In Matthew Hindman’s article on the first big digital media campaign he uses the example of the Howard Dean campaign talking about how it was the pioneer of using the Internet and political Web sites during his campaign. Dean started off as the underdog in the elections and did ultimately fail, but had it not been for the use of the Internet he would have never raised so much money from small donors, recruited volunteers and gotten such a large grassroots support. Since then many other candidates, such as Obama have also used the Internet as a tool during campaigning, but not as much as he had because he didn’t have as much to lose. The question to be posed is not how he failed, but how he made it so far. Many people say that since Obama has been elected he has not had a strong interactive presence on the Web and this is too bad because it is good for the public to be able to communicate with their president.
In Jarol B. Manheim’s article on strategic Communication he talks about the strategies foreign countries use to make a good image for themselves in the U.S. mass media through services and companies who have access to Washington decision makers. Much of the time this is all propaganda and set up by public relation companies and lobbyists and the public receives a skewed impression of the real issues because they are giving advice of how to communicate with the news media and what to say about their policies. This happens all the time and he gives an example of when the Prime minister from Japan came to America and right before he arrived there was a news report on how the Japanese markets didn’t close as many as Americans might think. This was produced by the Japanese government as a way to change American’s opinion of the country and the timing was not unintentional.
I think that whether the news on foreign countries is good or bad the main importance is that it is true and we are seeing the real picture. Many times the news only covers one side or shows the parts that make them look good and this is not right because the media is the one that has the control of what to show and what not to and people rely on it. It is different with domestic news because people are close to the action and if something is incorrect in the news they can find other alternatives to get the truth, which rarely is possible in foreign news.
by, Katrina Christenson
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