Welcome to Readings in Mass Communication, fall 2006!
The purpose of this course is to prepare students with in-depth knowledge of the concepts and key resources needed to conduct research on journalism and mass communication topics.
This course will expose students to the discipline's research resources: canon of books, databases, bibliographies, journals, and other scholarly works.
About Me
- Dr. Wachanga
- University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Wisconsin, United States
- Teaching, research and community service
6 comments:
Have you been following the eruption of words and demonstartions after Pope Benedict XIV remarks last week? Basing his comments on a conversation between a Persian and a 14th Century Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, the Holy Father said:
"Emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, went on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.God is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats."
And this has opened a Pandora's box.
Arabic newspapers Al-Quids Al-Arabi in London said the Pope's allegations "were more offensive than the anti-prophet Danish cartoons because they came from a Christian religious authority".
On Saturday, the Vatican issued a statement, saying "The Holy Father is sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers." The Pope's stand is that the Church "esteems Muslims, who adore the only God."
Any possibility that Pope's remark will add venom to the so-called 'Islamofascists?' Just a thought. What do you think?
Class, (This is from Sarah Junek)
here's my opinion. I'm interested in hearing yours.
The Pope is out of touch or he intended to be that irresponsible for political purposes. Has he taken Islamics 101? If I've learned one thing from personal experience, you are shooting yourself in the foot to say anything negative about Mohammed and expect a reasonable discussion. It is understandable if you study the religion. He is the core of the faith. To demean him, according to the Quran, requires Muslims to respond in his defense. It's not the same as picking on Jesus or Buddha, or the Pope. Period. The Pope should know that. And, in such a respected and high religious position, he should also know that Jesus never once pointed fingers outside his own community. I guess I would have expected him to be more responsible in following that example.
Representing the universal church, should he comment on matters outside his house? What does the Christian faith say about non-believers? How should we treat them? His response annoyed me, though it seemed helpful it was still pointing fingers. Jesus pointed fingers at his own religious leaders for their injustice, and that was it. He broke all the "rules" and we, Christians and Muslims, at times seem to think we are good by keeping them all. How frustrating. I have found in all my conversations with Muslims, I have more in common with them than I realize, in so many ways. Dialogues are more helpful than debates any day. So why use that language?
Islam is already in reformation. They will find their own Martin Luther from among themselves. It's foolishness to think an outsider could reform anything. The Pope's criticism on the matter isn't credible. Do we like it when Iran tells us how immoral we are? To them it's fact, but do we listen? No, it's out of our paradigm to think we Americans are immoral. We seem to enjoy judging others without looking at ourselves from their perspective.
We're just pouring salt on a wound. Words matter, and they are going to matter even more as these two trains head toward each other. If we boil this whole thing down to free speech, that is elementary as well. It is far more than free speech. It is miscommunication at its core.
Furthermore, the statement itself is wishy-washy philosophy and not even accurate. Just to point out facts, the God of the Bible is pleased by blood, as demonstrated in the history of the Jewish law of blood sacrifice required for the payment of sins.
Besides that point, no one can doubt violence has been around a long time. Questions about violence abound. There is so much of it. Shouldn't we accept it as a fact of human existence by now, that maybe it IS part of our nature to be selfish, evil? Is it more mysterious than we'd like to admit? Is the Divine more involved than we'd like to think in our decisions toward the good. Perhaps, are we not as in control as we think we are? Sounds like western ideological imposition on the Divine to me. Really can we "figure this all out?" We can't reason away violence no matter how hard we try.
The statement is the perfect example of how much we need to get outside our perspective if we're ever going to engage Islam with any sense of reasonability, and that is the most ironic thing about the whole scenario!!!!!!!!!!!
The Pope would do better to assess his own house rather than judge his enemy, at least in public.
In the words of Bugs Bunny, "them's fightin words." How he didn't see that coming is beyond me.
Well, that's my opinion. I'm sure it is a little stiff, and one-sided. So, other views. I'm not offended if you disagree. What do you think? Hope I've sparked your interest to submit a comment or two. I value your perspective.
Class,- From Shazia -
First, I would like to mention that Prophet Mohammed is loved by the Muslims
more than anything. According to Islam, He was the reason God (Allah)
created this universe.
So being a Muslim I was offended by the pope's remarks. And when I saw the
explanation of these remarks “the speech was an invitation to respectful
dialogue” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5353208.stm), I couldn’t
believe that a person at his level thinks that offensive remarks could start
a “respectful dialogue”.
If Islam was spread by sword, then all of India and Spain had been converted
to Islam under 800 years of Muslim rule. On the contrary, no Muslim army
went to Indonesia and Malaysia and now these countries have largest Muslim
population.
Shazia
Thank you Sarah for your contribution to this debate.
Your use of the concept "community of meaning" is subtle. But one may ask: What brings or ties members of any community together? There are a number of significant commonalities but key among them is the world view of community members. Again, what is world view? Simply stated, it is the sum total of philosophies that characterize the complex body of beliefs about human life; a systematic sharing of experiences that provides an outlook or a view point; a perspective. Within this complexity of sharing a world view, members of a community assess what is relevant to them. They forge an outlook where mores, norms, and values dominate social action. What is creates is what Germans call Weltanschauung, a particular way of looking at the world, a conceptual field of vision. It is from this framework that we start identifying members who are part of our community and those who are not, the "others." Collective world view allows creation of common customs, language, and lived experiences.
Elfreda Chatman calls your "community of meaning" a " small world."
Patrick Wilson, in First Hand and Second Hand Knowledge, creatively provides a clearer understanding of what is a perspective:
What you see, what will appear in your field of vision, depends on where you are and in what direction you are looking. The closer we are to some features of social life, the bigger it seems to us, bigger in the sense of importance, salience, significance, bigger in the sense that it occupies a larger share of attention, effort, interest, reflection.
Tied to perspective is Erving Goffman's framing concept, which we often use in news reporting. Given our view point, we interpret and create events from occurrences. This is a process of signifying from a vast pool of daily occurrences. We decide what is significant and attention grabbing. We create a frame, which is a scheme of interpretation where features of the world we attend to are organized, made intelligible, and given "meaning." But meaning is not objective.
Your friends in Uzbekistan occupy a " small world" and understandably "see" things differently.
It took me more than 20 hour to get to this country. When I finally arrived, I met Dr. Land. " I am very tired after this long flight." I said
" I know" he replied. ---- If he knows, why, then am I telling him?? I would have taken his response to be rude had I not known him before.
Thanks,
Dw
(From Sarah Junek)
Thank you Shazia.
I am sorry too for the "unreasonable" approach.
Honestly, my first reaction was, "Great another thing I have to
apologize for."
Dr. Wachanga's right. There is such potential for hurt beneath
communication across borders, unless we get to know each other. My
Uzbek family grew to see me as a friend, but being very traditional
and non-western friendly, I had a lot to learn from them and they
were tough teachers. They broke the news to me one morning about the
Abu Gharib torture. I couldn't understand it all, but left the table
knowing we had done something bad in Iraq. That was when I realized
I had taken a huge risk jumping into their community of meaning. It
was personal and it was real. They were hurt and it damaged our
friendship. I represented everything they didn't understand.
I rarely talked about religion with them even though they asked
because I knew my attempt to "communicate" would probably offend them
more than anything. So instead of teach, I learned their religious
holidays, participated in Ramadan, and adopted meaningful sayings to
express my respect for them. The more language I picked up, the more
I could see the world the way they saw it. I even caught myself
walking around talking about what a beautiful country Uzbekistan
was. It is, if you understand it. I found more in common with them
than I thought I would and they did too. They were so suspicious,
but by the end, the grandmother especially saw me as her daughter. I
made a lot of mistakes with them though. And, thanks to them, I have
a new warped view of the world that's about 40% Uzbek. So I guess
you can thank your family for screwing you up no matter where they're
from. ; ) Ah family. It's a good problem to have. I don't mind. I
owe them a lot for teaching me about family. That's the risk when
you do decide to engage, it eventually gets to you.
Shazia, I hope the west can do a better job of not adding fuel to the
fire in the future, but the only way that will happen is if we engage
Islam more respectfully. I couldn't agree with you more. Obviously
we do not know this community as well as we should. Americans,
though, historically prefer isolation or teaching, rather than
learning. The new Pope had a chance for being known for something
positive in the Muslim world. This quote, thanks to the media's
added edge, will be remembered in the Muslim world for as long as
this generation lives. It makes it so much easier to just write us
off as people who just don't get them. We don't because we just
don't want to.
sarah
One thing PR students should note from T.O's controversy is that Kim Etheredge is a publicist, not a Public Relations professional!!
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