Journal articles on the topic 'Radio Broadcasting to Cuba (Organization)'

By 1946, Cuban–US relations had become strained over radio. Broadcasting from each nation repeatedly crossed borders and interfered with radio reception in the other country. The 1946 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) attempted to remedy that problem. This account of the impassioned reactions and heated rhetoric surrounding the 1946 NARBA underscores the enduring strength of national and regional identities in a globalizing world. Encounters with US radio programming in Cuba inspired Cubans to fight for distinctly Cuban radio interests. The resulting 1946 NARBA, which imposed new restrictions on US broadcasting to benefit Cuba, provoked farmers from California and Arizona, who – as those who believed they were the most affected by the new restraints imposed on US radio – railed against their government’s acquiescence. Their reactions, in fact, were deeply entangled with the complex history of US identity formation, which had from the nation’s earliest years privileged specific regional loyalties that coexisted alongside both local and national ones. It is, in sum, a story that shows how in certain contexts audiences can and will resist globalizing influences by leaning on their existing national, regional, and local identities that provide meaning in their world.

The article is devoted to the identification of specific features of social management of the editorial office of a modern radio station. The purpose of this article is to consider various aspects of the management of a modern radio station, on the example of “Echo of Moscow” to identify the principles of its functioning, the interaction of editorial staff with the target audience. The objectives of the study include consideration of such concepts as “format”, “programming”, “formatting” of radio broadcasting, as well as factors affecting the effectiveness of management, such as the potential of employees, means of production, culture of organization, leadership of the head of mass media, classroom factor; analysis of the classification of modern radio stations; identification of specific for modern socio-political radio “Echo of Moscow” methods of team management and work with the audience. Today, like other mass media, radio has become a mobile source of broadcasting. This factor has transformed the style of broadcasting and the content of radio programs in General. “Echo of Moscow” is a universal radio station on the thematic focus of broadcasting, but it is focused mainly on broadcasting news, special attention is paid to news of politics and culture, reviews of the press, conversations with guests who are experts on various socially significant issues. The organizational structure of the radio station “Echo of Moscow” should be considered to the structure of the linear-functional type, in which the full power takes over the linear head, who heads the team. This structure has both pros and cons. The editorial office of the radio station “Echo of Moscow” is a social organization in which specific relationships are formed, due to the organizational structure of the enterprise and the overall goal of the team. Mutual assistance, team spirit, willingness to help, both in professional activities and at the interpersonal level, speak of the formation of corporate relations in the team of “Echo of Moscow”. Joint events, collective events unite employees and help to solve the branding problem, contribute to the promotion of the media and strengthen its positive reputation.

The article concerns the first two years (1992-1993) of the formation of commercial broadcasting in Ukraine. It studies the factors that influenced the creation of the first commercial radio stations, which gradually attempted to switch from a “game mode” to the broadcasting business and business entrepreneurship. The activity of the first ten commercial radio companies is studied by means of systematization, content analysis, generalization and other methods. The authors of the article offer the documented time of the first airwaves of each company mentioned (from the authors‟ personal archives). The role that these stations played in the formation of commercial private broadcasting in Ukraine is analyzed. Additional information is given about the creation of the Association of Private Radio Stations in Ukraine which was intended to unite commercial radio stations. The minute of the seminar “Local Radio” is published for the first time. The meeting with the head officers of the radio stations present was organized by the public organization International Media Center – Internews (Ukraine) and by the training center British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, England) from May 20 to June 3, 1994 in Pushcha-Vodytsia near Kyiv. It was there where they decided to create the association. One of the radio projects of MMC-Internews “Interview from Internews” is examined. It may be considered as the first radio project unifying commercial radio stations, and also the first student radio project at the private radio station in Ukraine. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to study facts and documents (from the authors‟ personal archive) certifying the dialectic progress of Ukrainian commercial broadcasting from the so-called “musical patchwork” to the transformation into a profitable means of mass communication.

This paper presents distribution and automation radio broadcasting organization that is operated by international radio stations such as Voice of America (VOA) using the control center that must rely on the cost of the electrical and electronic instruments and the operation and must be very high dependency computer technology that is relative to clock and must be done regularly to ensure the accuracy. The changing schedule of automation radio broadcasting controlled by programmable logic controller, PLC [1] and the master clock [2] is time in second is required to execute the PLC program for every changing of the schedule program. The ideology of silence of sound signal (Audio Mute) is used when each program ends instead using the master clock to execute the PLC program for changing the schedule radio program. The application of audio mute for changing new schedule when each program ends can be compared with the using the master clock controlling the PLC will be also minimum deviation of the time that will impact on automation radio broadcasting.

A holistic historical and informational analysis was conducted in the scientific context of the synergy of two systems – sound recording and radio broadcasting. Methodological support of the study was based on the use of general scientific and special methods. Taking into account the experience of «BBC Radio 1» in creating a unique collection of sound recordings and areas of use of music collections as objects of archival storage, the features of recording music sessions in recording studios of radio stations are revealed. The main methods of restoration, restoration and digitization of stock music phonograms of radio broadcasting subjects are revealed. Find out which software products perform digitization tasks. The author concludes that the basis for the protection and storage of music collections of radio archives is the organization of a system of backup and duplication of data.

In every disaster, problems of information and communication distribution always occur. The communication channel is very dependent on various supporting facilities. Electricity, transmitter towers, broadcasting stations, to human resources. In two big disasters in Indonesia in 2018: the Lombok earthquake; and the earthquake, tsunami and liquefaction in Palu, there were issues of the information and communication channels. Local people do not know the conditions that occur in their area and the situation of their families. While outsiders, the government, and rescue teams did not get detailed information from the affected areas. In countries with high intensity of natural disasters, emergency broadcasting policies have been long practiced. The simplest device for emergency broadcasting is radio. This kind of media can immediately air with simple facilities. Regardless, the initiative of emergency radio has not yet adopted into regulation in Indonesia. Therefore, the emergency radio initiator limited to a handful of organization like in Lombok earthquake. Conversely in Palu disaster, there was a Ministerial Decree of Information and Communication Ministry Number 773/2018 (KM 773), regulation that simplify access to radio frequency. Using comparative method, this research examined these two disasters to analyze the differences of emergency radio practices. Only 1.5 months away and similar location features, the emergency radios initiation differ in several aspects related subjects that regulated in this KM. The result shows that this KM can broaden all aspects of emergency broadcasting radio. Although, the KM unable to shorten the time of emergency radio implementation. Regulation change only limited to frequency access. A broader regulation change is needed to support the practice of emergency radio.

Community radio has been defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as promoting non-profit ownership of stations and volunteer participation. The increasing commercialisation of community radio in Canada, evident in changing station practices and regulatory policies, has resulted in the erosion of volunteer run governance and programming. This article draws on community media, anti-oppression, and third-sector studies literature to investigate the experiences of volunteers from two stations, CHRY in Toronto and Radio Centre-Ville in Montral. Current Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations define community radio by virtue of its place in the communities served. This article concludes that reducing the engagement and empowerment of volunteers in community radio programming and governance limits the place of community radio in the community. The authors will also identify best practices that are needed to re-centre community radio within the community while ensuring a sustainable non-profit community broadcasting sector.

AbstractThis article analyzes the broadcast activities of the Chicago Sunday Evening Club (CSEC), a mainline Protestant organization founded in 1908 and still active today. The CSEC began broadcasting its weekly meetings on the radio in 1922 and on television in 1956. Drawing on archival organizational records from the CSEC and from listener correspondence, this essay traces how the club's use of the new media of particular historical moments shaped its history as a public entity.This study makes two claims. First, it argues that, though evangelicals and fundamentalists took to radio and television broadcasting with greater vigor, mainline Protestant groups did as well, and the persistence of a group like the CSEC offers a way to understand the challenges that broadcasting presented to religious organizations. Second, this article shows how audience expectations for religious programming evolved from radio to television. For many listeners, radio offered what they told the CSEC was a spiritual and even miraculous experience, and they marveled at being able to tune in to religious services from their homes. Television, however, prompted remarks often focused on visual style, and the club found itself struggling to compete with the newly emerging group of religious television programs not only on denominational terms (many were evangelicals and fundamentalists) but also on aesthetic terms. In contrast to radio, as many viewers wrote to the CSEC, television seemed to provide not a singular “experience” but rather spectatorial access to events taking place elsewhere. In the context of competition from the more telegenic programming of evangelicals and fundamentalists, these shifting audience expectations shaped both the history of the CSEC as a public entity and the broader history of mainline Protestantism in the mass media.

В статье рассматривается деятельность редакции политического вещания Якутского регионального радиокомитета в годы Великой Отечественной войны на основе вводимых в научный оборот новых документальных материалов, которые еще не стали предметом исследования в отечественной историографии. С началом войны главное место на радио занимало политическое вещание, которое направляло основную нагрузку радиопередач на мобилизацию народной силы в оказании помощи фронту и на стимулирование трудового подвига в тылу. В статье изложено тематическое содержание политического вещания, включая сводку Совинформбюро, материалов ТАСС, выпусков "Последних известий" и трансляции главных новостей из Москвы. Проводится анализ организации информационно-пропагандистских радиопередач, настроения жителей и участия творческого актива общественных организаций в подготовке ради- оматериалов, на основе которого подводится итог идейно-политической, массово-сти- мулирующей роли радиовещания в 1941–1945 гг. в Якутии. The article examines the activities of the editorial office of political broadcasting of the Yakut regional radio Committee during the great Patriotic war on the basis of new documentary materials introduced into scientific circulation, which have not yet become the subject of research in Russian historiography. With the beginning of the war, the main place on the radio was occupied by political broadcasting, which directed the main load of radio broadcasts to mobilize people's power in helping the front and stimulating labor feats in the rear. The article describes the thematic content of political broadcasting, including a summary of the Sovinformburo, TASS materials, issues of "Latest news" and broadcasts of the main news from Moscow. Analyzes the organization of awareness-raising broadcasts, the mood of the people and participation of the creative asset of public organizations in the preparation of radio materials on the basis of which sums up the ideological-political, mass-stimulating the role of the radio in 1941–1945.

The basis of the effective functioning of the media along with the changes in the environment is in a constant development of management within the media, and therefore the corporate communication as a basic tool of development. Management JMU RTV broadcasting in the new (multi) media environment should establish a system of effective management of the technical, organizational, as well as innovation in the design and distribution of media content, aiming to find a balance between the needs of the market and the insatiable appetite of the media to the public, changes in technology, media legislation and general social trends. If the organization said that "the organism", then the communication is "bloodstream" of the organism. Corporate communication is a newer discipline which is used in all business segments worldwide. Top management creates, defines and improves corporate reputation through corporate communications and image management that created it. The image of a good and successful organization begins within. The level of satisfaction and motivation of our employees is a measurable and constant process that can be influenced, eg. how often and in which way to communicate with employees, how they transmit important messages and direct them towards achieving business goals.Corporate communication includes all communication and information activities among the members of the organization, it is targeted and oriented according to the success. Because the image of the organization can be understood as the reflection of its identity created corporate communication between different public - internal and external.

The basis of the effective functioning of the media along with the changes in the environment is in a constant development of management within the media, and therefore the corporate communication as a basic tool of development. Management JMU RTV broadcasting in the new (multi) media environment should establish a system of effective management of the technical, organizational, as well as innovation in the design and distribution of media content, aiming to find a balance between the needs of the market and the insatiable appetite of the media to the public, changes in technology, media legislation and general social trends. If the organization said that "the organism", then the communication is "bloodstream" of the organism. Corporate communication is a newer discipline which is used in all business segments worldwide. Top management creates, defines and improves corporate reputation through corporate communications and image management that created it. The image of a good and successful organization begins within. The level of satisfaction and motivation of our employees is a measurable and constant process that can be influenced, eg. how often and in which way to communicate with employees, how they transmit important messages and direct them towards achieving business goals.Corporate communication includes all communication and information activities among the members of the organization, it is targeted and oriented according to the success. Because the image of the organization can be understood as the reflection of its identity created corporate communication between different public - internal and external.

This article discusses the Australian Women's Broadcasting Co-operative (AWBC), formed by women working at the Australian Broadcasting Commission in response to the United Nations' declaration that 1975 would be International Women's Year. It examines the AWBC's attempts to challenge entrenched structural inequalities and sexual discrimination, improve opportunities for women in the organization, and change dominant representations of women's lives in the media. It analyzes the significance of the AWBC's key interventions, including the production of a national weekly radio show for women, The Coming Out Show; the provision of production training for women; pushing for a formal inquiry into the status of women; lobbying for staff childcare facilities; and representing women employees in industrial relations matters. The article concludes with a discussion of the long-term impact of the AWBC and the Coming Out Show, which, despite its genesis as a “bold experiment,” endured for twenty-three years.

The article analyzes the ‘Classical’ format of the radio. For centenary history of the industry’s development, a wealth of factual material has been accumulated and it needs systematization and conceptualization, however classical music is rarely noticed by media researches. The exception is the formative stage of musical broadcasting with organization of the first symphony’s and opera performances’ broadcasting. Meanwhile, there’s a lot of topics, discussion of which can not only interest theorists, but make a significant practical difference. Particular emphasis should be given to the filling of musical air, analyzation of which will help to identify new horizons of applied musicology and to correct radio stations’ strategies. Even though the radio of classical music outlines trends which are specific for academic art in general, there is a number of specialties arising from the nature of mass-media. Duality like this distinguishes the structure of its program too, the quality of which can not be evaluated without taking into account the functional specific of radio. The work of different broadcast’s filling is based on unified principles in accordance with certain set parameters, which helps to choose from basis and form in playlists the compositions of certain styles, genres, characters, duration, connecting them with the elements of sound design and the hosts’ commentaries. Nevertheless, undeniable artistic merit of the content not only ineffective radio of classical music and don’t give them considerable advantages over competitors, but overshadow it to the end of rating. At the same time behind the imaginary easiness of adhering the FM-standards hides the danger of homogenizing the important characteristics of airing compositions, which calls into question the possible realization the humanitarian mission of the classic radio, including the save of cultural heritage, musical education and creative development. In this situation just technology can’t guarantee the result, so it is important to create multi-level approach to the research of radio’s ‘Classical’ format as a original artistic phenomenon and a effective instrument of cultural policy.

Введение. Актуальность описания текстологических параметров радиотекста обусловлена новой формой его функционирования – медийной интеграцией радио и интернета, актуализирующей как классический, аудиальный код, так и инновационные: вербально-графический и акциональный. Материал и методы. Рассматриваются семиотические характеристики радиотекста, обеспечивающие его когерентную целостность на уровне адресата. В качестве основного признака выделяется темпоритмическая организация, по-разному специфицирующая радиотекст аналогового вещания и сетевого. На основе семиотической теории текста доказывается интегральная значимость темпоритмической структуры радиотекста для обеих форм радиовещания. Результаты и обсуждение. Семиотический потенциал темпоритма реализуется в организации внимания радиослушателя и пользователя сетевой версии радио. Рассматривается специфика реализации темпоритмической структуры в аналоговом и конвергентном радиовещании, делаются выводы о ее концептуальной значимости для формирования картины мира радио. Динамическая структура темпоритма аналогового (аудиального) радиотекста проявляется на паравербальном уровне его организации – в тех сверхфразовых связях, которые позволяют подключать рассеянное внимание адресата к определенным фрагментам речевого потока, ключевым словам, образам и эмоциям. В конвергентном радиовещании темпоритмический механизм активации внимания реализует акциональный код взаимодействия автора (модератора) и адресата – интерактивного пользователя, который проявляет необходимую для дискурсивной практики радио активность в производстве его гипертекста. Заключение. Анализ радиотекста разной технологической природы позволяет говорить о параметрах текстообразования, актуальных для медийного текста, характеризующегося семиотической гибридностью, жанровым полиморфизмом и специфической ролью адресата, участвующего в генерировании текстового контента. Introduction. The relevance of studying the textual parameters of radio text is determined by a new form of its functioning – the convergence of audio, graphic, verbal and action codes in the discursive space of the Internet. The processes of technological integration of radio and the Internet are influenced by socio-economic changes associated with the understanding of “journalism as a service”, providing two-way communication with the recipient – the consumer of a variety of program and application services. First of all, the recipient receives the status of an active agent of discursive practice and the subject of interactive content that manages the relationships between his and other texts on the network. Material and methods. The semiotic characteristics of radio text are considered, which ensure its coherent integrity at the recipient level. As the main feature, a temporal rhythmic organization is singled out, which differently specifies the radio text of analog broadcasting and network. Based on the semiotic theory of the text, the integral significance of the tempo-rhythmic structure of radio text for both forms of broadcasting is proved. Results and discussion. It seems that the process of generating text in these conditions should be considered from the point of view of the category of textuality. As an integral textual characteristic, significant for the qualification of the radial product of analogue (auditory) and convergent radio, the temporality is considered. The semiotic potential of the rhythm is realized in organizing the attention of the listener and the user of the network version of the radio. The paper considers the specifics of the implementation of the temporal structure in analogue and convergent broadcasting, draws conclusions about its conceptual significance for the formation of the axiological picture of the world of discourse. The dynamic structure of the rate of analog (audio) radio text is manifested at the paraverbal level of its organization, in those super-phrasal connections that allow you to connect the scattered attention of the addressee to certain fragments of the speech stream, keywords, images and emotions. The temporal rhythmic mechanism for activating attention in convergent broadcasting implements the promotional code for the interaction of the recipient, an interactive user, who displays the activity of choosing entertainment products and involvement in its consumption necessary for discursive practice. Conclusion. An analysis of the radio text of various technological nature allows us to talk about the parameters of text formation relevant for a media text characterized by semiotic hybridity, genre polymorphism and the specific role of the addressee involved in the generation of text content.

The Development of Stereophonic Sound in Slovakia The development of stereophonic sound in Slovakia in the late sixties had a profound impact on the quality of recorded music in all areas of artificial and non-artificial music and it also played an important role in composing music for radio plays. However, the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava was at that time the only technically equipped institute in Slovakia where a stereophonic record could be created. Therefore our research studies have particularly been concerned with examining the archives of this institution as well as the valuable information on implementation of the recordings we have collected through interviews with the former staff of the broadcasting organization. Our research focuses for the first time on the period of the beginnings of stereophonic sound in Slovakia, hence the purpose of this article is to summarize the research results.

Multiple-station, or group, ownership is a long established characteristic of broadcasting in the United States. It exists whenever a single organization owns more than one station or one medium. Through the efficiencies of operation of multiple outlets, or economies of scale, group media companies usually enjoy financial benefits that are not available to single medium operators. Thus, a long-term trend toward consolidation has prevailed throughout the history of the radio broadcasting industry. Television owners quickly adopted the practice, which has expanded steadily, as regulations have permitted ever since. The three forms of multiple ownership — Group ownership, Duopoly ownership, and Cross-media ownership are analyzed in this study. Particularly, this study provides (1) a statistical-historical account of the development of multiple-station ownership in the TV industry from 1940 to 2005; and (2) a historical account and analysis of the government's regulatory actions on media ownership during the same period. This study explores thus, the ownership consolidation and industry regulation that continue to be significant issues for the media industries with on-going implications.

THE ORGANIZATION AND FINANCING OF A PUBLIC RADIO AND TELEVISION IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANYIn the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich, radio broadcasting was dependent on the government. The Federal Republic of Germany, on the other hand, created a legal system that provided the mass media with legal and factual independence. The system of radio and television was influenced by the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court. The public radio and television broadcasters include national broadcasters and joint broadcasters of federal states, organized as public-law establishments with legal personality. The management of broadcasters has been implemented basing on similar principles. The radio broadcasting board is a constitutive and controlling body, the administrative board and the authorizing officer are executive organs. The national radio board consists of people delegated by the parliament, national government, circles and organizations which are significant politically, ideologically and socially, according to the statutory key. The board of Deutschlandradio, a corporation associating ARD, ZDF and national broadcasters, consists of representatives of the federal states, the federal government and social organizations. The radio board selects the majority of the members of the administrative board, selects and dismisses the authorizing officer, consents to the casting of the broadcaster’s management positions, adopts program guidelines, advises the authorizing officer in shaping the program and other basic matters, approves the economic plan, adopts the discharge resolution. The administrative board supports the broadcaster’s economic development, concludes an employment contract with the authorizing officer, settles disputes between the authorizing officer and the broadcaster, supervises the management of cases by the authorizing officer, controls the budget and annual closure drawn up by the authorizing officer, publishes the balance sheet and the annual report, takes decisions on contracts if there is no competent authorizing officer. The broadcasters are legally supervised by the competent government or minister. The internal control exercised by the radio board plays a fundamental role in the area of ensuring compliance with the law. German radio and television is financed by levies — initially from fees, and starting on 1.01.2013 from contributions levied on households. There is financial equalization in public radio and television. Such a system of financing provides the public media with independence and ensures the implementation of their statutory tasks, in particular the fulfilment of the public mission.

<p class="44444"><em>The methodological basis of the conducted research is based on the use of methods of monitoring and analysis of documents; generalization by the method of qualitative and quantitative study of primary and secondary information. Selection for the analysis of archival periodicals was made on the chronological principle of 1930 – early 1931. At the first stage, a qualitative analysis was carried out, which further deepened the logical studies of the content of radio programs, tracking the transformation processes in radio broadcasting caused by the evolution of ideas about financing such initiatives, access to local ones, local genres. design, etc.</em></p><p><em>The basic prerequisites for the creation of the first periodic Ukrainian clock in the multicultural radio space of the USA are outlined. The public discussion in the industry, the state of the development of the technical support of the radio signal reception, the conditions of its access and the quality of listening are analyzed. The content of such initiatives, their content, timing, musical and genre design are described. The importance of community unity and the development of a common constructive position on addressing important public issues were emphasized, in particular with regard to the organizational and financial provision of national music radio hours. It was found that despite the complexity of the organizational nature of the community of Ukrainians were able to present to the world, and most importantly to realize the need to design national presentation media sites that would position them favorably among other peoples.</em></p><p><em>The retrospective of the formation of foreign Ukrainian media space in the context of the radio production process of the early twentieth century was first documented.</em></p><p><em>The wide potential of using the results of the research is not limited to scientific discourse, but is an important documentary evidence of the high organization and development of the Ukrainian community in the world and the ramifications of its media structure.</em></p><p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> archival periodicals, multicultural media space, Ukrainian language broadcasting.</em></p>

In the newly shaped post‑WWI Europe the CEE region was an integral part of the pan‑European media system. The iron curtain that split Europe into two parts in the bipolar period, inevitably led to the emergence of two separate media systems, i.e. the Western European one and the one driven by the USSR (and existing predominantly in Eastern‑European states). These systems were institutionalized by the establishment of separate broadcasting alliances and corresponding TV programme exchange networks. At the same time, in the context of the Cold War, the CEE region was a key target of Western broadcasting with the aim to counter Soviet propaganda and political influence. This factor reinforced by the willingness of the CEE countries to preserve their European identity caused the socialist media system (as well as other Soviet integration projects) to remain artificial and to be rejected in the region. It was clearly confirmed at the beginning of the post‑bipolar period, when, after the collapse of the socialist camp and the USSR, the Soviet‑driven International Radio and Television Organization ceased to exist, and the CEE countries integrated into the European Broadcasting Union, unleashing their desire to “return to Europe”. At the same time, in the context of a policy aimed at preserving control over the post‑Soviet space, Russia makes efforts which could be regarded as an attempt to restore (preserve) the common media space in the post‑Soviet territories. In the paper the CEE region is regarded in the broadest way, including all states which were in socialist bloc, and appropriate former European Soviet republics.

The article examines the technical modernization of Siberian radio communications and broadcasting during the war period. Under the conditions of a large-scale evacuation of industrial facilities and the population to the Siberian region as well as the organization of new telephone and telegraph highways in the eastern direction wire telecommunications worked at the limit of its capabilities and could not cope with the load. In these conditions radio communication was often the only means of communication. Among the evacuated enterprises deployed on the territory of Siberia most of them were the enterprises of the radio industry. One of the main problems faced by the Siberian radio communications, in addition to the shortage of qualified personnel, was the lack of backup equipment, which the front desperately needed. Another difficulty was the restructuring of the radial telecommunication system which entailed the modernization of the transmitters of the main radio communication. In the conditions of an acute shortage of material resources for civil radio communications radio communication activities had to be seriously limited. In general, it was necessary to temporarily abandon the program of continuous radio coverage of the country developed in the pre-war period. First of all, the radio stations were set up at enterprises, city and rural streets and squares, in clubs, libraries, etc. At the same time, as far as possible, the park of radio points was expanded and the operability of radio centers was maintained. Thanks to the mobilization of internal reserves and measures of an administrativerepressive nature in Siberian radio communications it was possible to strengthen the material and technical basis. The industrial production of radio products (mainly for military purposes) was launched in Siberia. However, the quality level of radio communication was low. Since the main efforts were aimed at meeting the needs of the front and the liberated regions the total power of the Siberian radio network has not yet been able to match a large territory of the region and the average power of broadcast transmitters has also remained low. Development of broadcast networks was primarily happened in cities. So, a significant disproportion between the density of radio coverage in urban and rural areas preserved and increased.

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne 61 (2013), issue 2. The political transformations in Spain that ended with the free parliamentary elections of 15th June 1977 were a powerful catalyst for the activity of the Spanish nation in all walks of life. Between 1975 and 1990 a real revolution took place in the Spanish mass media and in culture. It resulted in the setting up of modern periodicals (among others, El País, El Mundo, Navarra Hoy, Diario la Rioja and many others), over 2,600 radio stations and a network of modern television channels broadcasting programs devoted to the culture and languages of the autonomous communities. The Ministry of Culture established in 1977 supported initiatives promoting the multiculturalism of the Kingdom of Spain, which resulted in the opening of several dozen modern museums, institutes of modern art and the organization of numerous festivals. The decentralization of the country made it possible to emphasize the multiculturalism of the Spanish autonomous communities that today act as a magnet for 70 million tourists from all over the world.

This article examines GDR television from a media-historical perspective with special focus on the inter- and transnational communication between Eastern and Western Europe in the Cold War until the dissolution of the separate spheres of power in 1990. It focuses on the development and function of the “Organisation Internationale de diffusion et de Télévision Radio” (OIRT), which was founded in 1946, and their network “Intervision”, founded in 1960, both centred in Prague. The OIRT, as an umbrella organization, coordinated cooperation between the TV-stations in the socialist community and represented their interests to the “European Broadcasting Union” (UER/EBU) and the “Eurovision” system. While “Intervision” handled the direct program traffic between the stations, exchange of movies and occasionally TV series was an autonomous field. A central conclusion is that the program transfer had a hand in a partial rapprochement and dialogue between East and West. In addition, these permanent relations triggered an early synchronization process with a tendency to cross-culture productions – even if the partial opening in Eastern Europe before 1990 brought only limited pluralism and could not contribute to genuine participation.

Qothrotul Falah is the Islamic traditional education (pesantren) based on salafi approach. In the research process, the article the focused on issues that has formulated related to the topic of social marketing and marketing strategy, which is implementing by pesantren of Qothrotul Falah. This study aims: 1) to identify the education marketing strategy at the pesantren of Qothrotul Falah, and 2) to analyze the social marketing to improve educational strategy in the competitive era. The method of this research used qualitative research that had developed with descriptive analysis. This study finding that the educational marketing which had been implementing by Qothrotul Falah consist fourteen (40) types: Kyai, writing skills, publications (Mass Media, Banner, Brochure, Calendar, Bulletin, Radio Broadcasting), social media (Facebook, Instagram, Website, WhatsApp), community participation, and alumni. According to educational development in the competitive era, Head of pesantren had been responding its conditions. For example, he included the modern system of Arabic teaching, English and established formal education (Junior and Senior Islamic Schools), and several supporting activities for studenst, including: Student Organizations, Scouting, Student Health Organization, Sports, Music, Marawis, Computer Course, Muhadharah and Qira'ah al-Qur'an.

Introduction. The paper deals with the issues of the propaganda system in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany (SOZ) between 1945 and 1949. Based on de-classified documents from Russian Archives propaganda organization, channels and methods of propaganda units of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAG) became a subject to study. The authors emphasize on control means towards German mass media and implementing the Soviet propaganda monopoly in East Germany. Methods and materials. The authors consequently analyze the main channels and methods of positive USSR image broadcasting: radio, press, SMAG propaganda unit lectures, people’s education system, activities of society for Soviet cultural studies, acquaintance trips of German delegations to the USSR, presentations of Soviet exhibitions and films. Analysis and Results. The authors come to a conclusion that the Soviet propaganda in East Germany had a low efficiency. It failed to establish a complete monopoly of Soviet propaganda units in East Germany. The SOZ population could access the propaganda from West Germany and West Berlin, which broadcast a radically negative image of the USSR. Besides, the units and institutions of the Group of Soviet Occupation Troops in Germany (GSOTG) created their own image of Soviet people, which was different from the ideal and broadcast one. Thus, it turned out to be impossible to provide the unification of the broadcast and perception of propagandist materials devoted to the USSR and its population. Soviet propaganda in Germany had gone through the transition by the late 1940s: division of Germany in two states appeared to be a reality, and the establishment of socialist society on Stalin’s model took place in East Germany. Ideological revisiting of the Soviet social constitution, and so its supremacy over the bourgeois one was to replace the conventional image of the country of total welfare and happiness.

The article considers a very important factor of His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church), who actively supported together with his followers, the most positive tendencies towards the development and pacification of Ukraine. The main idea of the article is to analyze, through the prism of the historical processes of creation and existence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the work of His Beatitude Lyubomyr Guzar, as well as the influence of the phenomenon of the international activities of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church on and its cooperation with the state in various fields. culture, language and national traditions, as well as in the structure of the state and the foreign policy of Ukraine. In addition, the article discusses the great contribution of His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar, as the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to the development and support of the Ukrainian diaspora abroad, which further contributed to the formation of numerous public associations of foreign Ukrainian in the world's states and linguistic, educational and cultural needs. The activity of public organizations of foreign Ukrainian is aimed at preserving its identity, language, culture and traditions. These activities are also implemented in joint projects of foreign diplomatic institutions of Ukraine and public organizations of foreign Ukrainian, directed, in particular, to scientific and educational projects, issuing periodicals with organizations, preparing and broadcasting television and radio programs, supporting Internet resources, publishing publications on Ukrainian topics. In mass media abroad, improvement of burial places (places of memory) of outstanding Ukrainian graves abroad, organization of children's lags her with the purpose of their acquaintance with the traditions of the Ukrainian language, literature, history of Ukraine, providing educational institutions with the study of the Ukrainian language and cultural centers of print, photo, audio, video production, objects of national symbols, publishing scientific, journalistic, artistic works and collections for communities of foreign Ukrainian, as well as works of foreign Ukrainian, translation of works of Ukrainian literature in foreign languages, popularization of the Ukrainian language, literature ry, culture, history and traditions of the Ukrainian people, including the teaching of the Ukrainian language, as well as other items in the Ukrainian language, fabrication and installation of plaques, dedicated to outstanding figures of Ukrainian history, science and culture and historical events.

Paralelamente às ações do Estado e das empresas o sagrado apresenta-se hodiernamente como agente ativo na organização do social do território controlando áreas, fluxos e delimitando novos campos de atuação do espaço geográfico. Para fins de reprodução de sua territorialidade na sociedade brasileira a Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus – IURD combina mecanismos (i)materiais como discurso da Teologia da Prosperidade e a utilização de um poderoso aporte técnico midiático, para circular a informação necessária a promoção de suas redes de poder. Trata-se de uma moderna infraestrutura instalada no território que vai de suntuosos templos a estruturas de redes midiáticas, como jornais, radiodifusão e canais de televisão utilizados para a difusão de seus produtos que se materializa em toda estrutura religiosa da igreja e fundamenta o seu marketing de sistema de crenças. Sendo assim, nossa incursão teórica pretende discutir a lógica de reprodução espacial da Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus – IURD, analisando suas principais estratégias no campo empresarial, político e social. Complementando essa análise procuraremos discernir algumas das ações dessa instituição religiosa vinculadas ao uso do território, considerando o impacto geográfico que essas trazem ao ordenamento social em algumas cidades como Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo e Irecê na Bahia.ABSTRACTIn parallel to the actions of the State and enterprises the sacred presents itself in our times as an active agent in the social organization of the territory controlling areas, streams and defining new geographical space fields. For the purpose of reproduction of his territoriality in Brazilian society the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God - UCKG combines mechanisms (i) materials like discourse of teleology Prosperity and the use of a powerful technical contribution media, to circulate the information needed to promote their power networks. It is a modern infrastructure installed in the territory ranging from sumptuous temples to the media network structures such as newspapers, radio and television broadcasting channels used for distribution of its products that materializes across religious church structure and bases its marketing belief system. Thus, our theoretical incursion discusses the spatial logic of reproduction of Universal Church of the Kingdom of God - UCKG, analyzing their main strategies in the business, political and social. Complementing this analysis will seek to discern some of the actions of this religious institution linked to the use of the territory, considering the geographical impact that these bring to the social order in some cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Bahia Irecê.Keywords: Universal Church of the Kingdom of God; Planning; Territory

Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and works of art, as well as symbols, names, images, and designs that are used in commerce. Intellectual property is divided into two categories industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and copyright which includes literary and works of art such as novels, poems and plays films, musical works, works of art such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programmes. 1883 marked the birth of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, the first major international treaty designed to help the people from one country obtain protection in other countries for their intellectual creations in the form of industrial property rights, known as: inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs. In 1886, copyright entered the international arena with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. The aim of this Convention was to help nationals of its member States obtain international protection of their right to control, and receive payment for the use of their creative works such as: novels, short stories, poems plays; songs, operas, musicals, sonatas; and drawings, paintings sculptures, architectural works. The Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) was adopted in 1952 and formalised in 1955, as a complementary agreement to the Berne Convention. The UCC membership included the United States, and many developing countries that did not wish to comply with the Berne Convention, since they viewed its provisions as overly favourable to the developed world. Patent Cooperation Treaty, signed on June 19,1970, provides for the filing of a single international patent application which has the same effect as national applications filed in the designated countries. An applicant seeking protection may file one application and request protection in as many signatory states as needed. On November 6, 1925, the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs was adopted within the framework of the Paris Convention. Under the provisions of the Hague Agreement, any person entitled to effect an international deposit has the possibility of obtaining, by means of a single deposit protection for his industrial designs in a number of States with a minimum of formalities and of expense. The system of international registration of marks is governed by two treaties, the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks, which dates from 1891, and the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement that was adopted in 1989. It entered into force on December 1, 1995, and came into operation on April 1, 1996. The reason for adopting the much more recent Protocol, following the original Madrid Agreement of 1891 (last amended at Stockholm in 1967), was the absence from the Madrid Union of some of the major countries in the trademark field, for example, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The Protocol is intended to make the Madrid system acceptable to more countries. The Rome Convention consists basically of the national treatment that a State grants under its domestic law to domestic performances, phonograms and broadcasts. Apart from the rights guaranteed by the Convention itself as constituting that minimum of protection, and subject to specific exceptions or reservations allowed for by the Convention, performers, producers of phonograms and broadcasting organisations to which the Convention applies, enjoy in Contracting States the same rights as those countries grant to their nationals. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is an international organisation dedicated to promoting the use and protection of works of the human spirit. These works, intellectual property, are expanding the bounds of science and technology and enriching the world of the arts. Through its work, WIPO plays an important role in enhancing the quality and enjoyment of life, as well as creating real wealth for nations. In 1974, WIPO became a specialised agency of the United Nations system of organisations, with a mandate to administer intellectual property matters recognised by the member states of the UN. With headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, WIPO is one of the 16 specialised agencies of the United Nations system of organisations. It administers 21 international treaties dealing with different aspects of intellectual property protection. The Organisation counts 177 nations as member states. One of the successes of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations was the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement), which came into effect on 1 January 1995, and up to date it the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property. The TRIPS Agreement is a minimum standards agreement, which allows Members to provide more extensive protection of intellectual property if they wish so. Members are left free to determine the appropriate method of implementing the provisions of the Agreement within their own legal system and practice On January 1, 1996, an Agreement Between the World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization entered into force. It provides for cooperation concerning the implementation of the TRIPS Agreement, such as notification of laws and regulations and legal-technical assistance and technical co-operation in favour of developing countries. In the 21st century intellectual property will play an increasingly important role at the international stage. Works of the mind - intellectual property such as inventions, designs, trademarks, books, music, and films, are now used and enjoyed on every continent on the earth. In the new millennium international protection of intellectual property rights faces many new challenges; one of the most urgent is the need for states to adapt to and benefit from rapid and wide-ranging technological change, particularly in the field of information technology and the Internet.

В статье проанализированы основные характеристики существующих систем цифрового звукового и мультимедийного радиовещания, преимущества цифрового радиовещания как технологии передачи звуковой и мультимедийной информации, особенности использования различных диапазонов частот, влияние социальных, технико-экономических факторов и географических особенностей на технические требования к сетям радиовещания. Рассмотрены вопросы организации высококачественного радиовещания, способного привлечь аудиторию в условиях современного развития технологий. Определены основные задачи в области производства приемного оборудования для цифрового радиовещания. The article analyzes the main features of existing digital sound and multimedia broadcasting, advantages of digital radio as a technology for transmitting sound and multimedia information, benefits of different frequency ranges for digital radio, the influence of social, technical, and economic factors, and geographical characteristics on the technical requirements for broadcasting networks. The issues of the organization of high-quality radio broadcasting capable to attract an audience in conditions of the modern development of technologies are considered. The main tasks in the field of digital radio receiving equipment production are determined.

Implementación de una estación retransmisora de radio en FM para una red satelital regional en el Nororiente Peruano Implementation of a retransmission station of FM radio for a regional satellite network in the Northeastern Peruvian Julio Ernesto Quispe Rojas, Herless H. Alberca Vásquez, Denis Amari Maldonado Escuela Profesional de Ingeniería Electrónica, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas Universidad Nacional Pedro Ruiz Gallo, Av. Juan XXIII No. 391 – Lambayeque - Perú. Radio Marañon, Av. Orellana No. 343 Jaen – Peru. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33017/RevECIPeru2011.0022/ RESUMEN Los sistemas de radiodifusión comercial, a mediados del siglo XX, se realizaban utilizando la modulación por amplitud – AM y las radioemisoras generaban la señal en forma local para transmitirla directamente a su área de influencia. En la segunda mitad del siglo XX, la transmisión en Frecuencia Modulada – FM, se extendió rápidamente por la calidad del sonido, que es una señal con dos canales, izquierdo y derecho, y en la ultima década del siglo XX, en nuestro país se utilizaban enlaces satelitales y retransmisores en FM, formando cadenas nacionales de radiodifusión, y lograron la mayor sintonía de los radioescuchas de provincias. Los costos para subir la señal al satélite, se podía asumir si se requería mas de doce estaciones repetidoras, sin embargo con el desarrollo tecnológico, en la actualidad esta al alcance de los empresarios e instituciones de provincias, para formar cadenas regionales, con la señal generada en la ciudad principal de la zona, con información de interés local y con una programación orientada a satisfacer los gustos de la región. El proyecto satisface la necesidad de ampliar la cobertura y mejorar la calidad de señal, y obedeciendo al reto de que la señal transmitida llegue a los distritos de la provincia y a las provincias vecinas, y la calidad del sonido sea estereofónico, utilizando para ello estaciones de retransmisión en FM, formando una Red Satelital Regional en el Nororiente del Perú, en la zona norte del Departamento de Cajamarca y Amazonas, en la frontera con el vecino país del Ecuador. El proyecto de está enfocado a aprovechar el sistema satelital que cuenta la organización, formada por una estación de transmisión hacia el satélite o Up Link, y tan solo una estación de recepción y de retransmisión en amplitud modulada - AM, ubicadas en la provincia de Jaén, Departamento de Cajamarca. El artículo que presentamos permite compartir la experiencia que se ha tenido en el diseño e implementación de la estación retransmisora en FM para la Red Satelital Regional, implementando la estación de recepción vía satélite y transmisión en FM en el Distrito de Chirinos, en la Provincia de San Ignacio, en el Departamento de Cajamarca. Descriptores: Radio en FM, Enlace vía satélite para radiodifusión, Estación de retransmisión. ABSTRACT Commercial broadcasting systems in the mid-twentieth century, were performed using amplitude modulation - AM and the radio signal generated locally to transmit directly to their area of influence. In the second half of the twentieth century, the transmission frequency modulation - FM, it quickly spread about the quality of sound, which is a signal with two channels, left and right, and in the last decade of the twentieth century in our country using satellite links and FM broadcasters, making national radio, and achieved the highest-rated radio listeners in the provinces. The costs for the satellite uplink, you could take if they needed more than a dozen base stations, however with technological development, now is accessible to entrepreneurs and provincial institutions to form regional channels, with signal generated in the main town in the area, with information of local interest and with a program aimed at satisfying the tastes of the region. The project addresses the need to expand coverage and improve signal quality, and obeying the challenge of the transmitted signal reaches the districts of the province and neighboring provinces, and stereo sound quality, using stations FM broadcast, forming a Regional Satellite Network in the Northeast of Peru, in the northern department of Cajamarca and Amazonas, on the border with the neighboring country of Ecuador. The project is aimed to harness satellite system that has the organization, formed by a transmission station to the satellite or Link Up, and only one receiving station and amplitude modulated broadcasting - AM, located in the province of Jaén, Department of Cajamarca. The present article to share the experience has had on the design and implementation of the FM relay station for Regional Satellite Network, implementing the satellite receiving station and FM broadcasting in the District of Chirinos, in the Province San Ignacio, in the Department of Cajamarca. Keywords: FM radio; broadcasting via satellite link, retransmission station.

Introduction: Coronavirus disease is one of leading causes of deaths in recent times that has surpassed cardiovascular and other respiratory diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) setup Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that have been adopted by the different governments to curtail its spread. Nonetheless, information on the adherence to the SOPs amongst market vendors is not well elucidated. Moreover, markets are centers of convergence of many people which increases the risks of community transmission. Therefore, our study, investigated the extent of the adherence to the SOPs amongst market vendors in Sironko district. Methodology: A quantitative study with cross-sectional design was adopted with a sample size of 221 randomly selected participants. Pretested structured questionnaires were used in the data collection. Categorical data was presented in tables and graphs with frequency (%). Pearson’s Chi-square (X2) was used to examine the statistical significance of our results. The analysis was done by using the statistical software MedCalc version 20.0008. All the analyses were done at 95% level of significance and a p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: A total of 221 participants were involved: 126, 57 % female, 80, 36% aged between 31-40 years and 158, 72% married. Fever, dry cough, chest pain, arches & pain loss of speech & movements were the most reported signs and symptoms of COVID-19 (p<0.0001). Most of the respondents were aware of the SOPs, hand washing soap and adequate water were readily available (p<0.0001). The commonly implemented SOP was wearing face masks (p<0.0001). The radio talk shows & broadcasting were the main sources of information(p<0.0001). The inadequate facemasks and limited finances constrained the Implementation of SOPs (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Most market vendors were aware of the COVID-19 SOPs and claimed they adhered. However, there is need to carry out a qualitative study to confirm the above claims.

The article reveals the conceptual foundations of the policy and system for ensuring information security in the countries of Central Europe, in particular in Germany, Poland, Hungary and Croatia. It was found that Germany, Poland, Hungary and Croatia are member countries of the European Union and NATO, therefore they are subject to the rules and standards of these international organizations. It was established that the main documents and programs for ensuring information security and cybersecurity in the EU and NATO member states are: Document C-M (2002) 49 “Security in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)”, the Cybersecurity Concept, formulated based on the results of the Lisbon Summit, the Concept cybersecurity, formulated as a result of the Warsaw Summit, “European Criteria for Information Technology Security”, “Common Criteria for Information Technology Security”, “Network and Information Security: a European Political Approach”, “Safe Internet”, “Towards a Common Policy in the Field of Combating cybercrime”,“Protecting Europe from large-scale cyber attacks and disruption: strengthening preparedness, security and resilience”, Directive 95/46 / EU “On the protection of individuals in the context of the processing of personal data and the free circulation of such data ”. It was determined that in Germany the policy and system for ensuring information security and cybersecurity is based on the Law “On Security Inspection”, the “Act for the Protection of Information in Telecommunications”, the “Act on Freedom of Information”, and the Law “On Strengthening the Security of Information Systems”. It was established that in Poland the policy and system for ensuring information security and cybersecurity is based on the Law “On Mail”, the Law “On Television and Radio Broadcasting”, the Law “On State Relations with the Roman Catholic Church in the Republic of Poland”, the Cybersecurity Strategy of Poland, the Doctrine of Cybersecurity Poland, Poland's Information Security Doctrine. It has been established that in Hungary the policy and system for ensuring information security and cybersecurity is based on the Law “On the Protection of Information about a Person and Access to Information of Public Interest”, the Law “On the Right to Information Self-Determination and Freedom of Information”, the Law “On Processing and Protection medical information and related personal data”, “Act on Electronic Information Security of State and Municipal Bodies”, Hungarian National Security Strategy, Hungarian National Cybersecurity Strategy. It was determined that in Croatia the policy and system for ensuring information security and cyber security is based on the “Information Security Act” and the National Cyber Security Strategy. It has been proved that Ukraine, which has chosen the course of European integration, should be guided by a number of information security strategies identified in the member states of the European Union, in particular in Germany, Poland, Hungary and Croatia.

For seven months in 1999/2000, six-year old Cuban Elián González was embroiled in a family feud plotted along rival national and ideological lines, and relayed televisually as soap opera across the planet. In Miami, apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported after Elián’s arrival; adherents of Afro-Cuban santería similarly regarded Elián as divinely touched. In Cuba, Elián’s “kidnapping” briefly reinvigorated a torpid revolutionary project. He was hailed by Fidel Castro as the symbolic descendant of José Martí and Che Guevara, and of the patriotic rigour they embodied. Cubans massed to demand his return. In the U.S.A., Elián’s case was arbitrated at every level of the juridical system. The “Save Elián” campaign generated widespread debate about godless versus godly family values, the contours of the American Dream, and consumerist excess. By the end of 2000 Elián had generated the second largest volume of TV news coverage to that date in U.S. history, surpassed only by the O. J. Simpson case (Fasulo). After Fidel Castro, and perhaps the geriatric music ensemble manufactured by Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club, Elián became the most famous Cuban of our era. Elián also emerged as the unlikeliest of popular-cultural icons, the focus and subject of cyber-sites, books, films, talk-back radio programs, art exhibits, murals, statues, documentaries, a South Park episode, poetry, songs, t-shirts, posters, newspaper editorials in dozens of languages, demonstrations, speeches, political cartoons, letters, legal writs, U.S. Congress records, opinion polls, prayers, and, on both sides of the Florida Strait, museums consecrated in his memory. Confronted by Elián’s extraordinary renown and historical impact, John Carlos Rowe suggests that the Elián story confirms the need for a post-national and transdisciplinary American Studies, one whose practitioners “will have to be attentive to the strange intersections of politics, law, mass media, popular folklore, literary rhetoric, history, and economics that allow such events to be understood.” (204). I share Rowe’s reading of Elián’s story and the clear challenges it presents to analysis of “America,” to which I would add “Cuba” as well. But Elián’s story is also significant for the ways it challenges critical understandings of fame and its construction. No longer, to paraphrase Leo Braudy (566), definable as an accidental hostage of the mass-mediated eye, Elián’s fame has no certain relation to the child at its discursive centre. Elián’s story is not about an individuated, conscious, performing, desiring, and ambivalently rewarded ego. Elián was never what P. David Marshall calls “part of the public sphere, essentially an actor or, … a player” in it (19). The living/breathing Elián is absent from what I call the virtualizing drives that famously reproduced him. As a result of this virtualization, while one Elián now attends school in Cuba, many other Eliáns continue to populate myriad popular-cultural texts and to proliferate away from the states that tried to contain him. According to Jerry Everard, “States are above all cultural artefacts” that emerge, virtually, “as information produced by and through practices of signification,” as bits, bites, networks, and flows (7). All of us, he claims, reside in “virtual states,” in “legal fictions” based on the elusive and contested capacity to generate national identities in an imaginary bounded space (152). Cuba, the origin of Elián, is a virtual case in point. To augment Nicole Stenger’s definition of cyberspace, Cuba, like “Cyberspace, is like Oz — it is, we get there, but it has no location” (53). As a no-place, Cuba emerges in signifying terms as an illusion with the potential to produce and host Cubanness, as well as rival ideals of nation that can be accessed intact, at will, and ready for ideological deployment. Crude dichotomies of antagonism — Cuba/U.S.A., home/exile, democracy/communism, freedom/tyranny, North/South, godlessness/blessedness, consumption/want — characterize the hegemonic struggle over the Cuban nowhere. Split and splintered, hypersensitive and labyrinthine, guarded and hysterical, and always active elsewhere, the Cuban cultural artefact — an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56) — very much conforms to the logics that guide the appeal, and danger, of cyberspace. Cuba occupies an inexhaustible “ontological time … that can be reintegrated at any time” (Stenger 55), but it is always haunted by the prospect of ontological stalling and proliferation. The cyber-like struggle over reintegration, of course, evokes the Elián González affair, which began on 25 November 1999, when five-year old Elián set foot on U.S. soil, and ended on 28 June 2000, when Elián, age six, returned to Cuba with his father. Elián left one Cuba and found himself in another Cuba, in the U.S.A., each national claimant asserting virtuously that its other was a no-place and therefore illegitimate. For many exiles, Elián’s arrival in Miami confirmed that Castro’s Cuba is on the point of collapse and hence on the virtual verge of reintegration into the democratic fold as determined by the true upholders of the nation, the exile community. It was also argued that Elián’s biological father could never be the boy’s true father because he was a mere emasculated puppet of Castro himself. The Cuban state, then, had forfeited its claims to generate and host Cubanness. Succoured by this logic, the “Save Elián” campaign began, with organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) bankrolling protests, leaflet and poster production, and official “Elián” websites, providing financial assistance to and arranging employment for some of Elián’s Miami relatives, lobbying the U.S. Congress and the Florida legislature, and contributing funds to the legal challenges on behalf of Elián at state and federal levels. (Founded in 1981, the CANF is the largest and most powerful Cuban exile organization, and one that regards itself as the virtual government-in-waiting. CANF emerged with the backing of the Reagan administration and the C.I.A. as a “private sector initiative” to support U.S. efforts against its long-time ideological adversary across the Florida Strait [Arboleya 224-5].) While the “Save Elián” campaign failed, the result of a Cuban American misreading of public opinion and overestimation of the community’s lobbying power with the Clinton administration, the struggle continues in cyberspace. CANF.net.org registers its central role in this intense period with silence; but many of the “Save Elián” websites constructed after November 1999 continue to function as sad memento moris of Elián’s shipwreck in U.S. virtual space. (The CANF website does provide links to articles and opinion pieces about Elián from the U.S. media, but its own editorializing on the Elián affair has disappeared. Two keys to this silence were the election of George W. Bush, and the events of 11 Sep. 2001, which have enabled a revision of the Elián saga as a mere temporary setback on the Cuban-exile historical horizon. Indeed, since 9/11, the CANF website has altered the terms of its campaign against Castro, posting photos of Castro with Arab leaders and implicating him in a world-wide web of terrorism. Elián’s return to Cuba may thus be viewed retrospectively as an act that galvanized Cuban-exile support for the Republican Party and their disdain for the Democratic rival, and this support became pivotal in the Republican electoral victory in Florida and in the U.S.A. as a whole.) For many months after Elián’s return to Cuba, the official Liberty for Elián site, established in April 2000, was urging visitors to make a donation, volunteer for the Save Elián taskforce, send email petitions, and “invite a friend to help Elián.” (Since I last accessed “Liberty for Elián” in March 2004 it has become a gambling site.) Another site, Elian’s Home Page, still implores visitors to pray for Elián. Some of the links no longer function, and imperatives to “Click here” lead to that dead zone called “URL not found on this server.” A similar stalling of the exile aspirations invested in Elián is evident on most remaining Elián websites, official and unofficial, the latter including The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez, which exhorts “Cuban Exiles! Now You Can Save Elián!” In these sites, a U.S. resident Elián lives on as an archival curiosity, a sign of pathos, and a reminder of what was, for a time, a Cuban-exile PR disaster. If such cybersites confirm the shipwrecked coordinates of Elián’s fame, the “Save Elián” campaign also provided a focus for unrestrained criticism of the Cuban exile community’s imbrication in U.S. foreign policy initiatives and its embrace of American Dream logics. Within weeks of Elián’s arrival in Florida, cyberspace was hosting myriad Eliáns on sites unbeholden to Cuban-U.S. antagonisms, thus consolidating Elián’s function as a disputed icon of virtualized celebrity and focus for parody. A sense of this carnivalesque proliferation can be gained from the many doctored versions of the now iconic photograph of Elián’s seizure by the INS. Still posted, the jpegs and flashes — Elián and Michael Jackson, Elián and Homer Simpson, Elián and Darth Vader, among others (these and other doctored versions are archived on Hypercenter.com) — confirm the extraordinary domestication of Elián in local pop-cultural terms that also resonate as parodies of U.S. consumerist and voyeuristic excess. Indeed, the parodic responses to Elián’s fame set the virtual tone in cyberspace where ostensibly serious sites can themselves be approached as send ups. One example is Lois Rodden’s Astrodatabank, which, since early 2000, has asked visitors to assist in interpreting Elián’s astrological chart in order to confirm whether or not he will remain in the U.S.A. To this end the site provides Elián’s astro-biography and birth chart — a Sagittarius with a Virgo moon, Elián’s planetary alignments form a bucket — and conveys such information as “To the people of Little Havana [Miami], Elian has achieved mystical status as a ‘miracle child.’” (An aside: Elián and I share the same birthday.) Elián’s virtual reputation for divinely sanctioned “blessedness” within a Cuban exile-meets-American Dream typology provided Tom Tomorrow with the target in his 31 January 2000, cartoon, This Modern World, on Salon.com. Here, six-year old Arkansas resident Allen Consalis loses his mother on the New York subway. His relatives decide to take care of him since “New York has much more to offer him than Arkansas! I mean get real!” A custody battle ensues in which Allan’s heavily Arkansas-accented father requires translation, and the case inspires heated debate: “can we really condemn him to a life in Arkansas?” The cartoon ends with the relatives tempting Allan with the delights offered by the Disney Store, a sign of Elián’s contested insertion into an American Dreamscape that not only promises an endless supply of consumer goods but provides a purportedly safe venue for the alternative Cuban nation. The illusory virtuality of that nation also animates a futuristic scenario, written in Spanish by Camilo Hernández, and circulated via email in May 2000. In this text, Elián sparks a corporate battle between Firestone and Goodyear to claim credit for his inner-tubed survival. Cuban Americans regard Elián as the Messiah come to lead them to the promised land. His ability to walk on water is scientifically tested: he sinks and has to be rescued again. In the ensuing custody battle, Cuban state-run demonstrations allow mothers of lesbians and of children who fail maths to have their say on Elián. Andrew Lloyd Weber wins awards for “Elián the Musical,” and for the film version, Madonna plays the role of the dolphin that saved Elián. Laws are enacted to punish people who mispronounce “Elián” but these do not help Elián’s family. All legal avenues exhausted, the entire exile community moves to Canada, and then to North Dakota where a full-scale replica of Cuba has been built. Visa problems spark another migration; the exiles are welcomed by Israel, thus inspiring a new Intifada that impels their return to the U.S.A. Things settle down by 2014, when Elián, his wife and daughter celebrate his 21st birthday as guests of the Kennedys. The text ends in 2062, when the great-great-grandson of Ry Cooder encounters an elderly Elián in Wyoming, thus providing Elián with his second fifteen minutes of fame. Hernández’s text confirms the impatience with which the Cuban-exile community was regarded by other U.S. Latino sectors, and exemplifies the loss of control over Elián experienced by both sides in the righteous Cuban “moral crusade” to save or repatriate Elián (Fernández xv). (Many Chicanos, for example, were angered at Cuban-exile arguments that Elián should remain in the U.S.A. when, in 1999 alone, 8,000 Mexican children were repatriated to Mexico (Ramos 126), statistical confirmation of the favored status that Cubans enjoy, and Mexicans do not, vis-à-vis U.S. immigration policy. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon and Camilo Hernández’s email text are part of what I call the “What-if?” sub-genre of Elián representations. Another example is “If Elián Gonzalez was Jewish,” archived on Lori’s Mishmash Humor page, in which Eliat Ginsburg is rescued after floating on a giant matzoh in the Florida Strait, and his Florida relatives fight to prevent his return to Israel, where “he had no freedom, no rights, no tennis lessons”.) Nonetheless, that “moral crusade” has continued in the Cuban state. During the custody battle, Elián was virtualized into a hero of national sovereignty, an embodied fix for a revolutionary project in strain due to the U.S. embargo, the collapse of Soviet socialism, and the symbolic threat posed by the virtual Cuban nation-in-waiting in Florida. Indeed, for the Castro regime, the exile wing of the national family is virtual precisely because it conveniently overlooks two facts: the continued survival of the Cuban state itself; and the exile community’s forty-plus-year slide into permanent U.S. residency as one migrant sector among many. Such rhetoric has not faded since Elián’s return. On December 5, 2003, Castro visited Cárdenas for Elián’s tenth birthday celebration and a quick tour of the Museo a la batalla de ideas (Museum for the Battle of Ideas), the museum dedicated to Elián’s “victory” over U.S. imperialism and opened by Castro on July 14, 2001. At Elián’s school Castro gave a speech in which he recalled the struggle to save “that little boy, whose absence caused everyone, and the whole people of Cuba, so much sorrow and such determination to struggle.” The conflation of Cuban state rhetoric and an Elián mnemonic in Cárdenas is repeated in Havana’s “Plaza de Elián,” or more formally Tribuna Anti-imperialista José Martí, where a statue of José Martí, the nineteenth-century Cuban nationalist, holds Elián in his arms while pointing to Florida. Meanwhile, in Little Havana, Miami, a sun-faded set of photographs and hand-painted signs, which insist God will save Elián yet, hang along the front fence of the house — now also a museum and site of pilgrimage — where Elián once lived in a state of siege. While Elián’s centrality in a struggle between virtuality and virtue continues on both sides of the Florida Strait, the Cuban nowhere could not contain Elián. During his U.S. sojourn many commentators noted that his travails were relayed in serial fashion to an international audience that also claimed intimate knowledge of the boy. Coming after the O.J. Simpson saga and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the Elián story confirmed journalist Rick Kushman’s identification of a ceaseless, restless U.S. media attention shift from one story to the next, generating an “übercoverage” that engulfs the country “in mini-hysteria” (Calvert 107). But In Elián’s case, the voyeuristic media-machine attained unprecedented intensity because it met and worked with the virtualities of the Cuban nowhere, part of it in the U.S.A. Thus, a transnational surfeit of Elián-narrative options was guaranteed for participants, audiences and commentators alike, wherever they resided. In Cuba, Elián was hailed as the child-hero of the Revolution. In Miami he was a savior sent by God, the proof supplied by the dolphins that saved him from sharks, and the Virgins who appeared in Little Havana after his arrival (De La Torre 3-5). Along the U.S.A.-Mexico border in 2000, Elián’s name was given to hundreds of Mexican babies whose parents thought the gesture would guarantee their sons a U.S. future. Day by day, Elián’s story was propelled across the globe by melodramatic plot devices familiar to viewers of soap opera: doubtful paternities; familial crimes; identity secrets and their revelation; conflicts of good over evil; the reuniting of long-lost relatives; and the operations of chance and its attendant “hand of Destiny, arcane and vaguely supernatural, transcending probability of doubt” (Welsh 22). Those devices were also favored by the amateur author, whose narratives confirm that the delirious parameters of cyberspace are easily matched in the worldly text. In Michael John’s self-published “history,” Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez, Elián is cast as the victim of a conspiracy traceable back to the hydra-headed monster of Castro-Clinton and the world media: “Elian’s case was MANIPULATED to achieve THEIR OVER-ALL AGENDA. Only time will bear that out” (143). His book is now out of print, and the last time I looked (August 2004) one copy was being offered on Amazon.com for US$186.30 (original price, $9.95). Guyana-born, Canadian-resident Frank Senauth’s eccentric novel, A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez, joins his other ventures into vanity publishing: To Save the Titanic from Disaster I and II; To Save Flight 608 From Disaster; A Wish to Die – A Will to Live; A Time to Live, A Time to Die; and A Day of Terror: The Sagas of 11th September, 2001. In A Cry for Help, Rachel, a white witch and student of writing, travels back in time in order to save Elián’s mother and her fellow travelers from drowning in the Florida Strait. As Senauth says, “I was only able to write this dramatic story because of my gift for seeing things as they really are and sharing my mystic imagination with you the public” (25). As such texts confirm, Elián González is an aberrant addition to the traditional U.S.-sponsored celebrity roll-call. He had no ontological capacity to take advantage of, intervene in, comment on, or be known outside, the parallel narrative universe into which he was cast and remade. He was cast adrift as a mere proper name that impelled numerous authors to supply the boy with the biography he purportedly lacked. Resident of an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56), Elián was battled over by virtualized national rivals, mass-mediated, and laid bare for endless signification. Even before his return to Cuba, one commentator noted that Elián had been consumed, denied corporeality, and condemned to “live out his life in hyper-space” (Buzachero). That space includes the infamous episode of South Park from May 2000, in which Kenny, simulating Elián, is killed off as per the show’s episodic protocols. Symptomatic of Elián’s narrative dispersal, the Kenny-Elián simulation keeps on living and dying whenever the episode is re-broadcast on TV sets across the world. Appropriated and relocated to strange and estranging narrative terrain, one Elián now lives out his multiple existences in the Cuban-U.S. “atmosphere in history,” and the Elián icon continues to proliferate virtually anywhere. References Arboleya, Jesús. The Cuban Counter-Revolution. Trans. Rafael Betancourt. Research in International Studies, Latin America Series no. 33. Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies, 2000. Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. Buzachero, Chris. “Elian Gonzalez in Hyper-Space.” Ctheory.net 24 May 2000. 19 Aug. 2004: http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=222>. Calvert, Clay. Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture. Boulder: Westview, 2000. Castro, Fidel. “Speech Given by Fidel Castro, at the Ceremony Marking the Birthday of Elian Gonzalez and the Fourth Anniversary of the Battle of Ideas, Held at ‘Marcello Salado’ Primary School in Cardenas, Matanzas on December 5, 2003.” 15 Aug. 2004 http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org.uk/fidel_castro3.htm>. Cuban American National Foundation. Official Website. 2004. 20 Aug. 2004 http://www.canf.org/2004/principal-ingles.htm>. De La Torre, Miguel A. La Lucha For Cuba: Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. “Elian Jokes.” Hypercenter.com 2000. 19 Aug. 2004 http://www.hypercenter.com/jokes/elian/index.shtml>. “Elian’s Home Page.” 2000. 19 Aug. 2004 http://elian.8k.com>. Everard, Jerry. Virtual States: The Internet and the Boundaries of the Nation-State. London and New York, Routledge, 2000. Fernández, Damián J. Cuba and the Politics of Passion. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000. Hernández, Camilo. “Cronología de Elián.” E-mail. 2000. Received 6 May 2000. “If Elian Gonzalez Was Jewish.” Lori’s Mishmash Humor Page. 2000. 10 Aug. 2004 http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6174/jokes/if-elian-was-jewish.htm>. John, Michael. Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez. MaxGo, 2000. “Liberty for Elián.” Official Save Elián Website 2000. June 2003 http://www.libertyforelian.org>. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Ramos, Jorge. La otra cara de América: Historias de los inmigrantes latinoamericanos que están cambiando a Estados Unidos. México, DF: Grijalbo, 2000. Rodden, Lois. “Elian Gonzalez.” Astrodatabank 2000. 20 Aug. 2004 http://www.astrodatabank.com/NM/GonzalezElian.htm>. Rowe, John Carlos. 2002. The New American Studies. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 2002. “The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez.” July 2004. 19 Aug. 2004 http://www.revlu.com/Elian.html>. Senauth, Frank. A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez. Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2000. Stenger, Nicole. “Mind Is a Leaking Rainbow.” Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1991. 49-58. Welsh, Alexander. George Eliot and Blackmail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Allatson, Paul. "The Virtualization of Elián González." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>. APA Style Allatson, P. (Nov. 2004) "The Virtualization of Elián González," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>.

The Language in the Workplace project, based in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has for most of its history concentrated on oral interaction in professional and manufacturing organisations. Recently, however, the project team widened its scope to include an introductory investigation of e-mail as a mode of workplace interaction. The ultimate intention is to extend the project's purview to encompass all written modes, thereby allowing a fuller focus on the complex interrelationships between communication media in the workplace. The Problems of Communication In an illuminating recent study, John Durham Peters explores problems that have dogged the notion of 'communication' (the term in this sense originating only in the late nineteenth century) from the time of Plato. The overarching historical problem he discusses is the recurrent desire for complete communication, the illusionary dream of transferring completely and without modification any idea, thought, or intention from one mind to another. There are two further and related problems that are particularly germane to my purposes here. A belief, at one extreme, that communication 'technologies' will interfere with the 'natural' processes of oral face-to-face interaction; together with its obverse, that communications plural (new technologies) will solve the problems of communication singular (self-other relations). A notion that dissemination (communication from one to many)1 is an inferior and distorting mode, inherently deterministic, compared with the openness of (preferably one-on-one) dialogue. Perhaps first formulated in Plato's Phaedrus, this lament has reverberated ever since, radio providing the instance par excellence.2 Yet another problem are the oppositions creating and sustaining these perceived problems, and their resultant social polarisations. Peters argues eloquently that technologies will never solve the differences in intention and reception amongst socially and therefore differentially positioned interlocutors. (Indeed, he counts it as a benefit that human beings cannot exempt themselves from the recognition and negotiation of individual and collective difference.) And he demonstrates that dialogue and dissemination are equally subject to imperfections and benefits. However, the perceptions remain, and that brings its own problems, given that people continue to act on the basis of unrealistic assumptions about communication. Looked at in this context, electronic mail (which Peters does not include in his historical studies) is a particularly fruitful site of investigation. I will focus on discussing the two problems enumerated above with reference to some of the academic and business literature on e-mail in the workplace; a survey conducted in part of a relatively large organisation in Wellington; and a public e-mail forum of primarily scientists and business people concerning New Zealand's future development. Communicative Distortion The first communication technology to be extensively critiqued for its corruption of social intercourse was writing (by Socrates in Phaedrus). Significantly, e-mail has often been characterised, not unreasonably, as a hybrid of speech and writing, and as returning written communication in the workplace toward the 'immediacy' and 'simplicity' of speech. In fact, as many practitioners do not sufficiently appreciate, informality and intimacy in e-mail communication have to be worked at. Efforts are made by some to use friendly salutations; a chatty, colloquial style; typographical representations of body language; and to refrain from tidying up errors and poor expression (which backfires on them when addressing sticklers for correctness, or when, as often happens, the message is full of obscurities and lacunae). When these attempts are not made, receivers impute to the messages the coldness and impersonality of the most functional letters and notes -- and this is only enhanced by the fact that so much e-mail in the workplace is used for directives (instructions and requests) or announcements (more specifically, proclamations; see below). In contrast to the initial reception of some earlier communication technologies, e-mail was widely welcomed at first. It was predicted to usher in a new egalitarian and democratic order of communication by flattening out or even by-passing hierarchical relations (Sproull and Kiesler; any issue of Wired magazine [see Frau-Meigs]). The realisation that other commercial factors were also contributing to this flattening out no doubt helped to dispel the utopian view (Casey; Gee)3. Subsequent literature has given more emphasis to the sinister aspects of e-mail -- its deployment by managers in the surveillance, monitoring, and performance measurement of employees, its capacity to support convenient and efficient reporting regimes, its durability, and its traceability (Brigham and Corbett; Corbett). This historical trajectory in attitudes towards, and uses of, e-mail, together with the potential variation in the readers' interpretations of the writer's feelings, means that people are quite as likely to conceive of e-mail as cold and impersonal as they are to impute to it more positive feelings. This is borne out in the organisational survey carried out as a part of this research. Of the respondents working in what I will call a professional capacity, 50 percent (the same proportion for both male and female) agreed that e-mail creates a friendlier environment, while only a small percentage of the remainder were neutral. Most disagreed. Interestingly, only a third of clerical staff agreed. One can readily speculate that the differences between these two occupational classes were a significant factor with regard to the uses e-mail is put to (more information sharing as equals on the part of professionals). Those who felt that e-mail contributed to a less friendly environment typically referred to the 'loss of personal contact', and to its ability to allow people to distance themselves from others or 'hide behind' the technology. In a somewhat paradoxical twist of this perceived characteristic, it appears that e-mail can reinforce the prevailing power relations in an organisation by giving employees a way of avoiding the (physical) brunt of these relations, and therefore of tolerating them. Employees have the sense that they can approach a superior through e-mail in a way that is both comfortable for the employee (not have to physically encounter their superior or, as one informant put it, "not have to cope with the boss's body language"), and convenient for the superior.4 At the same time, interestingly, respondents to our surveys have generally been adamant that e-mail is not the medium for conflict resolution or discussion of significant or sensitive matters pertaining to a manager's relationship with an individual employee. In the large Wellington service organisation surveyed for this study, 70% of the sample said they never or almost never used e-mail for these purposes. It was notable, however, that for professional employees, where a gender distinction used in the survey, 80% of women were of this view, compared with 60% of men. Indeed, nearly 10% of men reported using e-mail frequently for conflict resolution purposes. In sum, there is the potential in e-mail for a fundamental distortion; one that is seemingly the opposite of the anti-technologists' charge of corruption of communication by writing (but arguably with the same result), and one that very subtly contradictory, appearing to support, the utopianism of the digerati. The conventions of e-mail can allow employees to have a sense of participation and equality while denying them any real power or influence over important matters or directions of the organisation. E-mail, in other words, may allow co-workers to communicate across underlying tensions and conflicts by effectively suppressing conflict. This may have advantages for enabling an organisation's work to continue in the face of inevitable personality differences. It may also damage the chances of sustaining effective workplace relationships, especially if individuals generalise their use of e-mail, rather than selecting strategically from all the communicational resources available to them. Dialogue and Dissemination Notwithstanding the point made earlier in relation to radio about the flexibility of technology as a societal accomplishment (see note 2), e-mail, I suggest, is unique in the extent of its inherent ability to alternate freely between both poles of the dialogue -- dissemination dichotomy. It is equally adept at allowing one to broadcast to many as it is at enabling two or more people to conduct a conversation. What complicates this ambidexterity of e-mail is that, as Peters points out, in contradistinction to the contemporary tendency to valorise the reciprocity and interaction of dialogue, "dialogue can be tyrannical and dissemination can be just" (34). Consequently, one cannot make easy assumptions about the manner in which e-mail is being used. It is tempting, for example, to conclude from the preponderance of e-mail being used for announcements and simple requests that the supposed benefits of dialogue are not being achieved. This conclusion is demonstrably wrong on two related counts: If e-mail is encouraging widespread dissemination of information which could have been held back (and arguably would have been held back in large organisations lacking e-mail's facilitative qualities), then the workforce will be better informed, and hence more able -- and more inclined! -- to engage in dialogue. The uses to which e-mail is put must not be viewed in isolation from the associated use of other media. If communication per se (including dialogue) is increasing, it may be that e-mail (as dissemination) is making that possible. Indeed, our research showed a considerable unanimity of perception that communication overall has significantly increased since the introduction of e-mail. This is not to necessarily claim that the quality of communication has increased (there is a degree of e-mail communication that is regarded as unwanted). But the fact that a majority of respondents reported increases in use or stability of use across almost all media, including face-to-face interaction, suggests that a more communicative climate may be emerging. We need then to be more precise about the genre of announcements when discussing their organisational implications. Responses in focus group discussions indicate that the use of e-mail for homilies or 'feel good' messages from the CEO (rather than making the effort to talk face-to-face to employees) is not appreciated. Proclamations, too, are better delivered off-line. Similarly, instructions are better formulated as requests (i.e. with a dialogic tone). As I noted earlier, clerical staff, who are more likely to be on the receiving end of instructions, were less inclined to agree that e-mail creates a friendlier environment. Similarly, instructions are better formulated as requests (i.e. with a dialogic tone). As I noted earlier, clerical staff, who are more likely to be on the receiving end of instructions, were less inclined to agree that e-mail creates a friendlier environment. Even more than face-to-face, group interaction by e-mail allows certain voices to be ignored. Where, as often, there are multiple responses to a particular message, subsequent contributors can use selective responses to strongly influence the direction of the discussion. An analysis of a lengthy portion of the corpus reveals that certain key participants -- often effectively in alliance with like-minded members who endorse their interventions -- will regularly turn the dialogue back to a preferred thread by swift and judicious responses. The conversation can move very quickly away from a new perspective not favoured by regular respondents. It is also possible for a participant sufficiently well regarded by a number of other members to leave the discussion for a time (as much as two or three weeks) and on their return resurrect their favoured perspective by retrieving and responding to a relatively old message. It is clear from this forum that individual reputation and status can carry as much weight on line as it can in face-to-face discussion. Conclusion Peters points out that since the late nineteenth century, of which the invention of the words 'telepathy' and 'solipsism' are emblematic, 'communication' "has simultaneously called up the dream of instantaneous access and the nightmare of the labyrinth of solitude" (5). The ambivalence shown towards e-mail by many of its users is clearly the result of the history of responses to communications technology, and of the particular flexibility of e-mail, which makes it an example of this technology par excellence. For the sake of the development of their communicational capabilities, it would be a pity if people continued to jump to the conclusions encouraged by dichotomous conceptions of e-mail (intimate/impersonal, democratic/autocratic, etc.), rather than consciously working to develop a reflexive, open, and case-specific relationship with the technology. Footnotes This does not necessarily exclude oral face-to-face: Peters discusses Jesus's presentation of parables to the crowd as an instance of dissemination. The point is not as transparent as it can now seem. As Peters writes: "It is a mistake to equate technologies with their societal applications. For example, 'broadcasting' (one-way dispersion of programming to an audience that cannot itself broadcast) is not inherent in the technology of radio; it was a complex social accomplishment ... . The lack of dialogue owes less to broadcasting technologies than to interests that profit from constituting audiences as observers rather than participants" (34). That is, post-Fordist developments leading to downsizing of middle management, working in teams, valorisation of flexibility ('flexploitation'). There is no doubt an irony here that escapes the individual employee: namely, every other employee is e-mailing the boss 'because it is convenient for the boss', and meanwhile the boss is gritting his or her teeth as an avalanche of e-mail descends. References Brigham, Martin, and J. Martin Corbett. "E-mail, Power and the Constitution of Organisational Reality." New Technology, Work and Employment 12.1 (1997): 25-36. Casey, Catherine. Work, Self and Society: After Industrialism. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Corbett, Martin. "Wired and Emotional." People Management 3.13 (1997): 26-32. Gee, James Paul. "The New Literacy Studies: From 'Socially Situated' to the Work of the Social." Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context. Eds. David Barton et al. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 180-96. Frau-Meigs, Divina. "A Cultural Project Based on Multiple Temporary Consensus: Identity and Community in Wired." New Media and Society 2.2 (2000): 227-44. Peters, John Durham. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1999. Sproull, Lee and Sara Kiesler. Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1992. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Derek Wallace. "E-Mail and the Problems of Communication." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/email.php>. Chicago style: Derek Wallace, "E-Mail and the Problems of Communication," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/email.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Derek Wallace. (2000) E-mail and the problems of communication. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/email.php> ([your date of access]).

The World Health Organisation has noted the ageing of the world’s population and has emphasised the growing need for older people’s needs to be considered in a range of contexts (WHO 1999, 2001). In Australia, people over the age of 65 currently constitute approximately 13% of the population (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 2002), but this number is expected to increase to 24% by 2051 (ABS 1999). As our population ages it will become increasingly necessary to cater to the particular needs of older audiences. This will involve a change in attitudes as the needs of this group have been largely neglected in western cultures and older people continue to be largely invisible in the media (Grossman 1998; Napoli 2002; Thomas and Wolfe 1995). The ubiquity of the written word and our reliance on this medium in almost every aspect of our lives signifies its importance in modern life. Reliance can become problematic when individuals experience difficulties in comprehending text-based communications (Akutsu, Legge, Ross, and Schuebel 1991). This article explains the problems older people can experience when attempting to read text and provides recommendations to enable communicators to enhance text comprehension among older audiences. Older audiences Older people tend to feel generally neglected by the media (Chafetz et al 1998). Previous studies have found that older people are not represented in line with their numbers (Szmigin and Carrigan 2001), and that negative stereotyping of older people is common in the media (de Luce 2001; Nielson and Curry 1997). This cultural bias is reflected in inadequate knowledge and accommodation of the special needs of older audiences when it comes to comprehending text. This has implications not just for the access of older people to sources of news and entertainment, but also for their ability to obtain information important to their health and well-being. Written materials such as brochures are frequently used to disseminate health-related information to older people (Clark et al 1999), and as such there is a need to ensure that we understand how to use text effectively for older audiences. Biological changes Quality of eyesight is closely correlated with age (Wahl and Heyl 2003). Deterioration in eyesight usually becomes noticeable in our 40s and 50s (Stuen and Faye 2003). Stuen and Faye (2003) have described the process by which the structure of the eye changes with age. They note that the lens of the eye thickens, hardens, and becomes yellowish in colour. Reduced elasticity in the lens and a tendency for the cornea to scatter light makes it more difficult for older people to focus their eyes, making reading problematic. The pupil shrinks with age, allowing smaller amounts of light to filter into the eye to assist with vision. This results in the need for brighter reading conditions, but not too bright as glare can also interfere with light entering the deteriorating cornea. As well as physical alterations to the eye, changes in cognitive capacity are also closely associated with ageing (Spotts and Schewe 1989). Wahl and Heyl (2003) postulate that the ageing of the central nervous system results in the deterioration of the neural pathways to the brain resulting in slower cognitive processing, including the processing of visual stimuli. Attentional capacity reduces with age, which means cognitive processing becomes more demanding (Moschis 1992). The outcome of these changes is that the older person experiences increasing difficulty in absorbing new information and evaluating unfamiliar stimuli (Moschis 1994). In particular, it appears more difficult for older audiences to remember new information that contradicts previously learned information (Rice and Okun 1994). Despite these changes in cognitive capacity, older people are reported as being able to assimilate information effectively if given ample time to do so (Moschis 1992; Tongren 1988). In addition, ensuring that new information relates to existing knowledge is likely to enhance comprehension and retention (Clark et al. 1999; Rice and Okun 1994). Implications for text style and presentation Age-related changes in visual acuity and cognitive processing result in the need for modifications in styles and presentation of text to maximise comprehension by older audiences. In terms of text style, font size may need to be slightly larger (Braus 1995), but not too large as people of all ages can experience reading difficulties when text is too large or too small (Akutsu et al. 1991). There are warnings against the use of all upper-case text as this impacts negatively on readability (Braus 1995). Colour may need to be manipulated to maximise contrasts to facilitate text discernment (Fairley et al 1997; Spotts and Schewe 1989). Black on white provides a high level of contrast, while shades of the same colour (for example, dark brown on light brown) provide much lower levels of contrast. Colours in the blue-green range can be particularly difficult for older eyes to discern (Braus 1995; Spotts and Schewe 1989). The use of bright colours such as red, orange, and yellow are recommended as they are relatively easy to distinguish (Clark et al. 1999). Text should be printed on matte rather than glossy paper and presented in non-glare environments to enhance readability (Braus 1995; Spotts and Schewe 1989). In terms of text presentation, the emphasis is on selecting an appropriate message and locating it carefully. There is general consensus that information should be confined to a small number of important points that are communicated simply and explicitly (Clark et al. 1999; Rice and Okun 1994; Spotts and Schewe 1989; Tooth, Clark, and McKenna 2000). This means using concrete terms whenever possible and using abstract terms only when necessary (Clark et al. 1999). It is important to ensure that extraneous information is excluded and the most pertinent information provided first to reduce processing workload (Spotts and Schewe 1989; Tooth et al. 2000). Repetition appears particularly critical in ensuring information is retained by older audiences (Clark et al. 1999). As older readers have greater trouble differentiating between previously learned information and new information (Clark et al. 1999), it is important to ensure that messages contain information that is related to existing knowledge in a way that will enhance assimilation (Rice and Okun 1994). It helps to locate information in uncluttered contexts and to use short lines and paragraphs (Fairley et al. 1997; Spotts and Schewe 1989). Using pictures to reinforce the message in the text can be effective (Moschis 1992), although the pictures should also be concrete rather than abstract (Clark et al. 1999). It is particularly important to test written materials designed for older audiences prior to dissemination to ensure the right messages are being received (Clark et al. 1999; Tooth et al. 2000). To conclude, there co-exists an awareness of population ageing and a cultural bias against older people that has resulted in relatively little knowledge of the optimal design of text for older people. This article has argued that the physical changes associated with aging have significant implications for the design and presentation of text. Steps should thus be taken to ensure that written communications are modified to better meet the needs of older audiences. Works Cited Akutsu, H., G. E. Legge, J. A. Ross, and K. J. Schuebel. "Psychophysics of Reading - X. Effects of Age-Related Changes in Vision". Journal of Gerontology 46.6 (1991): 325-331. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Older People, Australia: A Social Report, Canberra, 1999. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2001 Census Basic Community Profile and Snapshot, Australia, Canberra, (2002. Braus, P. "Vision in an Aging America". American Demographics 17.6 (1995): 34-38 Chafetz, P. K., H. Holmes, K. Lande, E. Childress, and H. R. Glazer. "Older Adults and the News Media: Utilization, Opinions, and Preferred Reference Terms". Gerontologist 38.4 (1998): 481-489. Clark, K. L., R. AbuSabha, A. von Eye, and C. Achterberg. "Text and Graphics: Manipulating Nutrition Brochures to Maximize Recall". Health Education Research 14.4 (1999): 555-564. de Luce, J. "Silence at the Newsstands". Generations 25.3 (2001): 39-43. Fairley, S., G. P. Moschis, H. M. Meyers, and A. Thiesfeldt. "The Experts Sound Off". Brandweek 38.30 (1997): 24-25. Grossman, L. K. "Aging Viewers: The Best is Yet to Be". Columbia Journalism Review 36.5 (1998): 68. Moschis, G. P. Marketing to Older Consumers. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum, 1992. Moschis, G. P. Marketing Strategies for the Mature Market. Westport, Connecticut, Quorom, 1994. Napoli, P. N. "Audience Valuation and Minority Media: An Analysis of the Determinants of the Value of Radio Audiences". Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 46.2 (2002): 169-184. Nielson, J. and K. Curry. "Creative Strategies for Connecting with Mature Individuals". Journal of Consumer Marketing 14.4 (1997): 310-322. Rice, G. E. and M. A. Okun. "Older Readers' Processing of Medical Information that Contradicts their Beliefs". Journal of Geronotology 49.3 (1994): 119-128. Szmigin, I. and M. Carrigan. "Learning to Love the Older Consumer". Journal of Consumer Behaviour 1.1 (2001): 22-34. Spotts, H. E. and C. D. Schewe. "Communicating with the Elderly Consumer: The Growing Health-Care Challenge". Journal of Health Care Marketing 9.3 (1989): 36-44. Stuen, C. and E. E. Faye. "Vision Loss: Normal and Not Normal Changes among Older Adults". Generations 27.1 (2003): 8-14. Thomas, V. and D. B. Wolfe. "Why Won't Television Grow Up?" American Demographics 17.5 (1995): 24 Tongren, H. N. "Determinant Behavior Characteristics of Older Consumers". Journal of Consumer Affairs 22.1 (1988): 136-157. Tooth, L., M. Clark, and K. McKenna. "Poor Functional Health Literacy: The Silent Disability for Older People". Australasian Journal on Ageing 19.1 (2000): 14-22. Wahl, H. and V. Heyl. "Connections Between Vision, Hearing, and Cognitive Function in Old Age". Generations 27.1 (2003): 39-45. World Health Organization. Action Towards Active Ageing. Geneva, (1999). Available: http://www.who.int/archives/whday/en/pages1999/whd99_8.html. Accessed 13/11/2001. World Health Organization. Health and Ageing: A Discussion Paper. Geneva, 2001. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Pettigrew, Simone. "Creating Text for Older Audiences" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/010-pettigrew.php>. APA Style Pettigrew, S. (2004, Jan 12). Creating Text for Older Audiences. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/010-pettigrew.php>

Newspapers and the 7:15 Showing Cinemagoing involves planning. Even in the most impromptu instances, one has to consider meeting places, line-ups and competing responsibilities. One arranges child care, postpones household chores, or rushes to finish meals. One must organise transportation and think about routes, traffic, parking or public transit. And during the course of making plans for a trip to the cinema, whether alone or in the company of others, typically one turns to locate a recent newspaper. Consulting its printed page lets us ascertain locations, a selection of film titles and their corresponding show times. In preparing to feed a cinema craving, we burrow through a newspaper to an entertainment section, finding a tableau of information and promotional appeals. Such sections compile the mini-posters of movie advertisements, with their truncated credits, as well as various reviews and entertainment news. We see names of shopping malls doubling as names of theatres. We read celebrity gossip that may or may not pertain to the film selected for that occasion. We informally rank viewing priorities ranging from essential theatrical experiences to those that can wait for the videotape release. We attempt to assess our own mood and the taste of our filmgoing companions, matching up what we suppose are appropriate selections. Certainly, other media vie to supplant the newspaper's role in cinemagoing; many now access on-line sources and telephone services that offer the crucial details about start times. Nonetheless, as a campaign by the Newspaper Association of America in Variety aimed to remind film marketers, 80% of cinemagoers refer to newspaper listings for times and locations before heading out. The accuracy of that association's statistics notwithstanding, for the moment, the local daily or weekly newspaper has a secure place in the routines of cinematic life. A basic impetus for the newspaper's role is its presentation of a schedule of show times. Whatever the venue -- published, phone or on-line -- it strikes me as especially telling that schedules are part of the ordinariness of cinemagoing. To be sure, there are those who decide what film to see on site. Anecdotally, I have had several people comment recently that they no longer decide what movie to see, but where to see a (any) movie. Regardless, the schedule, coupled with the theatre's location, figures as a point of coordination for travel through community space to a site of film consumption. The choice of show time is governed by countless demands of everyday life. How often has the timing of a film -- not the film itself, the theatre at which it's playing, nor one's financial situation --determined one's attendance? How familiar is the assessment that show times are such that one cannot make it, that the film begins a bit too earlier, that it will run too late for whatever reason, and that other tasks intervene to take precedence? I want to make several observations related to the scheduling of film exhibition. Most generally, it makes manifest that cinemagoing involves an exercise in the application of cinema knowledge -- that is, minute, everyday facilities and familiarities that help orchestrate the ordinariness of cultural life. Such knowledge informs what Michel de Certeau characterises as "the procedures of everyday creativity" (xiv). Far from random, the unexceptional decisions and actions involved with cinemagoing bear an ordering and a predictability. Novelty in audience activity appears, but it is alongside fairly exact expectations about the event. The schedule of start times is essential to the routinisation of filmgoing. Displaying a Fordist logic of streamlining commodity distribution and the time management of consumption, audiences circulate through a machine that shapes their constituency, providing a set time for seating, departure, snack purchases and socialising. Even with the staggered times offered by multiplex cinemas, schedules still lay down a fixed template around which other activities have to be arrayed by the patron. As audiences move to and through the theatre, the schedule endeavours to regulate practice, making us the subjects of a temporal grid, a city context, a cinema space, as well as of the film itself. To be sure, one can arrive late and leave early, confounding the schedule's disciplining force. Most importantly, with or without such forms of evasion, it channels the actions of audiences in ways that consideration of the gaze cannot address. Taking account of the scheduling of cinema culture, and its implication of adjunct procedures of everyday life, points to dimensions of subjectivity neglected by dominant theories of spectatorship. To be the subject of a cinema schedule is to understand one assemblage of the parameters of everyday creativity. It would be foolish to see cinema audiences as cattle, herded and processed alone, in some crude Gustave LeBon fashion. It would be equally foolish not to recognise the manner in which film distribution and exhibition operates precisely by constructing images of the activity of people as demographic clusters and generalised cultural consumers. The ordinary tactics of filmgoing are supplemental to, and run alongside, a set of industrial structures and practices. While there is a correlation between a culture industry's imagined audience and the life that ensues around its offerings, we cannot neglect that, as attention to film scheduling alerts us, audiences are subjects of an institutional apparatus, brought into being for the reproduction of an industrial edifice. Streamline Audiences In this, film is no different from any culture industry. Film exhibition and distribution relies on an understanding of both the market and the product or service being sold at any given point in time. Operations respond to economic conditions, competing companies, and alternative activities. Economic rationality in this strategic process, however, only explains so much. This is especially true for an industry that must continually predict, and arguably give shape to, the "mood" and predilections of disparate and distant audiences. Producers, distributors and exhibitors assess which films will "work", to whom they will be marketed, as well as establish the very terms of success. Without a doubt, much of the film industry's attentions act to reduce this uncertainty; here, one need only think of the various forms of textual continuity (genre films, star performances, etc.) and the economies of mass advertising as ways to ensure box office receipts. Yet, at the core of the operations of film exhibition remains a number of flexible assumptions about audience activity, taste and desire. These assumptions emerge from a variety of sources to form a brand of temporary industry "commonsense", and as such are harbingers of an industrial logic. Ien Ang has usefully pursued this view in her comparative analysis of three national television structures and their operating assumptions about audiences. Broadcasters streamline and discipline audiences as part of their organisational procedures, with the consequence of shaping ideas about consumers as well as assuring the reproduction of the industrial structure itself. She writes, "institutional knowledge is driven toward making the audience visible in such a way that it helps the institutions to increase their power to get their relationship with the audience under control, and this can only be done by symbolically constructing 'television audience' as an objectified category of others that can be controlled, that is, contained in the interest of a predetermined institutional goal" (7). Ang demonstrates, in particular, how various industrially sanctioned programming strategies (programme strips, "hammocking" new shows between successful ones, and counter-programming to a competitor's strengths) and modes of audience measurement grow out of, and invariably support, those institutional goals. And, most crucially, her approach is not an effort to ascertain the empirical certainty of "actual" audiences; instead, it charts the discursive terrain in which the abstract concept of audience becomes material for the continuation of industry practices. Ang's work tenders special insight to film culture. In fact, television scholarship has taken full advantage of exploring the routine nature of that medium, the best of which deploys its findings to lay bare configurations of power in domestic contexts. One aspect has been television time and schedules. For example, David Morley points to the role of television in structuring everyday life, discussing a range of research that emphasises the temporal dimension. Alerting us to the non- necessary determination of television's temporal structure, he comments that we "need to maintain a sensitivity to these micro-levels of division and differentiation while we attend to the macro-questions of the media's own role in the social structuring of time" (265). As such, the negotiation of temporal structures implies that schedules are not monolithic impositions of order. Indeed, as Morley puts it, they "must be seen as both entering into already constructed, historically specific divisions of space and time, and also as transforming those pre-existing division" (266). Television's temporal grid has been address by others as well. Paddy Scannell characterises scheduling and continuity techniques, which link programmes, as a standardisation of use, making radio and television predictable, 'user friendly' media (9). John Caughie refers to the organization of flow as a way to talk about the national particularities of British and American television (49-50). All, while making their own contributions, appeal to a detailing of viewing context as part of any study of audience, consumption or experience; uncovering the practices of television programmers as they attempt to apprehend and create viewing conditions for their audiences is a first step in this detailing. Why has a similar conceptual framework not been applied with the same rigour to film? Certainly the history of film and television's association with different, at times divergent, disciplinary formations helps us appreciate such theoretical disparities. I would like to mention one less conspicuous explanation. It occurs to me that one frequently sees a collapse in the distinction between the everyday and the domestic; in much scholarship, the latter term appears as a powerful trope of the former. The consequence has been the absenting of a myriad of other -- if you will, non-domestic -- manifestations of everyday-ness, unfortunately encouraging a rather literal understanding of the everyday. The impression is that the abstractions of the everyday are reduced to daily occurrences. Simply put, my minor appeal is for the extension of this vein of television scholarship to out-of-home technologies and cultural forms, that is, other sites and locations of the everyday. In so doing, we pay attention to extra-textual structures of cinematic life; other regimes of knowledge, power, subjectivity and practice appear. Film audiences require a discussion about the ordinary, the calculated and the casual practices of cinematic engagement. Such a discussion would chart institutional knowledge, identifying operating strategies and recognising the creativity and multidimensionality of cinemagoing. What are the discursive parameters in which the film industry imagines cinema audiences? What are the related implications for the structures in which the practice of cinemagoing occurs? Vectors of Exhibition Time One set of those structures of audience and industry practice involves the temporal dimension of film exhibition. In what follows, I want to speculate on three vectors of the temporality of cinema spaces (meaning that I will not address issues of diegetic time). Note further that my observations emerge from a close study of industrial discourse in the U.S. and Canada. I would be interested to hear how they are manifest in other continental contexts. First, the running times of films encourage turnovers of the audience during the course of a single day at each screen. The special event of lengthy anomalies has helped mark the epic, and the historic, from standard fare. As discussed above, show times coordinate cinemagoing and regulate leisure time. Knowing the codes of screenings means participating in an extension of the industrial model of labour and service management. Running times incorporate more texts than the feature presentation alone. Besides the history of double features, there are now advertisements, trailers for coming attractions, trailers for films now playing in neighbouring auditoriums, promotional shorts demonstrating new sound systems, public service announcements, reminders to turn off cell phones and pagers, and the exhibitor's own signature clips. A growing focal point for filmgoing, these introductory texts received a boost in 1990, when the Motion Picture Association of America changed its standards for the length of trailers, boosting it from 90 seconds to a full two minutes (Brookman). This intertextuality needs to be supplemented by a consideration of inter- media appeals. For example, advertisements for television began appearing in theatres in the 1990s. And many lobbies of multiplex cinemas now offer a range of media forms, including video previews, magazines, arcades and virtual reality games. Implied here is that motion pictures are not the only media audiences experience in cinemas and that there is an explicit attempt to integrate a cinema's texts with those at other sites and locations. Thus, an exhibitor's schedule accommodates an intertextual strip, offering a limited parallel to Raymond Williams's concept of "flow", which he characterised by stating -- quite erroneously -- "in all communication systems before broadcasting the essential items were discrete" (86-7). Certainly, the flow between trailers, advertisements and feature presentations is not identical to that of the endless, ongoing text of television. There are not the same possibilities for "interruption" that Williams emphasises with respect to broadcasting flow. Further, in theatrical exhibition, there is an end-time, a time at which there is a public acknowledgement of the completion of the projected performance, one that necessitates vacating the cinema. This end-time is a moment at which the "rental" of the space has come due; and it harkens a return to the street, to the negotiation of city space, to modes of public transit and the mobile privatisation of cars. Nonetheless, a schedule constructs a temporal boundary in which audiences encounter a range of texts and media in what might be seen as limited flow. Second, the ephemerality of audiences -- moving to the cinema, consuming its texts, then passing the seat on to someone else -- is matched by the ephemerality of the features themselves. Distributors' demand for increasing numbers of screens necessary for massive, saturation openings has meant that films now replace one another more rapidly than in the past. Films that may have run for months now expect weeks, with fewer exceptions. Wider openings and shorter runs have created a cinemagoing culture characterised by flux. The acceleration of the turnover of films has been made possible by the expansion of various secondary markets for distribution, most importantly videotape, splintering where we might find audiences and multiplying viewing contexts. Speeding up the popular in this fashion means that the influence of individual texts can only be truly gauged via cross-media scrutiny. Short theatrical runs are not axiomatically designed for cinemagoers anymore; they can also be intended to attract the attention of video renters, purchasers and retailers. Independent video distributors, especially, "view theatrical release as a marketing expense, not a profit center" (Hindes & Roman 16). In this respect, we might think of such theatrical runs as "trailers" or "loss leaders" for the video release, with selected locations for a film's release potentially providing visibility, even prestige, in certain city markets or neighbourhoods. Distributors are able to count on some promotion through popular consumer- guide reviews, usually accompanying theatrical release as opposed to the passing critical attention given to video release. Consequently, this shapes the kinds of uses an assessment of the current cinema is put to; acknowledging that new releases function as a resource for cinema knowledge highlights the way audiences choose between and determine big screen and small screen films. Taken in this manner, popular audiences see the current cinema as largely a rough catalogue to future cultural consumption. Third, motion picture release is part of the structure of memories and activities over the course of a year. New films appear in an informal and ever-fluctuating structure of seasons. The concepts of summer movies and Christmas films, or the opening weekends that are marked by a holiday, sets up a fit between cinemagoing and other activities -- family gatherings, celebrations, etc. Further, this fit is presumably resonant for both the industry and popular audiences alike, though certainly for different reasons. The concentration of new films around visible holiday periods results in a temporally defined dearth of cinemas; an inordinate focus upon three periods in the year in the U.S. and Canada -- the last weekend in May, June/July/August and December -- creates seasonal shortages of screens (Rice-Barker 20). In fact, the boom in theatre construction through the latter half of the 1990s was, in part, to deal with those short-term shortages and not some year-round inadequate seating. Configurations of releasing colour a calendar with the tactical manoeuvres of distributors and exhibitors. Releasing provides a particular shape to the "current cinema", a term I employ to refer to a temporally designated slate of cinematic texts characterised most prominently by their newness. Television arranges programmes to capitalise on flow, to carry forward audiences and to counter-programme competitors' simultaneous offerings. Similarly, distributors jostle with each other, with their films and with certain key dates, for the limited weekends available, hoping to match a competitor's film intended for one audience with one intended for another. Industry reporter Leonard Klady sketched some of the contemporary truisms of releasing based upon the experience of 1997. He remarks upon the success of moving Liar, Liar (Tom Shadyac, 1997) to a March opening and the early May openings of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) and Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997), generally seen as not desirable times of the year for premieres. He cautions against opening two films the same weekend, and thus competing with yourself, using the example of Fox's Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr., 1997) and The Edge (Lee Tamahori, 1997). While distributors seek out weekends clear of films that would threaten to overshadow their own, Klady points to the exception of two hits opening on the same date of December 19, 1997 -- Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) and Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Though but a single opinion, Klady's observations are a peek into a conventional strain of strategising among distributors and exhibitors. Such planning for the timing and appearance of films is akin to the programming decisions of network executives. And I would hazard to say that digital cinema, reportedly -- though unlikely -- just on the horizon and in which texts will be beamed to cinemas via satellite rather than circulated in prints, will only augment this comparison; releasing will become that much more like programming, or at least will be conceptualised as such. To summarize, the first vector of exhibition temporality is the scheduling and running time; the second is the theatrical run; the third is the idea of seasons and the "programming" of openings. These are just some of the forces streamlining filmgoers; the temporal structuring of screenings, runs and film seasons provides a material contour to the abstraction of audience. Here, what I have delineated are components of an industrial logic about popular and public entertainment, one that offers a certain controlled knowledge about and for cinemagoing audiences. Shifting Conceptual Frameworks A note of caution is in order. I emphatically resist an interpretation that we are witnessing the becoming-film of television and the becoming-tv of film. Underneath the "inversion" argument is a weak brand of technological determinism, as though each asserts its own essential qualities. Such a pat declaration seems more in line with the mythos of convergence, and its quasi-Darwinian "natural" collapse of technologies. Instead, my point here is quite the opposite, that there is nothing essential or unique about the scheduling or flow of television; indeed, one does not have to look far to find examples of less schedule-dependent television. What I want to highlight is that application of any term of distinction -- event/flow, gaze/glance, public/private, and so on -- has more to do with our thinking, with the core discursive arrangements that have made film and television, and their audiences, available to us as knowable and different. So, using empirical evidence to slide one term over to the other is a strategy intended to supplement and destabilise the manner in which we draw conclusions, and even pose questions, of each. What this proposes is, again following the contributions of Ien Ang, that we need to see cinemagoing in its institutional formation, rather than some stable technological, textual or experiential apparatus. The activity is not only a function of a constraining industrial practice or of wildly creative patrons, but of a complex inter-determination between the two. Cinemagoing is an organisational entity harbouring, reviving and constituting knowledge and commonsense about film commodities, audiences and everyday life. An event of cinema begins well before the dimming of an auditorium's lights. The moment a newspaper is consulted, with its local representation of an internationally circulating current cinema, its listings belie a scheduling, an orderliness, to the possible projections in a given location. As audiences are formed as subjects of the current cinema, we are also agents in the continuation of a set of institutions as well. References Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge, 1991. Brookman, Faye. "Trailers: The Big Business of Drawing Crowds." Variety 13 June 1990: 48. Caughie, John. "Playing at Being American: Games and Tactics." Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Ed. Patricia Mellencamp. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steve Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Hindes, Andrew, and Monica Roman. "Video Titles Do Pitstops on Screens." Variety 16-22 Sep. 1996: 11+. Klady, Leonard. "Hitting and Missing the Market: Studios Show Savvy -- or Just Luck -- with Pic Release Strategies." Variety 19-25 Jan. 1998: 18. Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Newspaper Association of America. "Before They See It Here..." Advertisement. Variety 22-28 Nov. 1999: 38. Rice-Barker, Leo. "Industry Banks on New Technology, Expanded Slates." Playback 6 May 1996: 19-20. Scannell, Paddy. Radio, Television and Modern Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken, 1975. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Acland. "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php>. Chicago style: Charles Acland, "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Acland. (2000) Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]).

Investigative journalist Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart of The Daily Show: MOYERS: I do not know whether you are practicing an old form of parody and satire…or a new form of journalism. STEWART: Well then that either speaks to the sad state of comedy or the sad state of news. I can’t figure out which one. I think, honestly, we’re practicing a new form of desperation…. July 2003 (Bill Moyers Interview of Jon Stewart, on Public Broadcasting Service) Transmission, while always fraught and ever-changing, is particularly so at a moment when coincidentally the exponential increase in access to new media communication is paired with the propagandized and state-dominated moment of war, in this case the U.S. preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003. U.S. fighter planes drop paper propaganda along with bombs. Leaked into mainstream media by virtue of new media technologies, the violations of Abu-Ghraib represent the challenge of conducting war in a digital era. Transmissions are highly controlled and yet the proliferation of access poses a new challenge – explicitly named by Rumsfeld in December 2005 on the Jim Lehrer news hour: DONALD RUMSFELD: No, I think what is happening – and this is the first war that has ever been conducted in the 21st century when you had talk radio, the Internet, e-mails, bloggers, 24-hour news, digital cameras, video cameras, instant access to everything, and we haven’t accommodated to that yet. … And what’s happening is the transmission belt that receives it spreads all these things. … Rumsfeld’s comments about the convergence of new media with a time of war highlights what those of us studying cultural communication see as a crucial site of study: the access and use of new media to transmit dissenting political commentary is arguably a sign of new counter-public spaces that coincide with increased mainstream media control and erosion of civil liberties surrounding free speech. In this particular instance, the strategic use of media by U.S. political administration to sell a morally questionable war to the public through deceptions and propaganda raises new questions about the transmission and phenomenon of truth claims in a digital age. In this essay I examine three sites through which satire is used to express political commentary in the convergent moment of repression combines with increased affordances. The examples I offer have been chosen because they illustrate what I recognize as a cultural shift, an emotional sea change even for staunch postmodernists: replacing Jameson’s characterization of the “waning of affect,” there has emerged renewed desire for truthfulness and accountability. What’s unique is that this insistence on the possibility of truthfulness is held in simultaneous contradiction with cynical distrust. The result is a paradoxical affective sentiment shared by many: the simultaneous belief that all truths are rhetorically constructed along with the shared certainty that we have been lied to, that this is wrong, and that there is a truthfulness that should be delivered. This demand is directed at the corrupted synergy created between media and politicians. The arguments used to counter the dominant content (and form) of transmission are made using new digital media. The sea-change in transmission is its multidirectionality, its frequency, and its own rapidly-changing modes of transmission. In short, communication and the political role of media has become exponentially complex in the simultaneous demand for truthfulness alongside the simultaneous awareness that all truth is constructed. Visual satire offers an ideal form to transmit the post-9/11 contradictions because irony turns on the unsaid; it uses the dominant forms of logic to express what is otherwise silenced as dissenting didacticism; it expresses horrors in forms that are palatable; it creates a sense of shared meaning and community by using the unsaid to create a recognition of the dominant culture as misrepresentation. While irony has been used for centuries as a political tool, what is unique about the digitally produced and disseminated cultures created through visual ironies after 9/11 is that these expressions explicitly reference again and again a desire for accountability. Much could be said about the history of political satire, and if space permitted I would develop here my discussion of affect and parody, best excavated beginning with a history of political satire moving up to current “fair use legislation” which legally protects those who perform parody, one subset of satire. A more general comment on the relation of humor to politics helps set a context for the relationship of satire to contemporary political transmissions I address. Humor … helps one only to bear somewhat better the unalterable; sometimes it reminds both the mighty and the weak that they are not to be taken seriously. …One’s understanding of political jokes obviously depends on one’s understanding of politics. At one level, politics is always a struggle for power. Along with persuasion and lies, advice and flattery, tokens of esteem and bribery, banishment and violence, obedience and treachery, the joke belongs to the rich treasury of the instruments of politics. We often hear that the political joke is an offensive weapon with which an aggressive, politically engaged person makes the arrangements or precautions of an opponent seem ridiculous. But even when political jokes serve defensive purposes, they are nonetheless weapons (Speier and Jackall 1998, 1352). The productions I am studying I define as digital dissent: the use of new media to engage in tactical media, culture jamming, or online civic participation that interrupts mainstream media narratives. The sites I am studying include multimedia memes, blogs, and mirrored streaming of cable-channel Comedy Central’s highly popular news satire. These three examples illustrate a key tension embedded in the activity of transmission: in their form (satirical) and content (U.S. mainstream media and U.S. politicians and mistakes) they critique prevailing (dominant) transmissions of mainstream media, and perform this transmission using mainstream media as the transmitter. The use of the existing forms to critique those same forms helpfully defines “tactical media,” so that, ironically, the transmission of mainstream news is satirized through content and form while in turn being transmitted via corporate-owned news show. The following illustrations of digital dissent employ irony and satire to transmit the contradictory emotional sensibilities: on the one hand, the awareness that all truth claims are constructed and on the other, a longing for truthful accountability from politicians and media. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart The Daily Show (TDS) with Jon Stewart is a highly-popular news satire. “The most trusted name in fake news” is transmitted four nights a week in the U.S. and Canada on cable television and often on another local network channel. TDS format uses “real” news clips from mainstream media – generally about Washington D.C. politics – and offers satirical and ironic commentary about the media representations as well as about the actions and speech of the politicians represented. Aired in Europe through CNN as well througha half-hour once weekly version, TDS is also streamed online both through Comedy Central’s official site as well as on mirrored independent streaming. The Daily Show has been airing for 6 years, has 1.7 million television viewers, a wide audience who view TDS online, and a larger segment of age 18-31 viewers than any other U.S. nightly news show (Friend 28). Jon Stewart has become an icon of a cross-partisan North American critique of George W. Bush in particular (though Stewart claims himself as non-partisan). Particularly since his appearance on CNN news debate show Crossfire and now poised to host the Academy Awards (two days until Oscar broadcast as I write), Jon Stewart emblematizes a faith in democracy, and demand for media accountability to standards of civic discourse seen as central to democracy. (In a March 2, 2006 blog-letter to Jon Stewart, Ariana Huffington warns him against losing his current political legitimacy by blowing it at the Oscars: “Interjecting too much political commentary – no matter how trenchant or hilarious – is like interrupting the eulogy at a funeral to make a political point … . At the same time, there is no denying the fact, Jon, that you are going to have the rapt attention of some 40 million Americans. Or that political satire – done right – can alter people’s perceptions (there’s a reason emperors have always banned court jesters in times of crisis). Or that a heaping dose of your perception-altering mockery would do the American body politic a load of good.”) “Stop hurting America” Stewart pleads with two mainstream news show hosts on the now-infamous Crossfire appearance, (an 11 minute clip easily found online or through ifilm.com). Stewart’s public shaming of mainstream media as partisan hackery theatre, “helping corporations and leaving all of us alone to mow our lawns,” became the top-cited media event in the blogosphere in 2004. The satirical form of The Daily Show illustrates how the unsaid functions as truth. Within the range of roles classically defined within the history of humor and satire, Jon Stewart represents the court jester (Jones). First, the unsaid often occurs literally through Stewart’s responses to material: the camera often shows simply his facial expression and speechlessness, which “says it all.” The unsaid also occurs visually through the ironic adoption of the familiar visuals of a news show: for example, situating the anchor person (Stewart) behind his obscenely large news desk. Part of this unsaid is an implicit questioning of the performed legitimacy of a news report. For viewers, The Daily Show displaces a dominant and enforced hegemonic cultural pastime: individuals in isolated living rooms tuned in to (and alienated by) the 11 o’clock dose of media spin about politicians’ and military versions of reality have been replaced by a new virtual solidarity of 1.2 million living rooms who share a recognition of deception. Ironically, as Bill Moyers expresses to Jon Stewart, “but when I report the news on this broadcast, people say I’m making it up. When you make it up, they say you’re telling the truth” (“Transcript”). The unsaid also functions by using actual existing logics, discourses, and even various familiar reiterated truth claims (the location of WMD; claims made by Hans Blix, etc.) and shifting the locutionary context of these slightly in order to create irony – putting “real” words into displaced contexts in a way that reveals the constructed-ness of the “real” and thereby creates an unsaid, shared commentary about the experience of feeling deceived by the media and by the Pentagon. Through its use of both “real” news footage combined with ironic “false” commentary, The Daily Show allows viewers to occupy the simultaneous space of cynicism and desire for truth: pleasure and satisfaction followed by a moment of panic or horror. Bush in 30 Seconds The Bushin30seconds campaign was begun by the organization MoveOn, who solicited entries from the public and received over 500 which were streamed as QuickTime videos on their Website. The guidelines were to use the form of a campaign ad, and the popularly-selected winner would be aired on major network television during the 2004 Superbowl. The majority of the Bushin30Seconds ads include content that directly addresses Bush’s deception and make pleas for truth, many explicitly addressing the demand for truth, the immorality of lies, and the problems that political deception pose for democracy (along with a research team, I am currently working on a three year project analyzing all of these in terms of their content, rhetorical form, and discursive strategies and will be surveying and interviewing the producers of the Bushin30Seconds. Our other two sites of study include political blogs about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and online networks sparked by The Daily Show). The demand for truthfulness is well exemplified in the ad called “Polygraph” (see also #27 A Big Puzzle). This ad invokes a simulated polygraph – the polygraph being a classic instrument of rational positivism and surveillance – which measures for the viewer the “truth” quotient of Bush’s own “real” words. Of course, the polygraph is not actually connected to Bush’s body, and hence offers a visual symbolic “stand in” for the viewer’s own internal or collectively shared sensibility or truth meter. Illustrating my central argument about the expressed desire for truthfulness, the ad concludes with the phrase “Americans are dying for the truth.” Having examined 150 ads, it is remarkable how many of these – albeit via different cultural forms ranging from hip hop to animation to drama to pseudo-advertisement for a toy action figure – make a plea for accountability, not only on behalf of one’s own desire but often out of altruistic concern for others. The Yes Men I offer one final example to illustrate transmissions that disrupt dominant discourses. The Yes Men began their work when they created a website which “mirrored” the World Trade Organization site. Assumed to represent the WTO, they were subsequently offered invitations to give keynotes at various international conferences and press meetings of CEOs and business people. (Their work is documented in an hour-long film titled The Yes Men available at many video outlets and through their web site.) The main yes man, Bichlbaum, arrives to these large international meetings with careful attire and speech, and offers a straight-faced keynote with subversive content. For example, at a textile conference he suggests that slavery had been a very profitable form of labor and might be reintroduced as alternative to unionized labor. At another conference, he announced that the WTO had decided to disband because it has realized it is only causing harm to international trade and economy. In December 2004, the Yes Men struck again when they were invited by the BBC as representatives of DOW chemical on the 20th anniversary of the Union Carbide Bhopal accident in India. Those who watched the BBC news and Channel 4 and the hundreds of thousands who viewed these clips afterwards are made aware of the anniversary of the worst chemical accident in history; are apprised of the ongoing effects on the people of Bhopal; and hear an unusual primetime soundbyte lambasting the utter absence of social responsibility of corporations such as Dow Chemical. The Yes Men illustrate what some might call tactical media, some might call media terrorism, and what some aspire to in their own activism. “They compare their work to that of a “funhouse mirror” – exaggerating hideous features. ‘We do that kind of exaggeration operation, but with ideas. We agree with people – turning up the volume on their ideas as we talk, until they can see their ideas distorted in our funhouse mirror. Or that’s what we try to do anyhow. As it turns out, the image always seems to look normal to them,’ Bichlbaum said” (Marchlewski). Another article describes their goal as follows: When newspapers and television stations out their acts, it’s not just the Yes Men who get attention, but also the issues they address … . The impersonations, which the two call identity corrections, are intended to show, in a colorful and humorous way, what they say are errors of corporate and government ways. (Marchlewski 2005) In conclusion, these three examples illustrate the new media terrain of access and distribution which enables transmissions that arguably construct significant new public spheres constructed around a desire for truthfulness and accountability. While some may prefer “civil society,” I find the concept of a public useful because its connotations imply less regimentation. If the public sphere is in part constructed through the reflexive circulation of discourse, the imaginary relation with strangers, and with affect as a social glue (my addition to Michael Warner’s six features of a public), we have described some of the ways in which counterpublics are produced (Warner 2002; Boler, forthcoming). If address (the circulation and reception of a cultural production under consideration) in part constructs a public, how does one imagine the interactivity between the listener/bystander/participant and the broadcast or image? To what extent do the kinds of transmission I have discussed here invite new kinds of multi-directional interactivity, and to what extent do they replicate problematic forms of broadcast? Which kind of subject is assumed or produced by different “mediated” publics? What is the relationship of discourse and propaganda to action and materiality? These are some of the eternally difficult questions raised when one analyzes ideology and culture in relation to social change. It is indeed very difficult to trace what action follows from any particular discursive construction of publics. One can think of the endings of the 150 Finalists in the Bush in30 Seconds campaign, each with an explicit or implicit imperative: “think!” or “act!” What subject is hailed and invoked, and what relationship might exist between the invocation or imagining of that listener and that listener’s actual reception and translation of any transmission? The construction of a public through address is a key feature of the politics of representation and visions of social change through cultural production. Each of the three sites of productions I have analyzed illustrate a renewed call for faith in media as an institution which owes a civic responsibility to democracy. The iterations of calls for truthful accounts from media and politicians stand in tension with the simultaneous recognition of the complex social construction of any and all truth claims. The uncertainty about whether such transmissions constitute “an old form of parody and satire…or a new form of journalism” reflects the ongoing paradox of what Jon Stewart describes as a “new form of desperation.” For those who live in Western democracies, I suggest that the study of political transmission is best understood within this moment of convergence and paradox when we are haunted by paradoxical desires for truths. References “American Daily.” 7 Nov. 2003 http://www.americandaily.com/article/5951>. Boler, Megan. “Mediated Publics and the Crises of Democracy.” Philosophical Studies in Education 37 (2006, forthcoming), eds. Justen Infinito and Cris Mayo. Colebrook, Claire. Irony. London: Routledge, 2004. Jameson, Frederic. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” The Anti-Aesthetic. Ed. H. Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983. Jones, Jeffrey. Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Fletcher, M.D. Contemporary Political Satire. New York: University Press of America, 1987. Friend, Tad. “Is It Funny Yet? Jon Stewart and the Comedy of Crisis”. The New Yorker 77.47 (11 Feb. 2002): 28(7). Huffington, Ariana. “Memo to Jon Stewart: Tread Lightly and Carry a Big Schtick.” 2 March 2006. 4 March 2006 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/memo-to-jon-stewart-trea_b_16642.html>. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004). http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html>. Marchlewski, Kathie. “Hoaxsters Target Dow, Midland Daily News.” 20 May 2005 http://www.theyesmen.org/articles/dowagmmidlanddailynews.html>. Speier, Hans, & Robert Jackall. “Wit and Politics: An Essay on Laughter and Power.” The American Journal of Sociology 103.5 (1998): 1352. “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.” 8 Dec. 2005. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/fedagencies/july-dec05/rumsfeld_12-08.html>. “Transcript – Bill Moyers Inverviews Jon Stewart.” 7 Nov. 2003 . Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 49-90. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Boler, Megan. "The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”?." M/C Journal 9.1 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/11-boler.php>. APA Style Boler, M. (Mar. 2006) "The Transmission of Political Critique after 9/11: “A New Form of Desperation”?," M/C Journal, 9(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/11-boler.php>.

The brand began, quite literally, as a method for ranchers to identify their cattle. By burning a distinct symbol into the hide of a baby calf, the owner could insure that if it one day wandered off his property or was stolen by a competitor, he’d be able to point to that logo and claim the animal as his rightful property. When the manufacturers of products adopted the brand as a way of guaranteeing the quality of their goods, its function remained pretty much the same. Buying a package of oats with the Quaker label meant the customer could trace back these otherwise generic oats to their source. If there was a problem, he knew where he could turn. More important, if the oats were of satisfactory or superior quality, he knew where he could get them again. Trademarking a brand meant that no one else could call his oats Quaker. Advertising in this innocent age simply meant publicizing the existence of one’s brand. The sole objective was to increase consumers awareness of the product or company that made it. Those who even thought to employ specialists for the exclusive purpose of writing ad copy hired newspaper reporters and travelling salesmen, who knew how to explain the attributes of an item in words that people tended to remember. It wasn’t until 1922 that a preacher and travelling “medicine show” salesman-turned-copywriter named Claude Hopkins decided that advertising should be systematized into a science. His short but groundbreaking book Scientific Advertising proposed that the advertisement is merely a printed extension of the salesman¹s pitch and should follow the same rules. Hopkins believed in using hard descriptions over hype, and text over image: “The more you tell, the more you sell” and “White space is wasted space” were his mantras. Hopkins believed that any illustrations used in an ad should be directly relevant to the product itself, not just a loose or emotional association. He insisted on avoiding “frivolity” at all costs, arguing that “no one ever bought from a clown.” Although some images did appear in advertisements and on packaging as early as the 1800s - the Quaker Oats man showed up in 1877 - these weren¹t consciously crafted to induce psychological states in customers. They were meant just to help people remember one brand over another. How better to recall the brand Quaker than to see a picture of one? It wasn’t until the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as Americans turned toward movies and television and away from newspapers and radio, that advertisers’ focus shifted away from describing their brands and to creating images for them. During these decades, Midwestern adman Leo Burnett concocted what is often called the Chicago school of advertising, in which lovable characters are used to represent products. Green Giant, which was originally just the Minnesota Valley Canning Company’s code name for an experimental pea, became the Jolly Green Giant in young Burnett’s world of animated characters. He understood that the figure would make a perfect and enticing brand image for an otherwise boring product and could also serve as a mnemonic device for consumers. As he watched his character grow in popularity, Burnett discovered that the mythical figure of a green giant had resonance in many different cultures around the world. It became a kind of archetype and managed to penetrate the psyche in more ways than one. Burnett was responsible for dozens of character-based brand images, including Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, and the Marlboro Man. In each case, the character creates a sense of drama, which engages the audience in the pitch. This was Burnett’s great insight. He still wanted to sell a product based on its attributes, but he knew he had to draw in his audience using characters. Brand images were also based on places, like Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, or on recognizable situations, such as the significant childhood memories labelled “Kodak moments” or a mother nurturing her son on a cold day, a defining image for Campbell’s soup. In all these cases, however, the moment, location, or character went only so far as to draw the audience into the ad, after which they would be subjected to a standard pitch: ‘Soup is good food’, or ‘Sorry, Charlie, only the best tuna get to be Starkist’. Burnett saw himself as a homespun Midwesterner who was contributing to American folklore while speaking in the plain language of the people. He took pride in the fact that his ads used words like “ain’t”; not because they had some calculated psychological effect on the audience, but because they communicated in a natural, plainspoken style. As these methods found their way to Madison Avenue and came to be practiced much more self-consciously, Burnett¹s love for American values and his focus on brand attributes were left behind. Branding became much more ethereal and image-based, and ads only occasionally nodded to a product’s attributes. In the 1960s, advertising gurus like David Ogilvy came up with rules about television advertising that would have made Claude Hopkins shudder. “Food in motion” dictated that food should always be shot by a moving camera. “Open with fire” meant that ads should start in a very exciting and captivating way. Ogilvy told his creatives to use supers - text superimposed on the screen to emphasize important phrases and taglines. All these techniques were devised to promote brand image, not the product. Ogilvy didn’t believe consumers could distinguish between products were it not for their images. In Ogilvy on Advertising, he explains that most people cannot tell the difference between their own “favourite” whiskey and the closest two competitors’: ‘Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don¹t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn¹t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is ninety percent of what the distiller has to sell.’ (Ogilvy, 1993). Thus, we learned to “trust our car to the man who wears the star” not because Texaco had better gasoline than Shell, but because the company’s advertisers had created a better brand image. While Burnett and his disciples were building brand myths, another school of advertisers was busy learning about its audience. Back in the 1920s, Raymond Rubicam, who eventually founded the agency Young and Rubicam, thought it might be interesting to hire a pollster named Dr. Gallup from Northwestern University to see what could be gleaned about consumers from a little market research. The advertising industry’s version of cultural anthropology, or demographics, was born. Like the public-relations experts who study their target populations in order to manipulate them later, marketers began conducting polls, market surveys, and focus groups on the segments of the population they hoped to influence. And to draw clear, clean lines between demographic groups, researchers must almost always base distinctions on four factors: race, age, sex, and wages. Demographic research is reductionist by design. I once consulted to an FM radio station whose station manager wanted to know, “Who is our listener?” Asking such a question reduces an entire listenership down to one fictional person. It’s possible that no single individual will ever match the “customer profile” meant to apply to all customers, which is why so much targeted marketing often borders on classist, racist, and sexist pandering. Billboards for most menthol cigarettes, for example, picture African-Americans because, according to demographic research, black people prefer them to regular cigarettes. Microsoft chose Rolling Stones songs to launch Windows 95, a product targeted at wealthy baby boomers. “The Women’s Global Challenge” was an advertising-industry-created Olympics for women, with no purpose other than to market to active females. By the 1970s, the two strands of advertising theory - demographic research and brand image - were combined to develop campaigns that work on both levels. To this day, we know to associate Volvos with safety, Dr. Pepper with individuality, and Harley-Davidson with American heritage. Each of these brand images is crafted to appeal to the target consumer’s underlying psychological needs: Volvo ads are aimed at upper-middle-class white parents who fear for their children’s health and security, Dr. Pepper is directed to young nonconformists, and the Harley-Davidson image supports its riders’ self-perception as renegades. Today’s modern (or perhaps postmodern) brands don’t invent a corporate image on their own; they appropriate one from the media itself, such as MetLife did with Snoopy, Butterfinger did with Bart Simpson, or Kmart did by hiring Penny Marshall and Rosie O’Donnell. These mascots were selected because their perceived characteristics match the values of their target consumers - not the products themselves. In the language of today’s marketers, brand images do not reflect on products but on advertisers’ perceptions of their audiences’ psychology. This focus on audience composition and values has become the standard operating procedure in all of broadcasting. When Fox TV executives learned that their animated series “King of the Hill”, about a Texan propane distributor, was not faring well with certain demographics, for example, they took a targeted approach to their character’s rehabilitation. The Brandweek piece on Fox’s ethnic campaign uncomfortably dances around the issue. Hank Hill is the proverbial everyman, and Fox wants viewers to get comfortable with him; especially viewers in New York, where “King of the Hill”’s homespun humor hasn’t quite caught on with the young urbanites. So far this season, the show has pulled in a 10.1 rating/15 share in households nationally, while garnering a 7.9 rating/12 share in New York (Brandweek, 1997) As far as Fox was concerned, while regular people could identify with the network’s new “everyman” character, New Yorkers weren’t buying his middle-American patter. The television show’s ratings proved what TV executives had known all along: that New York City’s Jewish demographic doesn’t see itself as part of the rest of America. Fox’s strategy for “humanizing” the character to those irascible urbanites was to target the group’s ethnographic self-image. Fox put ads for the show on the panels of sidewalk coffee wagons throughout Manhattan, with the tagline “Have a bagel with Hank”. In an appeal to the target market’s well-developed (and well-researched) cynicism, Hank himself is shown saying, “May I suggest you have that with a schmear”. The disarmingly ethnic humor here is meant to underscore the absurdity of a Texas propane salesman using a Jewish insider’s word like “schmear.” In another Upper West Side billboard, Hank’s son appeals to the passing traffic: “Hey yo! Somebody toss me up a knish!” As far as the New York demographic is concerned, these jokes transform the characters from potentially threatening Southern rednecks into loveable hicks bending over backward to appeal to Jewish sensibilities, and doing so with a comic and, most important, nonthreatening inadequacy. Today, the most intensely targeted demographic is the baby - the future consumer. Before an average American child is twenty months old, he can recognize the McDonald’s logo and many other branded icons. Nearly everything a toddler encounters - from Band-Aids to underpants - features the trademarked characters of Disney or other marketing empires. Although this target market may not be in a position to exercise its preferences for many years, it pays for marketers to imprint their brands early. General Motors bought a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated for Kids for its Chevy Venture minivan. Their brand manager rationalized that the eight-to-fourteen-year-old demographic consists of “back-seat consumers” (Leonhardt, 1997). The real intention of target marketing to children and babies, however, goes deeper. The fresh neurons of young brains are valuable mental real estate to admen. By seeding their products and images early, the marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (Bud-weis-er) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, “They¹re great!” (Currently, more children recognize the frogs than Tony.) This indicates a long-term coercive strategy. The abstraction of brand images from the products they represent, combined with an increasing assault on our demographically targeted psychological profiles, led to some justifiable consumer paranoia by the 1970s. Advertising was working on us in ways we couldn’t fully understand, and people began to look for an explanation. In 1973, Wilson Bryan Key, a communications researcher, wrote the first of four books about “subliminal advertising,” in which he accused advertisers of hiding sexual imagery in ice cubes, and psychoactive words like “sex” onto the airbrushed surfaces of fashion photographs. Having worked on many advertising campaigns from start to finish, in close proximity to everyone from copywriters and art directors to printers, I can comfortably put to rest any rumours that major advertising agencies are engaging in subliminal campaigns. How do images that could be interpreted as “sexual” show up in ice cubes or elbows? The final photographs chosen for ads are selected by committee out of hundreds that are actually shot. After hours or days of consideration, the group eventually feels drawn to one or two photos out of the batch. Not surprising, these photos tend to have more evocative compositions and details, but no penises, breasts, or skulls are ever superimposed onto the images. In fact, the man who claims to have developed subliminal persuasion, James Vicary, admitted to Advertising Age in 1984 that he had fabricated his evidence that the technique worked in order to drum up business for his failing research company. But this confession has not assuaged Key and others who relentlessly, perhaps obsessively, continue to pursue those they feel are planting secret visual messages in advertisements. To be fair to Key, advertisers have left themselves open to suspicion by relegating their work to the abstract world of the image and then targeting consumer psychology so deliberately. According to research by the Roper Organization in 1992, fifty-seven percent of American consumers still believe that subliminal advertising is practiced on a regular basis, and only one in twelve think it “almost never” happens. To protect themselves from the techniques they believe are being used against them, the advertising audience has adopted a stance of cynical suspicion. To combat our increasing awareness and suspicion of demographic targeting, marketers have developed a more camouflaged form of categorization based on psychological profiles instead of race and age. Jim Schroer, the executive director of new marketing strategy at Ford explains his abandonment of broad-demographic targeting: ‘It’s smarter to think about emotions and attitudes, which all go under the term: psychographics - those things that can transcend demographic groups.’ (Schroer, 1997) Instead, he now appeals to what he calls “consumers’ images of themselves.” Unlike broad demographics, the psychographic is developed using more narrowly structured qualitative-analysis techniques, like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and even home surveillance. Marketing analysts observe the behaviors of volunteer subjects, ask questions, and try to draw causal links between feelings, self-image, and purchases. A company called Strategic Directions Group provides just such analysis of the human psyche. In their study of the car-buying habits of the forty-plus baby boomers and their elders, they sought to define the main psychological predilections that human beings in this age group have regarding car purchases. Although they began with a demographic subset of the overall population, their analysis led them to segment the group into psychographic types. For example, members of one psychographic segment, called the ³Reliables,² think of driving as a way to get from point A to point B. The “Everyday People” campaign for Toyota is aimed at this group and features people depending on their reliable and efficient little Toyotas. A convertible Saab, on the other hand, appeals to the ³Stylish Fun² category, who like trendy and fun-to-drive imports. One of the company’s commercials shows a woman at a boring party fantasizing herself into an oil painting, where she drives along the canvas in a sporty yellow Saab. Psychographic targeting is more effective than demographic targeting because it reaches for an individual customer more directly - like a fly fisherman who sets bait and jiggles his rod in a prescribed pattern for a particular kind of fish. It’s as if a marketing campaign has singled you out and recognizes your core values and aspirations, without having lumped you into a racial or economic stereotype. It amounts to a game of cat-and-mouse between advertisers and their target psychographic groups. The more effort we expend to escape categorization, the more ruthlessly the marketers pursue us. In some cases, in fact, our psychographic profiles are based more on the extent to which we try to avoid marketers than on our fundamental goals or values. The so-called “Generation X” adopted the anti-chic aesthetic of thrift-store grunge in an effort to find a style that could not be so easily identified and exploited. Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying “Whatever.” The members of Generation X are putting up a good fight. Having already developed an awareness of how marketers attempt to target their hearts and wallets, they use their insight into programming to resist these attacks. Unlike the adult marketers pursuing them, young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives. As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic-based pandering, they adopt a stance of self-protective irony‹distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers. Lorraine Ketch, the director of planning in charge of Levi¹s trendy Silvertab line, explained, “This audience hates marketing that’s in your face. It eyeballs it a mile away, chews it up and spits it out” (On Advertising, 1998). Chiat/Day, one of the world’s best-known and experimental advertising agencies, found the answer to the crisis was simply to break up the Gen-X demographic into separate “tribes” or subdemographics - and include subtle visual references to each one of them in the ads they produce for the brand. According to Levi’s director of consumer marketing, the campaign meant to communicate, “We really understand them, but we are not trying too hard” (On Advertising, 1998). Probably unintentionally, Ms. Ketch has revealed the new, even more highly abstract plane on which advertising is now being communicated. Instead of creating and marketing a brand image, advertisers are creating marketing campaigns about the advertising itself. Silvertab’s target market is supposed to feel good about being understood, but even better about understanding the way they are being marketed to. The “drama” invented by Leo Burnett and refined by David Ogilvy and others has become a play within a play. The scene itself has shifted. The dramatic action no longer occurs between the audience and the product, the brand, or the brand image, but between the audience and the brand marketers. As audiences gain even more control over the media in which these interactive stories unfold, advertising evolves ever closer to a theatre of the absurd. excerpted from Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say)? Works Cited Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage, 1983. Brandweek Staff, "Number Crunching, Hollywood Style," Brandweek. October 6, 1997. Leonhardt, David, and Kathleen Kerwin, "Hey Kid, Buy This!" Business Week. June 30, 1997 Schroer, Jim. Quoted in "Why We Kick Tires," by Carol Morgan and Doron Levy. Brandweek. Sept 29, 1997. "On Advertising," The New York Times. August 14, 1998 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Rushkoff, Douglas. "Coercion " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>. APA Style Rushkoff, D. (2003, Jun 19). Coercion . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>