Communication Making The World Less Tolerant

angkor writes "Interesting NY Times magazine article with a contrarian viewpoint: "In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place." " Reg. required blah blah - but the point the author makes is interesting - what if all the hubbaloo about connecting people via the Internet makes us less likely to like each other?

Comments

TV and the Internet

[56ker]

"global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place." - only because by the time people stop doing one of these activities they're either
1. annoyed
2. suffering from a short attention span

or both!

Seeing people at their worst ...

[Titusdot Groan]

My brother is a cop and he said one of the most important things you have to do as a cop is remember that you are sometimes seeing basically good people on the worst day of their entire lives; that not everybody you meet is criminal scum.

This is the same problem with the media; we are always seeing the culture at it's worst or only seeing the worst parts of it's culture. You don't see the bakers, clerks, teachers, nurses, doctors, scientists of a culture you see it's brutal armies and tyrannical leaders, it's terrorists and suicide bombers.

This is the real source of intolerance -- you never see anything from the bulk of foreign cultures that are worth saving.

Education is the key

[ZigMonty]

The sad thing is that our education systems don't teach us to question the news. I remember being in my social studies class and we read the the news and treated it like it was all the facts.

Here in Australia, we in High School (senior year) had a term topic called "Representations of Truth" which basically drilled into us a distrust of everything the media says. Apparently, courses like this come up about every ten years or so but, usually, they're gone in a year or two. Someone doesn't like it.

IMHO, the article's right. The big problem is the one-sidedness of the media. The Egyptian youth only see pictures glorifying suicide bombers, while we only see pictures of barbarians who dared to attack the West, the torchbearer of everything that is good and just in the world </sarcasm>.

The people who said global media would bring peace weren't wrong. We just *don't have* a global media. We have two separate propaganda machines, one on the Islamic side (or wherever) and one on our side. We need full, unbiased reporting, not the fear and hate mongering that has filled our screens since September 11. The media shapes public opinion. Most people will believe what they're told to believe.

But then again, I'm just a kid. What would I know?

Consumptive vs Creative Media

[lysurgon]

What the media provide is superficial familiarity -- images without context, indignation without remedy. The problem isn't just the content of the media, but the fact that while images become international, people's lives remain parochial

The author is (I think) talking about passive media here: sattelite broadcasts and CNN.com. The real value of an interconnected globe will only be realized when individuals worldwide are engaged in creating the media discourse, not merely consuming it.

As has already been noted the current "golbal media" is more like a series of biased propaganda machines with a global scope than anything else. I can read kavkaz.org and get a different viewpoint from CNN.com, but I don't know where I can log into a chat room and actually talk with a real person "over there".

It goes all the way back to the cluetrain: until the people are interconnecting and building the discourse with their own hearts and minds and stories, we will never create a social fabric that can resist being torn by demogaguery, be it from facistic leaders or bias news outlets.

Hopefully this interconnection is already happening, but it's going to take time. We (America/The West) are fairly settled into our consumer culture mode. Unless we really decide to take it upon ourselves to become citizens of our own nation and the world, we're not even going to be able to approach the utopian ideal of a global community.