Infotainment: From health to...liberating North Korea?

In examining the role of international communication and how it may affect development, Prof. Liew Kai Khiun presented a fascinating article ("Informatization–Dramatization: Communicating Health in East Asian Television Dramas") in a recent issue of the International Journal of Communication. He noted that scholarly "recognition of television’s ability to invoke a deeper 'structure of feelings' (Ang, 1985, p. 40), has led to wide acknowledgment that popular entertainment probably shapes lay images and discourses of health more significantly than do official sources" (2041). Evoking examples of "health films" produced as a part of TV and film productions in Japan and Hong Kong,  Prof. Liew goes on to explain that such films "predominantly associated with official, nonfictional, instructional health-related messages (HRMs)" that promote greater awareness of diseases and treatment (2040).  He notes that HRMs distributed through dramatized TV and movie productions are a "response to an increasingly literate publics’ demands for less explicitly instructional health narratives and for dramatic demonstration of knowledge through para-performances in television serials" (2040). This demand for adult infotainment in East Asia is very interesting and certainly relates to the challenge of adulthood in 21st century Asia where one is seemingly torn between fulfilling one's Confucian obligations to family as a filial daughter and one's individual desires to fulfill personal dreams and ambitions. 

That TV dramas and movies may serve as educational material for health information and awareness in Asia is excellent. Even more curious, however, is the particular role of South Korean TV dramas and movies in educating the public in the hermit state of North Korea. According to a BBC report:

In a survey of 250 North Korean refugees and overseas travelers in 2010, 48 percent said they had watched foreign DVDs while inside the country, up from just 20 percent two years earlier, the study said."  

The study's principal author Nat Kretchun, associate director of the InterMedia consulting group, said that South Korean dramas - popular across Asia - their northern neighbours a welcome break from their usual diet of stern, humourless propaganda. 

"When you get very well-produced, compelling South Korean dramas - a picture into a place that you've been fascinated with your whole life, because so much North Korean propaganda revolves around South Korea - that's extremely powerful," he said.

The study found that today, "North Koreans have more access than ever to outside media, including radio, TV and DVDs" (BBC). Some of these DVDs have been purposefully dropped over the border. Since DVD players are not illegal in North Korea, the popularity of South Korean k-dramas has reportedly spread like wildfire since the genre made its first inroads to the country in the early 2000s. (See here: http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&num=2862.) DVDs of the Korean soap operas--along with other foreign films, such as Titanic--have probably been made available through Chinese traders and the black market in North Korea. 

As TIME magazine reported in 2009:

In recent years, bootlegged South Korean dramas have been flooding into the northern neighbor — part of a recent explosion across Asia in the popularity of South Korean TV shows and music known as the Korean Wave. On the black market in North Korea, American DVDs go for about 35¢; South Korean ones go for $3.75, because of the higher risk of execution for smuggling them in, according to two recent defectors from Pyongyang. 

The nation's films and dramas have become so widespread across North Korea that the regime launched a crackdown this fall on North Korean university students, the movies' biggest audience, and smugglers at the Chinese border, charging some with promoting the ideology of the enemy state. "The government is terrified of the ideas North Koreans are getting about the outside world," Myung says. "The people are starting to ask, 'Why are we poor?' And they point to South Korea."

The number of defectors from North Korea has increased over the past decade. As Melanie Kirkpatrick documents in her new book, Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad, there are approximately 24,000 North Koreans that have managed to flee their country to seek refuge abroad. Countless thousands are also hiding in enclaves in China, fearing discovery and deportation by Chinese authorities. 

Information is value in North Korea and it is likely that any foreign information--via DVDs, radio broadcasts, or market goods--obtained within the country has an enormous impact on its recipient. As some interviews with defectors have revealed, seeing K-dramas that reveal a life of plenty in South Korea (with modern appliances, cellphones, and food) may convince just about anyone to question their reality in North Korea and their loyalty to the regime. Perhaps, in the future, we can explore the effects of K-dramas on the North Korean public. This of course, would be possible only when North Korea opens itself up. And perhaps, with the newest K-drama craze over "The King 2 Hearts," a show on South Korea's MBC channel, reunification is in the cards. From the ground--or TV screen--up. 

The Danger of a Single Story: Postcolonialism and Communication

In “Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the Terrain, Engaging the Intersections,” Raka Shome and Radha Hegde outline the role scholars and students have in their study of postcolonialism and communication. The two argue that we must responsibly “question and map” the intertwined relationship between the histories, contexts, and geographies of people and nations. This is an interventionist point of view advocating for informed contextualization and action.

In their overview of the relationship that exists between communication studies and postcolonial studies, they warn colleagues to beware of how “the discrete positioning of cultures without any sense of their interconnected histories reproduces the violence of colonial modernities and fixes difference in a spectacle of otherness” (263). In other words, one must be conscientious and careful of arming oneself with the knowledge of many contexts, including historical, geopolitical, racial, and cultural context of one’s subject area. In acknowledging the specific context(s) of a topic, for example Vietnamese immigration to the United States between 1975 and 1995, one is less likely to make the mistake of falling into the essential binary traps that have long reduced the world to divisions between the global North/South, East/West.

The authors warn how “institutionalized knowledge is always subject to the forces of colonialism, nation, geopolitics, and history” (251). Therefore, we must question the phenomena, effects, and affects of postcolonialism. How do our observations relate to the communication of ideas, identity, or nationalism?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of Half of a Yellow Sun, raises these types of questions in her writing. In her remarks for a TED talk, she points out the “danger of a single story” narrative. She emphasizes “how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story” and recounts her own experience growing up in eastern Nigeria reading British and American storybooks. Until she encountered Chinua Achebe and other African writers (who “saved” her), she did not know that girls like herself—with skin the color of chocolate and “kinky hair that cannot fit into pony tails” could actually “exist in literature.”

In the process of reading the Shome and Hegde article, I’ve become aware of what Homi Bhabha meant when he postulated how the “western metropole must [now] confront its postcolonial history, told by its influx of post-war migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity” (254). Adichie’s excellent talk below builds on this struggle. 

Breaking with tradition: Individual agency in mass communication

How do individual actors and modern day networks effect the traditional communication system? One of the traditional views of communication is expressed in the Shannon and Weaver sender-receiver model (drawn below, credit goes to Stephen Billig). 

Their 1949 model was based on radio transmission and highlighted the roles of the encoder (message originator), the message, the channel (through which the message is sent, e.g. radio or telephone), the decoder, and noise, or the risk of environmental interferences with the message. If the intended recipient successfully understands ("decodes") what the sender intended to him/her to understand, then the model is successfully realized. Amazing! 

If not, then it's a game of Telephone gone very, very wrong. For better or for worse. Right?

And maybe hilariously so. (Like Norman Rockwell depicted above, for an edition of the Saturday Evening Post.) Let's be honest here. Even with technology at our fingertips and ears--keyboards, headsets, bluetooth devices--it is rare that we successfully fulfill the Shannon and Weaver model. While we are gigabytes and exabytes ahead of Rockwell's time, our lovely human propensity for curiosity, laughter, and sense of scandal prevail. 

And, more often that not, our communications with others can get fuzzy. Though technology is increasingly used in place of face-to-face contact, it is not always the best medium for transmission of information. Skype drops out. You can't read your mother's face at the other end of the telephone when you tell her you had not one, but two hotdogs for dinner. From a cart. And the emoticons on GChat can't convey tone or accurately convey non-verbal reactions. (They're still missing an appropriate sarcasm emoticon.)

When it comes to mass media (instead of just the usual neighborhood gossip), what happens when we are part of the encoding process, and not just the decoding work? Professor Hayden highlighted this puzzle when he discussed the "the pervasiveness of mass self communication that preferences networks over nation states." This ability to mass self communicate -- via Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit -- seemingly "allows us to be reflexive consumers of information." In other words, he noted, "We also create agency over how, when and why what we consume as information, do with it, and create it."

Such thoughts are a fascinating way to frame this new era of communication and the complex issues that arise from it (including debates over fair use and copy right laws). 

The upside to all these debates is that although there are complexities that come with all of these developments, there are also benefits and exciting usage of technology that come out of the increasing role of individual agency in the mass communication process. See U.S. Ambassador to Korea Sung Kim's "Ask the Ambassador" video above. (Spoiler: I hope PSY doesn't request that he take it down because it includes snippets of "Gangnam Style".) More of Amb. Sung's videos are available here: http://www.youtube.com/user/USEmbassySeoul. 

I'm a citizen of the world, on Facebook. Aren't you, too?

In his chapter on “Media and the Reinvention of the Nation,” Silvio Waisbord defines cosmopolitanism as a belief in the “need to go beyond the lottery of birth that underlies national identities, so as to strengthen a universalist, humanitarian consciousness” (385). This modern understanding of cosmopolitanism is rooted in early twentieth century dialogue and correspondence between Rabindranath Tagore and W.B. Yeats, two extraordinary poets and thinkers who were both winners of the Nobel Prize in literature (in 1913 and 1923, respectively). Both were borne out of disparate parts of the British colonial empire; Tagore in India and Yeats in Ireland. Both were also self-identified staunch nationalists, believers in loyalty to their nations, but also to the global community of mankind.

Prior to Tagore and Yeats, cosmopolitanism was widely understood to be an eighteenth-century ideal that called for minimizing national differences in favor of “one uniform enlightened culture” (“Overcoming the “Contagion of Mimicry,” Louise Blakeney Williams, 70). In deemphasizing national culture, this construction of cosmopolitanism supported a universal set of values shared across all upper-middle and elite classes around the world.

Enter Tagore and Yeats, who questioned the inherent value of nation-states and their binary cultures. (You’re either part of a national culture and identity or you’re not.) Tagore and Yeats responded to prior visions of cosmopolitanism by articulating their own vision of a “rooted” cosmopolitanism. This is the same cosmopolitanism that we referenced in our contemporary discussions last week. As Williams notes:

[Tagore and Yeats] think that individuals can be nationalists by retaining their national identities and primary loyalty to one nation, while at the same time being “respectful of cultural diversity, interested in dialogue across cultures, and committed to forms of cultural hybridization.

In other words, a modern-day cosmopolitan respects a nation-state’s legacy traditions, values, and history while also embracing curiosity and openness to universal values espoused by all other nation-states.

Over 2,000 years have passed since the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic first declared that he was a cosmopolite, or, a “citizen of the world.” Back in 1999, John Tomlinson made the argument that cosmopolitanism cannot be true group identity because modern media does not support it. Instead, news and information are written and understood in reference to the nation-state.

However, in this age of rapid-fire social media—where the individual is seemingly empowered to dialogue across cultures on Facebook and through programs such as Peace Corps and participate in cultural hybridization through the consumption of globalized products and information—are we all still just Americans, Canadians, and Chinese? Or are we global citizens? Or somewhere in between, then, vacillating between our nationalist enclave and what Karim Karim describes as “a zone of intense, cutting-edge creativity born out of the existential angst of the migrant who is neither here or there” (Re-viewing the ‘National’ in International Communication, 400).  

Perhaps in this digital communication age flush with communication, a certain number of us in middle-class households with access to information and international consumption and/or travel opportunities are all occupying Homi Bhabba’s “third space.” 

Who assigns meaning to technology, and how?

Read about the caricature by clicking here.

Our in-class discussion and course readings by Elizabeth Hanson (“The Origins of the Information Revolution”), Daya Thussu (“The Historical Context of International Communication”), and Armand Mattelart (“The Emergence of Technical Networks”) traced the historical narrative of the field of international communications from the printing press to the telegraph to the telephone—mapping the technological communication advances of mankind all the way up until the Internet and modern day social networking platforms. Hanson and Thussu in particular pointed out the role of the nation state in facilitating the development of mass communication, while Mattelart made note of how political interests, networks, and culture had powerful effects on the actual development of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Thussu cited Reuters as a key example. History demonstrates how religious, social, and political leaders across the ages have always had a need for good information.

For many centuries, and still today in some areas of the world, literacy, information, and knowledge were reserved for the elite. The de' Medici family in Florence benefitted from learning what expensive goods lay in ships' hulls following their return from exotic trade routes--so they could better price them. Traders on both sides of the Atlantic yearn to know how the NYSE is faring; some may even risk jail terms to get insider trading tips. Amongst other points, our readings underscored how technological improvements in the delivery and exchange of up-to-date information created an appetite and hunger for more information. In reviewing the historic trajectory of international communication, the lessons learned often showcase the relationship between the information-privy and their subsequent desire for cultural, economic, and political recognition and hegemony.

(What is it about people and our love of sharing?)

In examining the historical path of the information revolution, it seems that a pattern emerges: Each technological advancement increased the power and role of the individual in society. While there were once national monopolies over the world’s telegraph lines as means of communication between cities and countries, telephony advanced and gave way to home phones and cell phones as means of communication between individuals. Over time, the information revolution became less of a technological phenomenon and more of a social phenomenon—a movement if you would have it—by today’s standards.

So, who has the privilege of assigning meaning to technology? If this question were raised one hundred years ago, the answer would most likely be nation states and the elites that led them. Today, however, the individual has a powerful hand in assigning meaning to technology. This is evident in the public’s use of Twitter and Facebook to voice opinions and launch a major socio-political movement during the recent Arab Spring. International communication is no longer a “macro” process administered by nation-states and governments. While once upon a time it was only by physically wiring far tracts of land and peoples together by the telegraph that nation-states successfully managed empires of power, wealth, and slaves--today international communication has succeeded in virtually knitting the world together in a whole new way through the Internet, the World Trade Organization, and manufacturing companies. These are just a few of the influential factors shaping our contemporary imagined community. International communication has moved from fueling the trade of raw goods for colonialism, running the engine of the industrial revolution to compacting the world through the process of globalization and raising awareness about the aftereffects.

Today, we continue to pursue an ongoing dialogue about the field in our very small, imagined community. SIS 640 is a microcosm of this community. I hope to learn more as we share and consume information by the millisecond, and as we ruminate on the importance of theories, systems, and organizations. What modes of communication are most effective in the 21st century? How can a public diplomacy practitioner adopt best practices culled from the study of international communication? How are our ideas and exchange limited by our current communication apparatuses? In her post, "The Invention of Culture," Dianna sagely notes how "Culture is the invention that [re]invents itself and the world around us constantly." In light of this thought, what is missing in our modern culture and method of information consumption, what will be reshaped and repurposed?    

As I look ahead, one of the most exciting prospects of our study is uncovering how culture and rhetoric have roles in shaping current and future dialogues across space, contexts, and individuals.

More posts to come soon!

We are thrilled to launch our new blog, Intercom! More posts to come soon.