Научно-исследовательская работа "Две страны - одна проблема" с презентацией

МУНИЦИПАЛЬНАЯ НАУЧНО-ПРАКТИЧЕСКАЯ

КОНФЕРЕНЦИЯ “ПОЛИТИКО-ПРАВОВЫЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ”

МАОУ «ЛИЦЕЙ №62» 21.02.2014

Тема: Две страны – одна проблема

Секция: Иностранный язык

Автор: Будовкин Владимир – 11 «А» класс

 МОУ «СОШ № 34 с углубленным изучением

художественно-эстетических предметов»

        Руководитель:

Чернышова Лидия Владимировна

учитель английского языка высшей категории

г. Саратов 2014

Contents:

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Main body

1. Information war &Media manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4

• Media manipulation in the U.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
• Media manipulation in Russia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2. Web-technologies as the way out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
3. Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

3. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12

4. Web sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13

Introduction

It's not a secret that political situation in the world has not been so stable for two last decades: the September 11 attacks in the United States in New York City and the Washington, D.C. in 2001, the armed conflict in Iraq which lasted from 2003 to 2011, the revolution in Egypt and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi by NATO forces in winter 2011… These are just some examples of unstable situation in the world and it’s a well-known fact that the USA was the country which interfered in all the conflicts.

Unfortunately, Russian-American relations are also being quietly worsened during the last century. There are obviously some weighty political reasons to it, but it creates a huge gap in multicultural interactions between the two countries. As a citizen of Russia and a person who cares about the world situation and who wants to live in peace, I decided to make it clear why it happens and what to do.

The aim of my research work is to find out the reasons of the gap between the two countries and try to help our societies grow faster using our countries’ experiences and provide closer contacts between people of the two nations.

The main tasks are:

• Attracting students to languages, cultures, forming their own political outlook
• Educating a new generation, which won’t be limited with its country’s media and will be able to construct a more realistic social and economical model based on multicultural experience
• Stabilizing the international situation

Methods of researching:

• The questionnaire
• Web-technologies
• Data analysis

The practical value of my work is helping people of our countries understand each other’s cultures better, making them think wider and analyze the present situation more properly.

Main body

Information war & Media manipulation

At the time of Gorbachev and Yeltsin Americans were perceived by Russians as a friendly nation. People were perplexed about Hollywood movies, where all Russians were impolite rude bandits. Now we can observe a similar process in the Russian Media. We get more negative information about the US. It's a great example of media manipulation. The Iron Curtain collapsed more than two decades ago, but nowadays we have a similar situation: a"Media bandage" on every person's eyes. It's nearly impossible to find any truth at the ocean of chaotic information. In hindsight, it seems that America’s use of the Russian word “peregruzka” (“overloaded”) instead of “perezagruzka” ("reload") in 2009 on Clinton-Lavrov meeting was somehow appropriate.

The impact of public relations cannot be underestimated. In the commercial world, marketing and advertising are typically needed to make people aware of products. There are many issues in that area alone. When it comes to propaganda for purposes of war, for example, professional public relations firms can often be involved to help sell a war. In cases where a war is questionable, the PR firms are indirectly contributing to the eventual and therefore unavoidable casualties. Media management may also be used to promote certain political views and ideologies. Where it is problematic for the citizenry is when media reports on various issues do not attribute their sources properly.

Techniques used by governments in media manipulation include:

• Paying journalists to promote certain issues without the journalists’ acknowledging this, or without the media mentioning the sources.
• Governments and individuals’ contracting PR firms to sell a war, or other important issues.
• Disinformation or partial information reported as news or facts without attributing sources that might be questionable.
• PR firms feeding stories to the press without revealing the nature of the information with the intention of creating a public opinion (for example, to support a war, even human rights groups fell for some of the disinformation, thus creating an even more effective propaganda campaign.
• National TV controlled by the government effectively shapes public opinion by boosting, playing down or ignoring any figure or event. 

        Media manipulation in the U.S.        

In March 2005, the New York Times revealed that there has been a large amount of fake and prepackaged news created by US government departments, such as the Pentagon, the State Department and others, and disseminated through the mainstream media. The New York Times noted a number of important issues including:

• The US Bush administration has “aggressively” used public relations to prepackage news. Issues with this have included that:
• A number of these government-made news segments are made to look like local news (either by the government department or by the receiving broadcaster)
• Sometimes these reports have fake reporters such as when a ‘reporter’ covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration
• Other times, there is no mention that a video segment is produced by the government.
• Where there is some attribution, news stations simply rebroadcast them but sometimes without attributing the source
• These segments have reached millions
• This benefits both the government and the broadcaster
• This could amount to propaganda within the United States as well as internationally
• Photographs manipulations: photos produced to artificially inflate the size of crowds listening to a speech by George Bush for example.

American tax payers have paid to be subjected to propaganda disseminated through these messages.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many of them were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.

The administration’s efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations...

Some reports were produced to support the administration’s most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters... They often feature “interviews” with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.

The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent,” the Time also notes.

Media manipulation in Russia

Russia has a number of smaller-audience media guided by professional skills and standards. But the existing free media remain irrelevant when the political process is tightly controlled. 

In today’s Russia the function of the media is strongly curtailed: it does not promote political competition or hold the government to account on the people’s behalf. Instead the media are reduced to being a political tool of the state or marginalized to a point of making no difference in policy-making.

Vladimir Putin came with a resentful vision, shared by the majority of his nation, that the post-communist years were a period of weakness and humiliation for Russia that the West repeatedly took advantage of. He undertook to persuade the West to see Russia as a power to be reckoned with, but these attempts proved unsuccessful: from the war in Iraq to continued NATO expansion, Western foreign policy decisions were taken without regard to Russia’s objections. Moreover, the West continuously criticized Russia for its undemocratic politics and encroachment on rights and freedoms. Seeing the West show more lenience towards other post-communist countries, Putin regarded the Western focus on democracy and human rights as nothing more than a pretext to harm Russia. As the Kremlin rhetoric grew increasingly anti-Western it was eagerly accepted by the people.

In Putin’s Russia, the media which provide coverage of political and public affairs may be roughly divided into two categories. The first is the largest mass-audience media, especially national TV channels, which reach almost 100 per cent of Russian households. The three major national channels are used as tools of state propaganda in a way that is increasingly reminiscent of the Soviet days. The second category includes a variety of smaller-audience outlets – print, radio, websites and smaller TV stations. This category is of less interest for the ruling elite as a political resource, but all the Russian media operate on the understanding that loyalty to the state is the order of the day. In Moscow media circles ‘irreverent and ironic’ journalists are not uncommon, and some even dare investigate abuses of state authority, but in the controlled political environment the existing elements of free media are essentially irrelevant for policy-making.

Putin was not the first Russian leader to use television for political purposes. Television was instrumental in Yeltsin’s 1996 election victory over a popular communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov; it played an equally crucial role four years later, when the elites put up Putin himself as a status quo candidate against their political rivals.

There is a major difference, however, between the political landscape under Yeltsin and under Putin. Under the former president, the political environment was fiercely competitive. The Russian media, too, offered a diverse and lively picture.

Just as Putin undertook to eliminate political competition, very early in his presidency, also moved to get rid of pluralism on television. Both projects proved to be equally – and highly – effective. In cleansing the political scene of any challengers to the supreme ruler.

At various times national television has effectively shaped anti-Ukrainian, anti-Georgian, anti-Estonian and anti-American sentiments.

It is not that the Russian people are unaware of the manipulative nature of Russian politics, and national television in particular, but they can’t change anything.

Regional governments are less squeamish or subtle. Local authorities frequently settle scores, in a heavy-handed way, with local media outlets

The mass-audience channels are playing down the gravity of the crisis; their coverage is, as usual, focused on Russia’s leaders, who are shown firmly in charge and taking good care of the people. So as not to arouse unwelcome public reaction, the mass protests that took place in the Russian Far East in December 2008 simply went unreported. But the government may be facing a serious dilemma: if the gap between life on the screen and hard everyday realities gets too broad, television may no longer prove an efficient tool in maintaining social and political stability.

For the first time since Putin became president and moved to reconsolidate the state, there is a chance of a reverse swing: a rise of societal activity and political pluralism. This would enable the media to regain political relevance and reassume the role of serving the public interest. But a darker scenario is far from ruled out: in seeking to pre-empt or suppress public protests and political turmoil, the government may opt for a further crackdown and isolationist, anti-Western policies.

Web-technologies as the way out

The only one way we can resist to info-media war is to have as many information sources as we can and to be aware of all the real information. Foreign friends may be such a powerful source.

We entered a new age of enormous information streams where all limits are being erased one by one. Borders don't separate countries anymore, the whole world is united with the global network and nowadays people can share ideas and grow wherever they are. The world turned into a «Global Village».

There're many international chats, messengers and programs where people from different countries can talk and explore new cultures and make new friends: Skype, Chatroulette, Windows Messenger, Kik messenger, Whats-up etc. For a couple of years some schools in Russia and other countries have been already using them for international conversations (to improve language skills, to get the information, to develop new methods of teaching, etc.)

 If all schools and universities used international communication programs in teaching, students would be less hypnosed with media manipulation tools and international relations would be warmer.

Questionnaire:

In the process of studying the subject I decided to find out the attitude of some young people (aged 15-27) of both countriesto the problem of media manipulation and their wish to communicate.I made a questionnaire and asked some English-speaking Russians and Americans three questions on Internetand here are the results:

As we see from these pie charts, the largest part of people in both countries think that the information they get from the mass media is not completely truthful,many people communicate with foreigners and get some other views on different situations in their country.Even though Russian-American political relations are pretty cold, people of the two nations are willing to get in touch.

Thus, media manipulation is getting less efficient and probably we will be able to get rid of it in the future if we try to understand each other and get closer. It will provide us many international sources of information.

Conclusion

In fact, we live in a time of ongoing information war, where no one can be trusted and the gap between how the world is and how powerful interests try to portray it has grown dramatically wider. Governments use media for their political games and not to bring real information into masses. Virtually nothing in public debate these days is free of the virus of fakery....Today information distortions are much more easily injected.

As I have found out, regardless of the underlying reasons media-war exists and must be countered. Most readers and consumers of information and news are intelligent and can often judge for themselves how much validity to give a particular source but the majority do not have the time to investigate and take a closer look at the information they are presented. Most of their time is spent in digesting the information they are given and this is exactly what those who wish to manipulate the media count on. Unfortunately, this occurs so regularly that media-manipulators have become emboldened and rely on this fact.

We have a rare chance to resist to those small political groups which rule the world using their own tools. The Internet, though contains terabytes of fake information, connects people and since it is not out of law to tell the truth freely, people can get a more realistic view on all ongoing events.

Web sources

http://voiceofrussia.com/2012_07_18/Media-bias-US-coverage-of-Russia/http://www.carnegie.ru/publications/?fa=37199

http://www.russianlessons.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=715

http://www.rus-ameeduforum.com/content/en/

http://tnu.podelise.ru/docs/index-213561.html

http://www.globalissues.org/article/532/media-manipulation#FakeNews