[Comment] War culture - a greenhouse for human violence

I recently purchased a book edited by Colleen Roach,PhD. Its title is "Communication and Culture in War and Peace."

The first article authored by the editor stresses the covert effect of War Culture - e.g. video games, war toys, and Rambo movies. I agree with the concern the author has. As Dr. Tawil Souri argued in her presentation at AoIR (title: From Real to Virtual Conflict: Palestinian Kids and On-line Games), online virtual games are utilized for hightening the level of hatred.

It's not surprising because major game companies enhanced the reality of their violent games by recruiting generals and admirals from the military. Palestine's resistance by making another game shows the dilemma mankind confront... Who can blame them? Who cannot blame them?

The delicate hands of children are clicking the surreal combats. They are killing people in the present tense.

[comment] Google as a peacemaker?

One of Korean newspaper (Jonjashinmun) reported that Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google company, asserted in Nikkei Forum 2005 in Japan that IT technology will save human beings: e.g. Google earth's realtime photo service saved around 4 thousand people in the area damaged by hurricane Katrina. If that is true, it shows literally thatl technology saves the world. He added that Google Earth shows just 1 percent of total information over the world, so realization of potential information use would make the global peace possible.

Personally, I have argued that subculture media like Weblog could save the world with the power of its realtime interactivity. That's why Schmidt's remark http://news.naver.com/news/read.php?mode=LSD&office_id=030&article_id=0000121762§ion_id=102&menu_id=102 attracted my interest. What do you think about IT tech and global peace?

[info] A suggestion of "the second Marshall Plan for global peace"

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050616-101028-4888r

Breaking the cycle of violence
By Ed O'Rourke

She/He suggests that true peace is possible not by advanced warfare but by commerce, diplomacy, science, technology, education, international law and human investment.

The most impressive remarks by Ed O'Rourke are:

"An old saying is that you cannot have peace as long as you have injustice."

"World peace can be achieved if there is serious attention to the root cause of conflict and terrorism. A second Marshall Plan for the world's poor will be far more effective than airport security and anti-terrorism measures in reducing the number of desperate people who do desperate things."

What do you think?

[info] Jang Kim's three presentations about conflict.

I presented three papers at AoIR6.0 at Chicago. AoIR is a research community based on multidiscipline approach whose members are devoted to internet studies. My three papers are

1. Blog as an oppositional medium?: A Semantic Network Analysis on the Iraq War Blogs

2. Web as a battlefield: A Semantic Network Analysis through the GoogleTM Search for International Conflicts 1997-2001, coauthored with George A. Barnett & Yon Soo Lim

and

3. The Effect of Cognitive Complexity on Information-Seeking Behavior on the Web, collaborately authored by Jang Kim, Kyoosang Choi, and George A. Barnett.

You might be curious why no.3 belongs to peace research, but its experiment is about searching information about the Iraq War.

If you feel interested in AoIR, go here and consider joining it. Jang.

[comment] International conflict as an economic sacrifice

I'm looking for some information about arms trade and during the process I found one article by chance:

Economic analysis of conflict
Todd Sandler
The Journal of Conflict Resolution; Dec 2000; 44, 6;
pg. 723

Sandler said:
"If people have to spend some of their resources guarding their possessions and the fruits of their labor, there are fewer resources for productive activities. In addition, there is less incentive to produce as the probability increases that this production can be stolen." (p.723)

Media coverage about global conflict usually focuses on its tragedic scene or violence itself, but not on what people are really losing. People tend to be interested in how much budget is spent on the war, not in how many jobs are lost because of it. This article gave me a good insight about conflict.

[info] An education video for peace information search

Even if somewhat outdated, I found one useful videotape for information searching in terms of peace processes. The tape was produced not for peace education, but the example it used was Palestine-Israel peace process information. Its running time is 23 minutes and it includes diverse way of web searching such as boolean search, category search and snow-balling. I'd like to use this video for my peace communication class.

link

[book] A book about peace journalism

A BBC journalist, Jake Lynch, who has been to lots of war spots wrote a book Peace Journalism. If I teach "peace communication" course next year, I'd introduce this book to my students.
Book info http://www.hawthornpress.com/books/peace-jn.html

Amazon.com link to Jake Lynch http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author-exact=Jake%20Lynch&rank=-relevance%2C%2Bavailability%2C-daterank/102-9215580-0411366

[book] Ashley's impression about Lowery & DeFleur, 1995.

One of my colleagues, Ashley Anker, read a book (Lowery and DeFleur 1995), and expressed her opinion about violence and media. http://schoolof.info/ashley/?p=15

Direct quotation below:

"The chapter entitled “Violence and the Media: The Turbulent Sixties” within “Milestones in Mass Communication Research” (Lowery & DeFleur, 1995) struck me as being quite time dependent and socially constructed. This study was conducted during the late 1960’s, when America was experiencing such violent events as the Vietnam War, increasing crime, and rioting and demonstrations in cities (Lowery & DeFleur, 1995). Lowery and DeFleur show how this study conducted a content analysis of violence in the media, and also explored adult’s experiences with and attitudes toward violence."

Here are different view from Carolyn http://schoolof.info/carolynhurley/?p=21 and Derek http://schoolof.info/lackaff/?p=18

Book info at Barnes&Noble http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=Lf4b2jABSg&isbn=0801314372&TXT=Y&itm=1

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

[info] The Iraq War and US's image

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4064

One of the advisory committee to Dept of States admitted that the Iraq War critically damaged the reputation of the United States.

[info] a public discourse at crisis: Al Gore

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/26494/

Al Gore points out that out public sphere is at crisis with such a contaminated information source as Television news. By the way, Mr. Gore, what have you done to change such status quo?

Jang.

[book] The crowds, not the majority, are right

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

If you visit this link, you can re-evaluate the power of crowds which has been distorted as "populism" The decision of crowds, in many cases, lead to proper political processes. In a road to global peace, we might rely on the crowd's power organized by the Internet communication.

Jang.