Global Media News

Global Media News Webcast Spring Premiere!

Our Global Media News Spring Premiere!

Global Media News for Thursday, January 30, 2013

Global Media News is a weekly webcast covering media news from around the world.  GMN is a production of  Media Studies students from the SUNY College @ Old Westbury.   We scour the web for news about the world's media.

This week on Global Media News: 

• Social Media News from Great Britain: Confronting Abuse on Twitter
• Young Saudis Go Digital and the Authorities Are Nervous!
• Kenyan Author Binyavanga Wainaina Came Out Online:  What Happened?
• Sochi Censorship:  What is Putin Thinking?
• Rape Coverage in Afghanistan: Does the Media Help?
• Hollande's Affairs:  Shoud the French Media Cover the President's Private Parts?
• Blogging in Vietnam:  More Censorship?

This is our first webcast of the season!   See you next week!

Listen to our next webcast from the New Media Newsroom  streaming live on Thursday, February 6 @ 11am EST.

Can't listen live? Our next webcast of the season will be posted by 2:00pm, Thursday, February 6, 2014.

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China's Internet Hacked? Possibly Work of Own Government

    Chinese Authorities are saying that they have been a victim of internet hacking. As Amy Qin reports that an hour long internet blockage may not have been caused by a group of hackers but by possibly the Chinese government itself. The state run newspaper reported that the abrupt stoppage of internet traffic was caused by a "mysterious attack" on the internet in China. "The Great Firewall" stopped all internet users in China from accessing .net,.org, and .com's.

    The issue of censorship in China continues to be a problem for the government and for the people. It seems that the government is really censoring internet usage for the people and the people might be catching on to what their government is doing in regards to censoring them from certain things. The fact that they can control the news and mask their censorship by saying that hackers are responsible is troubling to me.

    This story really gets to me because it shows the capabilities of a government. It makes you think about  your life and your government and the possibility of this happening to you. It shows the raw power of news and media.

Canada to Stop Delivering Mail to City Homes

An article written by Ian Austen in the New York Times from Waterloo, Ontario features how the Canadian Postal Service would stop home delivery for over the next five years, and try to increase postal rates in doing so. Canada would be the first group to end all residential mail delivery in cities and suburbs. This would make things very hard for employees, and people who are trying to get hired by the Canadian Postal Service. It is calculated that almost 8,000 jobs would disappear.

This would not only be an inconvenience to an individual who was looking for a job with the Canadian Postal Service, but also for the average person who goes out to their mailbox right outside their home to get the important information they need on a daily basis. Now Canadians who live in the cities would have to pick up their mail and parcels at a community mailbox. The Canadian Postal Service does not just make it harder for you to get your mail; they also want to raise the price of stamp booklets from 63 cents to 85 cents.

Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party leader criticized the Canadian Postal Service by saying that "They took a major step without any advance notice or discussion with customers". The leader of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Denis Lemelin, called the rise in postage rates and cutbacks were "shortsighted and foolish".

The ultimate plan for the Canadian Postal Service is to cut costs, and make a more competitive Postal Service, But what about all the much older, and disabled citizens who stop getting home delivery? No one seems to have a plan for them. Dwayne Winseck a communications professor from Carleton University in Ottawa said "the end of postal delivery was a pivotal moment in Canadian History. The Canadian Postal Service must now find spaces in congested areas to squeeze in communal boxes for five million households, and it is going to be hard.

Hungarian Musician Shows Media's Obsession of Photoshop

A singer from Hungary has released a music video revealing the usage of photoshop by media outlets around the globe. Boggie performs her song "Nouveau Parfum" while a shocking visual transformation takes place. The music video starts off with her as a regular person and by the end of the video, she is hardly recognizable due to so much digital enhancement.

The reasoning behind the video, according to Boggie, was "to lift the lid on the lack of reality in celebrity culture and advertising." Media outlets around the globe constantly use photoshop to glorify ads or make celebrities more appealing. From viewing this video, the changes that a few clicks of a mouse can make are alarming.

In today's media, like it always has, "sex sells." With that being said, it's important that advertisers display beautiful women and handsome men in order to deliver their products in a more convincing way. Magazines are the biggest culprit of editing pictures to make people look better. Specifially, models are constantly edited to be made more visually appealing.

Photoshop has also caused a global epidemic in putting pressure on people to meet unrealistic physical expectations, especially in young women. Many actresses, dancers, and other professions are told that "they're too fat" and need to lose weight, even though they are maintaining a healthy body weight. Model Kate Upton has been criticized of being "fat," as has actress Jennifer Lawrence.

The most important message that I think Boggie is trying to portray is that it's ok to be yourself and you should be happy for who you are. The expression "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" can be used here and having yourself edited to a point of being unrecognizeable is absurd. Photoshop may be keeping media outlets alive, but they're slowing killing who celebrities really are.

 

Below is the music video for Boggie's song "Nouveau Parfum." As the video progresses, viewers with no prior knowledge of Boggie would not recognize the woman at the end of the video.

 

 

Pete Seeger: Still Got a Last Verse that Holds Out Some Hope!

Sing Out! Pete Seeger died today.  His memory, his voice will live on in the hearts of everyone who sings for a better world.   A great American hero,  a great loss.  Don't mourn,  Organize.

"Don't let me holler by myself"  -- Watch This:

"Sounds good when you all join in.  Those Old Songs will never die."

Un Rest in Bangkok, Thailand

 

 One of the articles that I read was "Thai Leaders Declare State of Emergency in Bangkok By Thomas Fuller"  The prime Minister of Bangkok Thailand issued a state of emergency last Tuesday January 21^st 2014. By issuing a state of Emergency in Bangkok this is to say that the Prime Minister is using a more forceful stance against protesters who have been swarming  the streets of Bangkok for the last two or so months. Some of the protesters have been swarming around officials offices so that they can't get into the office.  In addition people are swarming  major streets and having marches and demonstrations. By declaring a state of emergency in Bangkok this allows for curfews to be enforced, censor the news media, and to use the military in order to enforce order in Bangkok.  The Prime Minister said that it was crucial to demand a state of emergency due to the fact that people have blocked official offices and also banks  which is illegal. In addition to people blocking official offices and banks people have harassed government officials. By instituting the state of emergency it allows Thailand to move forward and also allows the democratic process to move forward.   The picture above demonstrates the protest going on in the streets of Bangkok.  

The other article that I read was “Social media 'major' protest medium by Local News" Occurring to the Bangkok Post Mr. Teera expects that the base of communication amongst the protesters and the officials will be mainly by social media. The type of social media that Mr. Teera thinks will be used will be national television as well as major newspapers.  In the recent year some of the most common use of social media includes Line and Facebook. Line and facebook have emerged from only being used as a Communication application to being one of the top mega platforms. I think that both of these articles demonstrate how much unrest is going on in Bangkok, Thailand. Hopefully the unrest will calm down and people will stop trying to overthrow the government.

 

 

 

Twitter faces backlash over rape-threat tweets

    I decided to go on CNN.com and research social media and I came across this article that sparked my attention.  I use twitter quit frequently as do many people around the world. In my opinion twitter should be used to communicate with friends or promote onesself, especially if you are a celebrity of some kind.  Unfortunetly, twitter has been used to insult people on a regular basis. This is taking insulting to a whole different level.

    A feminist, Caroline Criado-Perez, from England protested that woman should be displayed on British banknotes and as a result, there were about "50 sexually-abusive tweets per hour." Police were able to locate this man and he was arrested in Manchester, England.  This was not taken lightly by people and especially by Twitter UK's General Manager Tony Wang, who stated "the social-networking company takes online abuse very seriously, offering to suspend accounts, and called on people to report any "violation of Twitter rules."

    UK Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote a letter to Wang stating, "Despite the scale and seriousness of these threats, the official response from Twitter continues to be extremely weak -- simply directing Caroline away from Twitter towards the police, and, belatedly, directing users to abuse-reporting forms on Twitter."

    Although, twitter has the report tweet button once something is on the internet and seen by millions of people there is no erasing it from people's minds or preventing other tabloid sites from uploading it onto their sites. I feel that there should be a some kind of blocker that actually is able to decode very offensive tweets preventing them from even being allowed on twitter.  The fact that this man was allowed to openly tweet such offensive things to a woman who was simply protesting in what she believed in is appalling.  People that make offensive tweets should be banned from twitter as well as any social media outlet because what is stopping them from making offensive facebook posts as well.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/29/tech/twitter-criado-perez-abuse-media-reaction/index.html?iref=allsearch

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