Current United States President Barack Obama ushered in the end of the era of television presidency that started with Kennedy, and the beginning of the Internet presidency. Obama used a combination of television, the Internet, and social media to recruit volunteers and supporters, and cement relationships with them during his 2008 presidential campaign. He asked supporters to supply their cell phone numbers, and sent out regular text-message blasts, even announcing his selection for vice president over text message. Using a custom social networking site, created with the help of a Facebook co-founder, Obama supporters were able to log in and find lists of people they could call, or whose doors they could knock on, to try to persuade others to vote for their candidate._ Some attribute this ‘barrage’ of the various methods of mass communication as a key factor that led to the election of Obama over his opponent John McCain. What Barack Obama was able to do was reach demographics either previously ignored or unable to be reached by the traditional U.S. politician.
Not to say that the impact of communications technologies is basely political. The ‘West’ has had a long standing history of conflict in varying forms with the Arab or Middle Eastern world. For many people in the West, all Arabs are Muslims, Muslim women wear black chadors, angry young Arab men commit suicide attacks because they want to be martyrs to enjoy virgins when they arrive in Paradise or Arabs ride on camels and some of them are rich oil sheikhs._ Although these pictures are full of clichés, many of them still stick in the minds of many Westerners. Many ‘innocent’ Westerners - using Mark Twain’s terminology from The Innocents Abroad - are often astonished that European women are able to travel alone in the Middle East without being held hostage by grim-looking Muslims like Betty Mahmoudy in Not Without My Daughter; they are surprised to learn that many more Muslims live outside the Arab world and they are even more amazed to hear that Arabs can also be Christians and that their churches are far older than those in Western Christendom. It is easy to blame all those stereotypes on the media, because most people learn about other cultures and countries second-hand via the media. Yet before putting all the blame on Western mass media for a one-dimensional look at Islam, a more thorough analysis of the programs and reports dealing with the Muslim world and the workings of media outlets is required, coupled with a stock-taking of the events that have influenced the way ‘the West’ looks at the Muslim world.
An observation of Western television and radio programs in recent years will show that there are various feature programs and reports about the multiple faces of Islam and Muslim societies. Scholars who have worked and lived in the Muslim world give interviews to the media to explain political events and put them into a wider historic and social context._ Many more books have been published to raise awareness among readers about the different faces of Islam. Yet despite all these efforts, polls show that Westerners are to various degrees fearful of Islam and often feel powerless in the face of the horrible terror attacks committed in the name of Islam in Western capitals. With disbelief they watch the violent eruptions of Muslim rage and hatred towards the West after the publication of cartoons in a regional Danish newspaper, or after the Pope’s speech that none of the violent protesters had seen or read.
The main fault with the impact of these technologies is that the people with the most money often control what is said or broadcast. However, with the onset of self publishing via the internet with sites such as blogger and wordpress, and now with podcasting becoming more and more popular, the ‘small voice’ can be presented as loudly as the ‘large voice’. The people now have the ability to have a direct effect on their environment. No longer must we simply sit idly by and be told what is happening by those that determine what is ‘news’ and what is not; what is relevant and what is not. Societies can decide what they would like shared with the world and what they would like to receive. For the first time in human history, the populous en mass has some say in how the world will be shaped.
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References
1 Tyner Allen, Erika. "The Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debates, 1960". museum.tv. Retrieved on 21 January 2009.
_2 J. Cohen, Y. Tsfati, and T. Sheafer, “The Influence of Presumed Media Influence in Politics: Do Politicians' Perceptions of Media Power Matter?” , Public Opinion Quarterly, June 1, 2008; 72(2): 331 - 344.
_3 Savage, Chris “How Obama's Campaign Strategy Will Deliver Michigan” The Huffington Post, Retrieved on 21 January 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-savage/how-obamas-campaign-strat_b_133336.html
_4 Haddad, H. S., & Nijim, B. K. (1978). “The Arab world: a handbook”, Wilmette, Ill, Medina Press.
_5 DP Demers, K Viswanath, (1999). “Mass Media, Social Control, and Social Change: A Macrosocial Perspective” ,Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press_
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