Approaches to the world outside

Group Members-

•Veena Bhate

•Priyanka Ketkar

•Shruti Melethil

•Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations.

•Officer M. Jean de Pierrefeu, who edited the French communiqués said that General Joffre and his cabinet met and argued over nouns, adjectives, and verbs that were to be printed in the newspapers the next morning.

•The French were not prepared for the German attack, but to confess that, would have aroused images in the heads of civilians that might well have turned a reverse into a disaster.

•Hence, instead of letting the public act on all the facts which the generals knew, the authorities presented only certain facts, and these only in such a way as would be most likely to steady people.

•In this case, the men who arranged the pseudo-environment, knew what the real one was.

•Germans had announced through their communiqués that they had taken the fort Douaumont by assault. French didn’t know anything about this assault.

•Headquarters explained, “ A bitter struggle is taking place arounf the Fort de Douaumont which is an advanced post of the old defensive organization of Verdun. The position this morning by the enemy, after several unsuccessful assaults that cost him very heavy losses, has been reached again and passed by our troops whom the enemy has not been able to drive back.”

•London, Feb.26 (1916) “ A furious struggle has been in progress around fort de Douaumont which is an advance element of the old defensive organization of Verdun fortresses. The position captured by the enemy after several fruitless assaults which cost him heavy losses, was reached again and gone beyond by our troops, which all attempts of the enemy have not been able to push back.”

•What had actually happened, differed from both the French and the German accounts. Yet from the communiqué everyone believed that the fort was surrounded. The words did not explicitly say so, but, “the press, as usual, forced the pace.”

According to M. de Pierrefeu, the French command had converted itself to this belief- By an extraordinary aberration of mind, only the attrition of enemy was

seen; it appeared that our forces were not subject to attrition.

We have learned to call this Propaganda.

•Propaganda- A group of men, who can prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose.

•A view was designed by the French command to neutralize the effects of German territorial advances and the impression of power which the persistence of the offensive was making.

-:Censorship in today’s world:-

• Censorship is the control of the information and ideas circulated within a society that has been a hallmark of dictatorships throughout history.

• Dealing with corporate censorship.

• Self-censorship need of the hour in today’s corporate world.

Examples of censorship in India

• Related to French- German attacks

• Many media stations in India provided vast coverage of the Gujarat Riots in 2002 in which a large number of Muslims were murdered but have often failed to report on the persecution of Hindus in Muslim-dominated Jammu & Kashmir. There are also denials of the fact that Indians in general and Hindus in particular are being ethnically cleansed in Kashmir.

Propaganda

• Walter Lipmann – A group of men, who can prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose.

• Now-a day’s media wants to control how we think and how we behave.

• Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is not possible.

• Indirectly, Censorship and propaganda goes hand-in-hand.

•Walter Lipmann says that, without some form of censorship- propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct a Propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event. Access to the real environment must be limited, before anyone can create a pseudo-environment that he thinks wise or desirable.

•Fraction of the whole, they often are arranged to portray a certain, subjective interpretation of an event. Often, those who know the “real” (true) environment construct a favorable, fictitious pseudo-environment in the public mind to suit his or her private needs. 

Money – show me the money

Most of the media is now privately owned and has become a money making business.

-:Privacy:-

• Walter Lipmann – whether the reasons for privacy are good or bad, the barriers exist. Privacy is insisted upon all kinds of places in the area of what is called as public affairs.

• News is controlled not only by censorship but also by the following-

1.Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation2.The Advertising License to Do Business3.Sourcing Mass Media News

Questions • How have you got the facts on which you

base your opinions ?• Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted,

named the thing, about which you have an opinion ?

• Was it the man who told him or who told you, or someone still further removed ?

• And how much was he permitted to see ?• How was he able to watch it ?

-:CONTACT AND OPPORTUNITY:-

• News doesn’t reach everyone at all times

• Rough estimate of the effort it takes to reach everybody can be gauged by considering the government’s propaganda during the war

• The problems arising out of the means of communication are of the utmost importance.

The monopolizing of cables, of ports, fuel stations, mountain passes, canals, straits, river courses, terminals, market places means a barrier upon the exchange of news and opinions. Thus Monopoly acts as one of the barriers.

•Cost and availability are even greater barriers, for if the cost of traveling and trading is prohibitive, if the demand for facilities exceeds the supply, the barriers exist even without monopoly.

•Size of a man’s income is another factor determining the communication process. With money, he can overcome almost every tangible obstacle of communication.

•Self-imposed limitations-•Many a times, the world is waiting to be explored, but people are stuck in their comfort zone, so much that they talk and discuss about the same things and thus, limit their own knowledge.

•Our social set consists of people as in the phrase- “people are saying”, they are the people whose opinions matter the most to us.

-: Social set :-

• Social set is were the set of ideas are derived by a group of people with views and opinions and categories on what coverage of topic should be judged and what should be omitted.

• E.g.: Here let us take in an Indian context where cricket is the life of people; they would accept certain things which according to their point of view are acceptable enough and omit the rest of it.

• A strong site of such a social set is seen when people whose approval matters most intimately with us too.

• For e.g. : Each social set has a fairly clear picture of its relative position in the hierarchy of social sets. Between sets at the same level, association is easy, individuals are quickly accepted, hospitality is normal and unembarrassed. But in contact between sets that are "higher" or "lower," there is always reciprocal hesitation. Which are seen in love marriages

• Social set resembles a biological clan, because it nurture the child with basic values of canon of Family Tradition, Respectability, Propriety, Dignity, Taste & Form.

• This set bounds us spiritually within and during contact with the world too.

• This is where we tend to fix out on what things should be accepted ,what is admissible, and to determine how it shall be judged.

• The enforcement of the judgment itself is formed on patterns that may be inherited from the past, transmitted or imitated from other social sets is what

Lippmann believes .

• Social set plays a role in molding mixture of idea where we come across views from twelve different minds and are capable enough to make our own judgment.

• When we talk about time & attention, it is possible to make out the rough estimation.

• Time can be calculated by the attention we give to any particular topic.

• Three estimates that have been examined considerably in different place and by different methods.

Time and Attention

The Three estimated questions

1.How many hours do they spend on reading a newspaper ?

2.How many newspaper do they read?

3. 5 features which interest them the most ?

• Now ,the other question arise according to the conclusion was how much space certain topics be given according to the interest of readers.

• which can play an important role on seeking the attention.

• But as the circulation increased with a size of newspapers it gave us more than what it gave 20 years back.

• In a penny you get to know the entire world while comfortably sipping tea at your home.

-:SPEED, WORDS AND CLEARNESS:-

• Introduction –

• Competition has become increasingly keen in the area of the mass media as they keep fighting for the attention of the readers, listeners, and TV-viewers.

• Framing and priming

-:WORDS:-

• Language is a communication tool

• It can be used in many different ways to express either the same idea, or a completely different idea

• The problem arises when translators attempt to translate word for word. This can be disastrous because the context in which the words are used is not taken into consideration

• Example - In English "gift" is a present, something positive. In German, "gift" means poison. Simply translating the word gift to another language without taking into account the context can change the original meaning completely

• The unseen environment is reported to us chiefly by words (nouns, adjectives, verbs- 1st)

• Those few words must often for a whole succession of acts, thoughts, feelings and consequences

• The report from the sources is too long for the publication, therefore the correspondents or translators culls an item for the print

• Editing of the news removes its importance as only those issues are primed which will hook readers attention

• It is also highly doubtful that supreme master of style could pack all the elements of the truth that complete justice

• Words can make or break the news

• Representation

• If each fact and each relation had a name that was unique, and if everyone had agreed on the names , it would be possible to communicate without any misunderstanding

• Walter Lipmann says, ‘’A British prime minister speaking to the whole attentive world, speaks his own meaning in his own words to all kinds of people who will see their meaning in those words. No matter how rich or subtle, the more his meaning will suffer as it is sluiced into standard speech and then distributed among alien minds.

• Words can understate or overstate a news(English word ‘AWFUL’)Therefore the reporter has to keep in mind is whatever he writes creates a authentic map in the readers mind

Perception

• There is no certainty that the same word will call out exact the same idea in the reader’s mind as it did in reporter’s

• Dim picture of readers or viewers

Example of ‘bastard’, obituary translation• Perception also includes assumption and

imagination.Example of alien, Japan and Mexico

Translations

• When a word is to be translated we should look after its emphasis that plays on the word

• This happens due to cross cultural differences

• For example, the word "dude" is used as a friendly term between buddies. There may be no equivalent of the same word in another language. So the translator is faced with this problem: What is another word that can be used to express the same meaning? Sometimes, there is a close substitute. Other times, the translator is not so lucky and has to settle for a word that has a totally different meaning. This depends on the language

Clearness-

• It is very difficult to secure a sound public opinion on a certain topic

• Function defines itself very gradually; To complete inexperience this is a coherent and undifferentiated world, in which, all facts are born free and equal (e.g.-children) (Stand of newspaper)(inflation)

Distortion• External- People of a big city are assaulted by incessant

sound, the nights are noisy and ablaze and are the city dweller lacks solitude , silence and ease (lack of attention)(Reaction)

• Internal- experiment shows that the speed, accuracy , and the intellectual quality of association is deranged by what we are taught to call emotional conflicts (bias, economic interest, class prejudice, perception)

• All this factors distort our reading, our thinking, our talking and our behavior in great variety of ways.

• Quality of attention is still further depressed with complexity of an issue, where the people doesn’t exactly know where the issue exactly started.

Conclusion• The environment with which our public opinion

deal is refracted in many ways –

1.Censorship and privacy at the source

2.By physical and social barriers

3.By scanty attention

4.By poverty of language

5.By distraction

6.By monotony and stress

7.Complexity of facts

8.Perception

-: THANK YOU :-