agree with me, but do not you feel that mass media communication is one good thing that we can implement to send our message? I believe what we need is only to choose the right methods that will help to achieve the purpose of it.

cultural gap..? (5th entry, 6th week topic)

Each country, each group, each people have its own cultural background that shows differences and uniqueness that have been passed from a generation to the next ones. To elaborate, culture can be defined as the template of living, where people tend to act and have the same point of view towards certain issues because they have been shaped through the culture that has been passed to them.

Since there might be different cultural background for each group of people, it might give spaces between people whom interact. Whereas an Indonesian teenager who pursuing an undergraduate degree in other people country, there were times I see things differently compared with an individual who grew up in Singapore itself.

There are many characteristics of culture; dynamic, multifaceted, moreover culture identities are overlapping. We have to believe with the culture itself because it is a basic perceptive and the factual. Although culture within a group may change by the upbringings, but it will take times for a person to accept new culture in the mixture of the one inside oneself that has been brought by many generations above. However, the culture itself is the boundaries for the group members of what they can do and they cannot do.

As a 17 years old girl, I have been taught well about my culture. As a Chinese Indonesian, there are things that we should understand well enough because Chinese people are not the majority in Indonesia. However, my family still celebrates the Chinese New Year celebration every year, we have to obey and appreciate all the elderly where as can be seen in western culture, they do not call their aunties with aunt, but instead they call their aunts with names. For me, there are positive things and also the negative ones within every culture. For a little example on names, I call my aunts and uncles with extra ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ before the name, it sounds appropriate in East Culture but sometimes I just called ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle’ to those that I forgot their names. It seems easier that way, and that might become disadvantage since I might not remember their names.

The hardest on culture’s attribute is cultural gap, as a student in Singapore; I found it is basically the way local people pursue the education, it pressures me a lot as they may one step ahead of being ready and understand much things better that I am. Beside that, most of the time I feel that I am different from others, because they seem more mature than I am as maybe their parents have formed them like that, to be ready and independent.

These are two common examples given to see the differences between two different cultural backgrounds. However, culture is something that cannot be said whether it is right or wrong for the reason that it will create an ethnocentrism where, we should appreciate everyone’s culture, although it may be different from ours, but it still their culture, their belief towards certain aspects of life.

Nevertheless, there are people who really see things and considerate everything they are going to do through culture they have, which called as collectivism, and there are people who see things and decide whatever they are going to do through personal perspective and through personal benefit, which is called as individualism. For my family, we are shaped as a collectivism people where we should consider about other people and we should adapt with people around. Things we do should be within the norms that people around us like our family can accept it. Even though we can decide things by our own views, but it is usually for the small issue.

Sometime we forget about our culture, we are trying to look like other people’s culture, but most of the time people will start to “kick in” when we are severely challenged about it. However, it is true because people are usually try to make them be seen differently since each people have their own culture uniqueness thus they will try to make the culture alive within themselves. This might be true, but sometime it is might also be false. It depends with the person itself after all.

So, about culture, are you going to be a collective person or individualism? Are you going to appreciate people around with their culture? Are you going to show your culture wherever you are at? Make sure your culture is keep alive, because culture should be passed from one generation to the next ones.

there are ways to maintain relationship and the conflicts, can you choose wisely what to do? (5th entry, 4th week topic)

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_384358.html?vgnmr=1

This article is basically talking about a 17 years old Indonesian model whom has been married with a son of Kelantan royalty in Malaysia, flees from the prince, while she was in Singapore that day, and reached Jakarta – Indonesia in last Saturday with her mother. She has been married since August last year. The husband, Tengku Temenggong Muhammad Fakhry, and the wife, Manohara Odelia Pinot, are two famous people in their hometown. The husband is basically the prince of Malaysian Royalty, while the wife is a model in her hometown, Indonesia. The gap years between these two people are quite a lot because Ms. Manohara is only 16 while she got married with Mr. Fakhry, which is considered as a grown-up.

The communication interaction between them should be interpersonal because they are committing to spend lives together forever through a wedding vow, and this is included in dyadic communication because it only contains two people to communicate with one another. But instead, after almost a year of marriage, the wife felt that she was not in a “common” peacefully condition of being a wife. However, Manohara did not apply the DeFleur et all (2005) framework, where there are steps from the beginning towards the end which are: engagement, followed with management, and last but not least, disengagement. Manohara did face the phase of engagement and management before and during the marriage life, but after she was about to face disengagement, instead of trying to solve and discuss between her husband, she escaped from the fact and yet from the situation.

There were might be things that attract both parties at the beginning, such as the physical appearance, the woman might attracted the man. And also, there were also possibilities that the woman might become an exchange of rewards, which is about the mother’s or Manohara’s thoughts that Manohara could enjoy and became the happiest girl if she was married with the royal prince of Malaysia.

In this topic, the maintaining process from one and another parties failed because they did not end up in a peaceful way; instead they were trying to cover up their own side. This failure of maintaining is caused by the different perception they are facing after having relational challenges such as unrealistic expectation, aversive communication behaviors and aversive emotional states.

Based through Knapp Model of Relational development, they are facing the coming apart phase in specific; they were facing the differentiating part that may happen because of the reflection that has been developed too fast.

For my opinion, actually it is possible for the wife, Manohara, to solve the problems without have to act and bring this issue to the media, since as known that the husband, Muh. Fakhry is a royalty in Malaysia; she can actually try to solve the problems inside their own community through communicate what she is feeling and what she should have. Because if the condition is like this, it means that both of the parties cannot communication well in terms of verbal and non-verbal communication. However there are two ways to resolve the conflict such as functional and dysfunction. Throughout the article, we can see that Manohara chose to do the dysfunction instead of trying to build a relationship.

As human we have the ability to choose, what we can do is choose everything wise enough. To choose the relationship we build with, to solve conflicts between it. Are you ready enough? You determine it yourself.

is nonverbal easy??...(3rd blog entry, 4th week topic)

(The Jakarta Post, May 25th 2009, Page 7)

(http://www.okmagazine.com/pixandvids/gallery/14367/15)

Both of the images above are non verbal images taken through the media, one is from newspaper in opinion section which showing two people who are in a discussion within a particular issue; the other one is picture of Kris Allen, the winner of American Idol 2009 with his runner up contestant and the host of the show.

The first picture shows that current American President, Mr. Obama, is talking with someone about an issue of Bahamas/ Palestine/ Sudan (Because the picture is black and white, it cannot be determined surely which country it is about). There is also a small image of a person with thinking bubble in the side of the picture. This man is basically showing the fact that he is also thinking about what the 2 men are talking about, since it is clearly seen that they are having issue towards the country that is represent by the flag.
In the other image, the scene is taken when the host of the show notifies that Kris Allen won the competition for this year. Kris Allen is the man standing in the middle of the picture with a very particular face impression.

There are two ways to communicate towards people around us, which are through verbal communication and also non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication occurs when a stimulus other than words create meaning for the communicator(s) and receiver(s). This type of communication is never taught in any regular institution because it is subjective. Therefore it requires an understanding between the communicator(s) and the receiver(s) because one of the parties does not understand; it will create a miss-understanding. There are certain types of nonverbal communication, however in both images; it uses kinetics, oculesics, physical appearance and haptics.

As it illustrates, Mr. Obama uses kinetics, study of body movement, to convey his meaning. While in the same illustration, the Mr. Governor uses Oculesics, study of nonverbal meaning associated with the eyes, to demonstrate that he does not agree with Mr. Obama’s idea. As it is appear with a very decent physical appearance thus as audience that does not understand about this topic, I assume this men are highly educated men with a status. However, it creates misunderstanding, especially because as an “unfamiliar” audience, I cannot obtain the purpose(s) of the image well.

On the other hand, since I watched American Idol 2009, I understand the image better rather than the 1st image. The fact that Kris Allen was shocked because he won the competition with a person that he thought would win the competition instead of him. The shocked given by him is basically a well known nonverbal face expression; since people around the world can understand that it shows stockiness.

Overall, nonverbal communication is very close with human beings since we use that a lot in our daily lives. But indeed in my point of view, nonverbal communication is not an easy way of communication because all of the parties included have to understand one another to diminish possibility of misunderstanding.

Therefore, do you believe that everyone can understand other people’s nonverbal communication, where there are some specifics symbols during the communication? Is there anyone able to understand all the nonverbal communication among human beings?