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Technology and Human Rights

Lecture and PP  Presentation for Human Rights Students... 

Slide #1

What is Technology?

In social communication and media studies…

           

Technology is considered as the Signified or Concept of any activity (or Act) that resides with its referents or real life objects; i.e. machines, software, or anything made or invented.

Slide #2

Technology…contd.

u Technology is also a phenomenon that human beings experience in their lives. So user groups realize technology.

u Technology also considered as unit means what human beings execute. Oral techniques; literate techniques etc.

Slide #3

Technology & Technological:

Technology therefore appears

u Concept;

u Phenomenon;

u Experience;

Technological however indicates

u Referent or Outcome;

u Individual Judgement;

u Convention; like ‘Computerized’;

u Finally, human ‘arbitrary’ rights to define any category;

Slide #4

What is Technology?...contd.

The modular presentation looks like

Signifier  =                    Signified + Referents

(Intellectual Act)        (Technology) + (Objects)

So every Act can give birth of a specific concept of a new technology.

Slide #5

University of Toronto proposes

Canadian Communication School derives Social Transformation in view of the development of technology.

Theorists like Tim O’Sullivan, Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan et. al. formulated social transformation in three distinctive social features;

Slide #6

University of Toronto proposes contd.

u Oral Society: Oral Communication Technology drives the society.

u Literate Society: Literate Technology drives the society.

u Electronic Society: Electronic communication technology drives the society.

u Global Village: Convergence of all communication & media Technologies.

Slide #7

Technology as Signifier:

u Problem now pops up when Technology is considered as a driving force or an ‘Act’ itself;

uIf technology now is the signifier, what would then be the signified and referent?

uIt then affects human ‘arbitrary’ rights.

uTechnology then drives your knowledge, satisfaction, need, and all other cognitive outcomes; like, computer softwares today drive your needs, knowledge and social positioning;

Slide #8

When Technology itself is the Signifier…

Slide #9

The Signified is just a Package that soaks up all other concepts…

Slide #10

The truth…abuse…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #11

The newer Ghettos…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #12

The new fireworks…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #13

New questions…

Source: Academics for Justice

Slide #14

Leaving out…Bare Frames

Slide #15

So Human Rights…

In a post ‘Mass-ification’ era of packaged mediation; 

Does ‘Human Rights’ exist at all as signified for mass?

Slide #16

Universal Declaration of Human Rights…nevertheless

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Slide #17

Technological Determinism

u So Technology provides space to know new things;

u Technology also rules the space;

u Digitalization of TV gives you freedom of choice; but within what is provided;

u Technological space is therefore not a natural space;

uTechnological space or media space squeezes public space to individuated space;

u But this is only for consumption not to exert human rights

Slide #18

Technology and message

Noted French Poststructuralist Jean Baudrillard proposed:

Øglobal explosion of technology is being mirrored into implosion of understanding; a typical consumerist mode of introspection;

ØImplosion mirrors explosion of information; promotes consumption of information;

ØConsuming information creates a greater illusion of technological explosion;

ØThe more we consume information the less we consume meaning;

Slide #19

Human Rights Elements

u All underlined traditional Signifiers are largely owned by technocapitalist media houses; except some remote ethnic identities

u All red Signifieds are now defined as media products; it is highly evident in Social Networking Sites.

Slide #20

Slide #21

Human Rights Signifiers…

u If now ‘Human Rights’ matters at all, does it exist as ‘Right’ or a note of all round ‘Consumption’?

u All newer spaces like social networking sites, shopping malls, amusements parks, water resorts, even publications belong to the same political economy of signification that only promotes outright consumption.

Slide #22

Human Rights Signifiers…

u It is thus very hard to rally with the belief that a specific post in a social networking site can organize a revolution; toward the end of a thirty year tyranny; If so…

u Consumption of mediated contents then can lead to a revolution any moment!! Leftists and Radicals should learn something out of it.

Slide #23

New Declaration of Human Rights

u Consumption rules the social order that includes Individual Human Rights also.

u Philosophy of the hour:

I shop therefore I am;

Slide #24

Final ‘Human Rights’ Signifier…

Thank You

Media, Cultural Studies and Human Rights

Lecture delivered at the UGC Sponsored Course on Human Rights

What does ‘cultural studies’ refer to as human rights?

Human Rights as commonly referred to the rights written in both national and international constitutions, memoranda and some achieved by conventions otherwise, are those categories/structures which an individual associates with his/her identity. So it may include any extent of individual association with any event up to his/her satisfaction.

‘Human Rights’ beyond national or international declarations therefore is that ‘unconscious category’ of [an] individual[s] that comes after the immediate conscious or experience at the time of communication. So ‘human rights’ is that mental affair or judgement which an individual gives verdict on any act of communication in social peripheries. ‘Human rights’ therefore largely reminds those rights which are only in problem or crisis and precisely easy to measure and understand through empirical methodologies and can be represented through statistical figures. This easy-to-measure approach helps authorities and NGOs to initiate proper legal action.

But the problem with Human Rights academic approach is that the measuring of ‘events and primary experience’ are being regularly performed empirically through lots of survey methodologies which can only set some cases for further investigation. This would largely identify the perpetrators under the purview of law.

But compared to the violators of human rights there are many more victims remained undernourished and undertreated in all respects which empirical studies can identify but cannot represent properly. The above so called behaviourist approach of human rights discourse cannot move beyond that keeping the rest to be performed by the state despite being aware that it won’t do anything for some stray cases unless it gets huge mass attention. So ‘mass attention’ becomes an imperative to validate and arrange proper representation for any such case of violation in social space.

So there is an inevitable gap between the human rights violations as empirically determined facts and statistical figurations and those affected identities that suffer huge pain and loss through a profoundly ‘unconscious route’ which people or any institutions are largely unaware of. On this construction ‘human rights’ is such a process that behind our backs, produces and structurates our consciousness in such ways we are not really aware of. Human rights then are those rights which are enlisted in all declarations of statements to be violated by the perpetrators but do not in real terms include my autonomy to make a judgement on it.

The common route to handle or describe ‘human rights’ is the cases and experiences so far been acknowledged either by the state, human rights organizations and NGOs. Now to analyze further those acknowledged cases of violations of human rights which has already been taken care of by the judiciary means to make a critique largely on whether the agents democracy have performed their duties or not.

So even after exploring the factual incidents and a mapping of human rights violations in different nations and also internationally, the empirically driven information and judgements on that, the whole human rights studies or academic approach becomes largely insufficient to catch up the real foundation or the reasoning of that in terms of heavy loss of individuality.

The ‘idea’ behind this approach is not to invoke any unnecessary commentary against the performances of the agents but to establish the insufficiency of empirical approaches that would hardly say the ‘sociology’ of the ruled and victims. The state and NGOs and their people must take some initiatives to discover that unconscious route of pain and loss of human rights of an individual even if it appears difficult to implement. It would then form a new politics and a new dream of movement that may locate the broader area of human rights violations and the notion of at least what our human rights are, under whatever professions and identities we work and live.

Anyone therefore may learn how to acknowledge the human rights violating acts, and international guidelines of what human rights are but he/she has also to learn the ideology of human rights which human being lives life within. For that, some traditional processes and views must be reshaped and revised so that a real alternative human rights movement can be started not just to launch protest against the perpetrators but to discover and address the unconscious route of human sufferings and loss which statistical figures and other forms of empirical information do not really represent.

Media and Human Rights:

Now when we attach or install media in human rights academics it would give you a further mode of representation of your society that originally represents the same arguments and empirical impositions of aspects of human rights violations and also to investigate whether agents of democracy have performed their duties properly.

So installation of media in human rights approach would therefore appear to be just a mode of representing not the society only but they have also to establish some amount of integrity to the ruling establishments for their own sustenance.

Media are supposed to perform certain degree of representation in general:

(a)  To investigate the acts of human rights violations;

(b)  To investigate whether agents of democracy have performed their duties;

(c)  To represent the victims objectively as per information or representing voice available;

(d)  To represent both agents and institutions to prepare opinion of the civil society; if so, public opinion;

(e)  To cover in favour of or opposition to the establishment;

(f)     To safeguard the culture industry, in terms of the ruling entertainment market, as much as possible; because for majority of cases people and civil society members often hold entertainment boom as responsible for human rights violations on the other side of traditional problems like illiteracy, ethno-religious superstitions, economic underdevelopment etc. etc.

(g)  Finally, to establish the claim of representing the unknown and undifferentiated mass;

But apart from the above mandatory representations media are also supposed to be critical to the social inequalities among masses in general. So despite keeping the side of advertisers and culture industry media have enough space to criticize any violation of ‘human rights’ in terms of news, soap operas, reality shows, talk shows, and news magazines such as ‘Satyameva Jayate’.

Media and its behaviourist approaches:

Media in the contemporary phase of international political alignment under US-led version of democracy and growth of human rights concepts largely promote US behaviourist approaches. These mass media approaches basically promote a common axiomatic condition, i.e. people’s consent. People both in individual and mass forms are considered to be assertive and proactive to everything that media promote, propagate, initiate, formulate, show, and represent.

Media therefore perform certain functions:

(a)  Priming;

(b)  Framing;

(c)  Agenda Setting;

(d)  Gatekeeping;

And in every step of media operation media houses generate enough space to cover certain amount of human right awareness reports in terms of its violation and also certain initiatives or human rights movements. But before this empirical information let us know a bit detail of the above mediation activities. While performing these functions media treat individual people firstly as audience; then mass audience and nothing more than that. So media can create a powerful opinion representing certain empirical data of human rights violations and clips of some moves but can never be a ‘partner’ of the suffering till that ends. Instead media would prefer to be partner of any programme representing culture industry.

Growth of Human Rights and Journalism:

In this all pervasive behaviourist approach of media operation and analysis journalism profession almost becomes a complementary category of the authorities across disciplines. The statement does not entail any quantitative survey to establish that there is no sign of independent journalism anywhere in the world. But it is also a fact that journalism particularly covering human rights violation issues faces a massive political and authoritarian challenge across national boundaries. The so called independence of the profession becomes a less debated topic nowadays— very few are interested to initiate a startling debate on it, as it intrudes unknowingly interests of immediate authorities.

The very first paragraph of report on ‘Journalism Media and Challenge of Human Rights Reporting’ reveals interestingly the base of human rights reporting. ‘International Council of Human Rights’ grounds certain questions:

How well do the media report human rights issues? How should journalists and editors

themselves judge the quality of their reporting in this area? What pressures and constraints do

they face and how might they be managed better?

The basic three questions focus ideological queries on media operation which, I consider, give us any suitable answer. The perspective on which these queries are being put forward is also very interesting:

Human rights have become increasingly prominent in recent years. Governments and political

leaders refer to international human rights standards more frequently, both in formal definitions

of policy and in public speeches. Public awareness has similarly evolved. Human rights are

understood to be near the heart of many international news issues, from Afghanistan to

Palestine, Colombia to Sierra Leone — and increasingly linked to discussions of international

debt and trade, education and health. Coverage of human rights in the media is therefore likely to continue to grow — and it is appropriate increasingly to expect journalists and broadcasters to

report them accurately.

Courtesy: © 2002, International Council on Human Rights Policy

You can add some more countries in the list as we are all aware of basic political reason why or the politics behind the listing. Now we are supposed to re-explore human rights in those regions on the debris on human rights where human beings are denied of getting basic needs of life almost a decade ago. Palestine people are still denied of getting food and shelter, and we are talking about sending relief there and not initiate a movement against the US-Israel pact that causes such a blockade for years.

The relief is the conscious route of political development; but the movement against the reason is the unconscious route of politics where sufferings and loss ask for the real foundation of relief. You can measure empirically how many relief operations are being held there or any other areas but it is really difficult to measure the suffering and the real cause of it. Journalism seldom does this operation. If it does we all remember those reports, like Watergate scandal, Tehelka, Wikileaks, Bofors Scam etc. Some other revelations like 2G scam, Coal mine scam are also to be remembered.

Media however operating in different regions often disclose many issues that cause serious harm to the human rights like infant foeticide, child marriage. These revelations get hardly any mass appeal unless any popular category like Amir Khan renders his presence for these.

Findings of the Report:

(i)                  Media, since 1990s, make reference to human rights in their coverage more often and more systematically;

(ii)                Many human rights issues are underreported by the media; although journalists have expanded coverage of human rights issues;

(iii)               Media do not explain and contextualize human rights information as well as they might; In general, data on human rights violations and on human rights standards are not lacking. However, the impact of this information on the public is not as great as might be expected. The media miss human rights stories because they do not pay attention to the specific legal and policy implications they have. Often, they do not have adequate knowledge of human rights and its relevance to the material they are covering. The media frequently also miss the context of human rights stories. These shortcomings diminish the professional quality of reporting, and hamper the communication of information that is sometimes essential for understanding.

(iv)             News is all-pervasive. The news output of the dominant providers is standardised. There is little difference in content between the information given by different providers. In practice, the large media corporations do not question one another’s journalistic values or priorities — even though they are in fierce competition for audience. Newsgathering operations have reduced serious analysis. Programmers adapt programme content to appeal to the largest audiences.

(v)              Human rights issues become ‘human interest stories’,forced to adhere to certain emotional clichés. Since the content of news programmes is very similar, competition between providers leads them to focus on presentation more than content.

The Editorial Process:

(i)                  Reporting is essentially reactive. The breaking news culture undermines editorial and ethical reflection, which is crucial to human rights reporting.

(ii)                The selection of news is event-driven.the news-driven information culture focuses on political and military events rather than social and economic processes, and as a result ignores or under-reports many human rights issues.

(iii)               The media determine what is newsworthy where press freedom exists.

(iv)             The editorial environment is information-loaded. Human rights news competes for the attention of journalists and editors with vast amounts of other information.

(v)              The relationship between reporter and editor is crucial. Reporters and editors are both involved in deciding what stories are identified and selected, and how they are covered.

Conclusion:

The conclusion of this lecture is thus again to explore the unconscious route to reach the core of the real foundation of human rights reporting so that real public awareness accompanied by a real movement can rule the order of the day.

Role of Media as an agent of Social Change

Prof. Swapna Mukherjee Memorial Lecture

Women’s College, Kolkata

29th November, 2011

The subject, assigned to me, deliberately affirms the contemporary media operation toward a definite social change. The referent or external area of the subject i.e. ‘social’ or precisely ‘social change’ assures multi-dimensional emergence of facets in our ‘social’ lives caused chiefly by the media operation or at least defined in such a manner. If we watch the revolutionary upsurge in Egypt and other neighbouring West Asian nations, a very popular note still reigns in popular psyche almost a ruling that the Facebook posts of someone Asma Mahfooz initiated the upsurge. Whatever the actual base would be, this very popular notion hits the global attention quite easily through popular mediation. So what we see here that the notion mediated becomes more catchy attractive and reduced than the actual upsurge and many such parallel reasons or connotations. And this very catchy, attractive and reduced notion becomes a slogan in popular media, which beyond proper reasoning have made it a ‘public opinion’. It now makes you believe that the Facebook posts by Lady Mahfooz created the upsurge that ended the 30 years of tyranny and dictatorship in Egypt. It appears like a headline of a news story which often in most cases comes down to be arbitrarily produced by the journalists according to his/her house policy than readers’ choice. Here my point is by any means not to establish the absurd ‘readers’ choice’, but the journalists’ policy that is not also one of readers’ very own. So making of social or social change happens and you expect me to tell you the story of how assuredly media do this change. I will tell you the story accordingly.

Before moving into details of the stories let me ask you a very old and unpopular question; what do media do to its people? Denis McQuail has quite interestingly identified some categories of functioning that media perpetrate for its audience. These are:

(i) media exert power and inequality;

(ii) national integration;

(iii) social change;

(iv) controlling mass;

You can now safely remove the tag of ‘national integration’ from all global media houses operating in India. Gone are those days of public service broadcasting with Akashbani and Doordarshan and ‘Mile Sur Mera Tumhara’. Media at that time at least for a decade until 1990 never worked as an ‘agent’ but its being was well acclaimed as a developmental tool for Indian people.

Media as an agent…

Do we really have an idea of our media to be acting as an agent? What does an agent do specially to its society or social? Does this ‘agent identity of media’ mean everything but responsibility? Commonly a human or an institutional agent looks after everything professionally without having any emotional, ideological, or cultural attachment to the society or institution. Cultural Anthropology defines ‘agent’ as a concept related mostly to the power…deployed between individual and social structures…act for power. 

Did we mean such a functioning of media? Your subject then clearly suggests that mass media perpetrates the social change as just an agent not as a pillar of democracy or your very own and old friend as fourth estate or watch dog. Why the media is to be treated as a confirmed agent of social change…for its affirmed freedom? 

As and when we try to build an appropriate understanding with media in terms of its operation in our region or national territory, it always becomes our sacred duty to affirm the freedom of media, educating value of media, as an instrument of making public opinion, our agenda-setter, and our cultivator. Do we have any space remaining to accept media in other way as our very own? Do we nevertheless see media from public sphere? 

We do always better to portray our past relationship with media which commonly describes a very social relationship with our own mass media, sometimes as a family member. But difficulty arises when it comes to the contemporary media operation. If media acts as an agent, we have a functional relationship with it, may be a needful relationship. Now for a needful and empowered media it is subsequently very easy to organize any form of social change as it anyway appears to be more powerful, authoritative, and maker of popular opinion. Objectivity of news is now an index of not just mere social credibility but a commercial credential of every media house for simply to sustain as a corporate identity to its political and corporate authority. 

It is however very difficult to judge whether media or popular media act as a social agent although a mass consent would affirm every media house as an empowered corporate body that produces news story and other contents for its targeted audience or consumers to earn and maximize profit. Some quotes may however endorse my point:

(i) We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.

— Michael Eisner, CEO, The Walt Disney Co., (Internal Memo). Quoted from Mickey Mouse Monopoly-Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power

(ii) We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d'etre.

— the C.E.O. of Westinghouse(CBS), Advertising Age, February 3, 97

I can also recall a very interesting quote a media representative on a television channel during 2006 Cricket World Cup: We don’t serve people; we only have a professional relationship with the advertisers to run the programme for revenue.

You may safely differ and rule out my opinion. You may even conform to the notion that media do much to us as an agent and we do not expect media doing something more than this. This is the way to initiate critical media studies and debate on operational philosophy of the contemporary media.

Social Change…

Now what do we mean by social change? Is it something related to the social transformation? In media and cultural studies, we have two types of social change:

(i) major or macro social change that often appears to be revolutionary, as earlier seen in socialist revolutions; but recently in 

(a) Egypt and other West Asian nations including newly born South Sudan;

(b) Obama’s win over many traditional rifts and questions within US territory;

(c) significant socio-political change in many Latin American countries, like, Brazil, Nicaragua, Uruguay;

(d) demolition of Iraq and Afghanistan in the name and tag-line of liberation; and 

(e) live telecast of Gulf War;

(f) massive religious upsurge;

(g) ethnic and subaltern political outbursts as seen in UP and many other Indian states etc. 

(h) information revolution through social networking sites and media; complete dissolution of information, its institutional base, and the notion of public opinion; as we can count people voting on an opinion and hardly sustain.

(ii) minor or micro social change that appears to be quite subtle but can exert enough power to change the existing social order. Minor social changes often deal with ethnicity, individuality, social and cultural categories like, languages, emotions, conventions, rituals, hierarchies, deliberate praxis, exterior and interior behavioural expressions, milestones, traffic signals and all possible mundane exercises that affect life.

Mass media through programmes like mega soap operas, reality shows, news bulletins put a control over the above minor but significant categories that subtly cause a social change. Media were however also directly involved in disclosure of Watergate scam in late 70s, Jessica Lall murder case some years back and many such issues of investigation.

How do media perpetrate social change…

It is now quite interesting to watch that media mostly deal with all minor categories of social change to influence its audience except in some regional cases where media are seen quite polarized to a specific political stance. 

In all repetitive contents, like, news bulletins, mega soap operas, newer reality shows media while reiterating selective social categories cultivate its audience to change the behaviour in the long run. Noted communication theorist George Gerbner stated that “television acts as a ‘socializing agent’ that educates viewers on a separate version of reality. The concrete base behind the cultivation theory states that viewers tend to have more faith in the television version of reality the more they watch television. ‘Television world dramatically overemphasizes the prevalence of law enforcement jobs in the real world (Chandler).

So if now the cultivation power of media is instrumental to how media perpetrate social change, it involves certain procedural aspects or features media usually perform. It should also be noted at the same time that now we are not talking about the traditional developing agenda of mass media as a state machinery or organ. We are now in a situation where media conglomerates control the global media operation from phone tapping to providing necessary political backing. In such a situation all pervasive media operation leaves a very scant space for people’s participation in public sphere.

From the initial phase of global media operation with the collapse of Soviet Union people had an opportunity to observe the live media operation in the first Gulf War in 1990. Noted media theorist Douglas Kellner rediscovered the whole story behind the war declaration. US’s foremost official channel CNN publicizing two satellite photographs claimed that an ‘amass of 100,000 Iraqi soldiers gathered at the Qatar border. President George Bush in no further delay declared the deadliest war against Iraq. Later within two months it was further discovered that the yellow stretch was actually a line of sand bags and other materials delimitating the Iraq-Qatar border. An unprecedented social change comprising not only the destruction of a nation and huge public property but an afresh reach of global media through it also.

Media however, as analyzed so far, perform certain chronologically structured functions for every genre of its contents or programmes. US media theorists though found media audience very much willing to accept all media operations, have nevertheless restructured all aspects of media effect toward both major and minor social change. These are: 

(i) Priming: propagating before context;

(ii) Framing: how to prepare the message capsule;

(iii) Agenda Setting: short term media effect on both individual and mass audience; media set people’s agenda;

(iv) Media Cultivate: media in the long run change audience’s behaviour and ideology;

And in this manner media perform its duty to change the socio-political or socio-economic order.

Media spectacle and package…

But things are gradually becoming very complicated in the contemporary global mediation. With the growth of mediation and the globalization of media mass consumption of media contents is becoming the social order that has outlined the traditional notion of development. Today’s world and region receive mediational development much before territorial development. They receive advertisement of a product much before the produced one. Most of our population even does not have that opportunity to see the product for buying although they have enough exposure through popular media. But all industrial attentions converge to the centre of capital accumulation thus marginalizing peripheries and thus creating a havoc social change in favour of affordability and affluent exposure.

Media contents, i.e. advertisements, news, reality shows, mega soaps have gradually become distinct packages that broadcast everything but the truth of the product-message. A massive fictionalization of all above contents moves beyond the common head and judgements. Noted French theorist Jean Baudrillard comments interestingly: media practices have rearranged our senses of place and time. Television is the real world; television is dissolved into life and life is dissolved into television. The fiction is realized and the real becomes fiction…no freedom beyond this activity. We are proletariatized regardless of class, a function of the spectacle.

To my Blog-viewers

All viewers of my Blog are welcome to put forward any question, if they have in mind, related to my posts. It would indeed enrich our understanding of cultural studies and communication.