The influence of the media: Canadian elections

The influence of the media: Canadian elections Mao ZeDong once said that power comes out of the barrel of a gun. While that is still true, power also comes out of the manipulated images created to change ones thinking process and behaviour. Through the world of third person communication, technologies have generated various types of media. This paper will be discussing the effects and influential powers exercised by media in Canadian elections. During this complex process, understanding the brief history of media organizations as well as some information on Canada will provide a steppingstone for a deeper knowledge of the concepts and practices. Practically, in every attitude of the election campaign will engage the media. In fact, media is the ultimate platform where all political parties will be fighting on. Whether by budging through television and news reports or by purchasing time and space on mass media, parties must always use media to hype voters for support. Media organizations have their own agenda. They tend to sell themselves to the audiences with their star reporters, journalists, and as much as they can cover over the course of election. Inevitably, news will be discriminately selected, stories will be twisted, and they will be promoted with personal views and reactions. Mass media, therefore, will have powerful influences on voters. Canada, the country with the highest per capita immigration rate in the world, is far more familiar to multiculturalism than any other countries. Citizens are more social and less religious, while at the same time, keeping less class oriented and less partisan, than Americans who are more troubled by racial issues. As stated by Ian McAllister: Partisan dealignment implies that fewer voters begin the election cycle with such predisposition, making them more susceptible to the short-term issues and themes of the campaign. In other words, Canadians tend to have less political attachments and therefore consumers have greater effects on broadcast media. First Canadian media is the invention of newspaper. It is developed in the eighteenth century as gazettes. The official publications at that time are restricted only to edicts and laws, and some news from the home country; editorial materials are highly prohibited. Reporters are often beaten, threatened or jailed by the authorities. Until 1820s and 1830s, after William Lyon Mackenzie and Joseph Howe have fought and won the important court battle on in the area of publications materials, the right to publish freely can finally be ensured. Since then, various types of media have surfaced within citizens lives. Consumers are able to acquire contents that can be accessed through newspaper, television, radio, magazine, video product, or the internet. A new market has been innovated. Yet, the ownership of this new product remains in relatively few hands. These privately owned corporations, controlled by very wealthy people, dominate the Canadian media business. The effects are quite obvious, as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky state: they are closely interlocked, and have important common interest with other major corporations, banks and government. Reporters keep close contact with the government as they could be benefited greatly from these close relationships. They could boost their popularity and influential ratings, as they were often given important scoops and leads, and they were known to have key connections to important backstage information. In the recent years of Canadian newspaper industries, some of the most significant changes were that the family-owned newspaper sold to newspaper chains owned by large business organizations. While reducing the production cost, newspapers became within reach of ordinary people, whereas, in the nineteenth century, newspapers were relatively expensive and available only to the elites. One of the biggest newspaper companies, Canwest, now under the control of Shaw Media, owns thirteen newspapers in Canada, which together control over thirty percent of Canadas newspapers circulation. Another large communications company is Sun Media, which issues thirty six different newspapers, making it the most number of papers per company. The two companies cover up to fifty one percent of the total number of newspaper and take over fifty-four percent of Canadas total newspapers circulation, thus, creating a concentrated ownership. With dominate powers; these two companies are in much lesser competiti on forces. They will feel unnecessary needs on the range of media information than do the need to make profits and the organizational structure of news-gathering and reporting. As a result, concentrated ownership is seen as limiting the range of ideas and information that reach the public. The limitation on the range of ideas and information was further explained by Walter Lippman who first proposed that the function of news is to signalize an event. The concept can be understood more in details by the argument made by Bernard Cohen after his research during the 1960s, The press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion, it may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. During the elections of 1988, as one of the major campaign themes, the New Democratic Party (NDP) constructed the following message (audio): The job is hard work. I love it and Im good at but Canadas good Medicare is being threatened by the Mulroney free trade deal. In the United States Ive seen whole families wiped out by one illness. We cant let that happen here in Canada. The New Democrats started Medicare and I know I can trust Ed Broadbent to fight for it. This time, Ed Broadb ent. The short commercial, highlighting a nurses fear on the health care system of Canada, have created the NDPs most successful election in the history, a 20.4 percent of votes with 43 district seats in the House of Commons. Media plays a role in social learning. The first appearance of this effect can be extracted from the World War I; when tens of millions of people being entertained, and influenced by the latest Hollywood films, and when large numbers of population were being subjugated and manipulated by the propagandas created by Hitler and Stalin. The first research on such effects was conducted in 1920s and 1930s, and sometimes called the magic bullet theory. The hypothesis behind was that media images could directly penetrate peoples conscious and unconscious thoughts. In a study of 1,800 children and adolescents, Herbert Blumer concluded that when his subjects saw behaviours of the actors in the films that were beyond their own experiences, subjects behaviours were altered primarily based on what they had been seen at the movies. To be effective and influential, political parties must find consistent association between media viewing and an increase in changing behaviour. Effective broadcast of media is like the shadow striker; it hits the viewer anonymously. Agenda-setting and priming can be adopted for an effective broadcast to influence viewers. Various researches on agenda-setting involved relationship between the priorities on a particular issue set by the media and by the public. McCombs whom first started researches on agenda setting noted that the media influence what people believe before they reach a decision, particularly and election decision. If candidate is able to lead voters to a realization on a particular issue, and set it to top priority, then they may have an effective advantage. With a condition that the voter is not a partisan, in which something Canada tends to have less of. Priming the audience is identified by Iyengar and Kinder as a phenomenon that they described as by calling attention to some matters while ignoring others, television news influences the standards by which governments, presidents, policies, and candidates fo r public office are judged. If the television news broadcast the environmental issues over a significant time period as lead items, then environmental issues will be the deciding factors to the government for viewers. When it comes to television advertising, these techniques can be very effective. Another important finding on media effect is the role of repeated messages which was studied by Rothschild and Ray(1974). In an experiment using short ads about candidates, 20 percent of the subjects remembered the candidates after the message had been presented once; 55 percent of the subjects could name the candidates after it had been presented six times. The experience can be summarized into; message repetition is an important factor in familiarizing voters with candidates and issues. In Canada, the current election laws give the governing party enormous advantage in the media campaign. During each election campaign, each broadcaster must have a certain amount of minutes made available for political parties to purchase for advertising based on the number of seats that each party has in the House of Commons, the percentage of the vote in the last election, and the number of each party candidates running for election. In 2008 election campaign, 396 minutes in total were allocated; the governing party, the Conservative Party, had 95.5 minutes, the runner up, the Liberal Party, had 82.5 minutes, and the New Democracy Party only had 45 minutes. The result of the 2008 election was the Conservative Party won 143 seats with 37.6 percent in vote, the Liberal Party has 77 seats with 26.2 percent in vote, and the New Democracy Party has 37 seats with 18.2 percent in vote.In concept, with the datatand advertisers at least as much as they cover the election.

Ralph Waldo Emersons Transcendentalist Philosophy and Its Influence on

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalist Philosophy and Its Influence on Margaret Fuller's Feminist Philosophy Ralph Waldo Emerson was a leading thinker in the American Transcendentalist movement, who first proposed many of the movement’s most influential ideas regarding the relation between the human mind and the world. He believed each person to possess a â€Å"soul,† a power within the self to uniquely perceive and understand the world, and grasp the intricate relationships between all things; Emerson’s universe was infinitely knowable, and his ideal, independent soul should be in a state of constant consideration and reevaluation of the world around him. Emerson’s notion of the chief end of life was the growth and development of one’s soul, and the maintenance of a constant state of learning and changing, of always becoming rather than simply being. He viewed society as a fundamentally oppressive phenomenon, as it imprints itself upon one’s soul and possesses the dictatorial capacity to hinder the soul’s crucial independent thought; to E merson, society was a â€Å"conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members†¦ The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,† (Self-Reliance 1162). â€Å"Self-reliance,† the title of Emerson’s 1841 essay, advocates independent thought as a human ideal, above and beyond the confines of traditional, unquestioning society. Emersonian Transcendentalist thought influenced many other emerging figures, including the feminist thinker Margaret Fuller, who believed society, males and females alike, to be suffering from a lack of gender equality. Fuller took t... ...of minds, gains the capability of self-reliance. Emerson depicts his homeostatic society as governed by the tyranny of the fickle majority: â€Å"the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,—disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college,† (Self-Reliance 1164). This is paradoxical, in that the American people should ideally be free, but are instead manipulated by the tyrannical masses. If all Americans are governed by an oppressive majority, it seems that nobody is yet free. It would, therefore, follow, that some institutional or governmental reform should be necessary before anybody, man or woman, can be free enough to become self-reliant and, through Emersonian ideals, change society internally.

What does china has an ageing population?

China, the second larges country in the world, is facing a serious problem — ageing population. Before 1979, when Mao was the chairman of China, he persuaded women to have lots of babies in order to finish his plan – the Great Leap Forward. This is the start of the ageing population in China. In January 1958, Mao launched the second five year plan known as the Great Leap Forward. 1Mao wanted China to become a world power. He wanted to catch up with the west by ending Chinese dependence upon agriculture. His aim was to catch up with UK in the industry products in ten years time and with America in 15 years time. In order to do this, he will need lots of peasants but many of them die during this progress. This is why Mao encouraged women to have lots of children. In the DTM, the birth rate at stage 2 and 3 are both very high and this is due to requirement of Mao. China's population base increased â€Å"only† by another 100,000,000 on top of its 432,000,000 base.2 The magnitude of China total population increase so much that even the People's Republic of China found it hard to support. This is when One Child Policy (ICP) came in to control the over growing population. ICP is the birth control policy of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC)3. When Deng Xiao Ping took over the power at 1978, he realized the overpopulation is a roadblock to economic development and also the death rate will increase due to the lack of food and water, then he came out with the ICP idea. In general, this policy is very successful because the birth rate has been reduced gradually starting at the middle of stage 3 in the DTM. The 1982 fertility survey shows the total fertility rate falling from around 6.0in the mid-1950s to well below 4.0in 19614. However, ICP leads to some other problem such as the ageing population. Since the ICP is introduced, the population has successfully decreased. However, the infant mortality increases at the same time. This is because as a Chinese tradition, the boys carry the family name but now, the families are only allow to have one child therefore the chance of having a boy is less then before. Because of this, some families may choose to kill the baby if it's a girl in order to carry the family name. This is not the only effect of ICP, since most families choose to have a boy rather than a girl, there will be more males than female in the future. The difference will also increase as the time pass by. As years go by, the medical care develops a lot in China therefore the life expectancy increase at the same time. Since the birth rate was so high is 1960s but then decrease so much when ICP is introduced, there are depend people then independent people. This slows down the economic development of China. When there are more dependent then the government will need to pay more than it earns. Since the dependent people can not earn their own living, the government will have to give them money and because the numbers of dependent people are so many, the money that was given to the dependents is more than the money China earns. The birth rate keeps dropping in China is due to one other main reason – as most of the people are now educated, they understand that if you want to raise up your children as best as you can, one child is more than enough. Also, the cost of having two children is normally too expensive for lower or middle classes. The time that is taken to look after them is too much if both parents are working. These are the main reasons why most of the parents choose not to have more than one child. In conclusion, China has an ageing population a problem is because the birth rate was really high when Mao was the chairman but then it decreases so much that ICP was introduced. The differences between that get worse and develop as the ageing population. Because of this problem, the economic developments is held back since the input and output is not balance due to part of the income is given to those dependent people. The death rate will increase dramatically when the dependent people die. This will affects reputation of China too.

Effects Of Canada s Temporary Foreign Workers Policy

Name: Date: Class: Instructor: Consequences of Recent Changes to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Workers Policy The pace of immigration in the contemporary scenario has increased significantly. Historically, movement of people from rural areas to cities and under-privileged nations to rich, affluent countries was a normal phenomenon. As increasing poverty and unemployment in the modern world have forced many poor workers in under-privileged and developing countries to search opportunities elsewhere, the demand in the developed countries like Canada have increased, especially for low-wage, low skilled, temporary workers. In Canada, the reluctance of many Canadians to accept low wage, low-skilled, temporary employment has fueled the demand for†¦show more content†¦People migrate in search of better economic prospects and opportunities. Many move to enjoy a better lifestyle and improve standard of living. A segment migrates from the home country to find a secure place where they can spend lives peacefully. Recently, the increasing pace of globalization has prompted migrant workers to move from one country to another. Canada is a preferred country for immigrants from developing and poor nations. Since founding of the country, Canada has always allowed rather encouraged migration with the dual objective of expanding country’s population and to ensure an expanding and vibrant economy. Most of the Canadian governments in the past have pursued polices to accomplish these objectives (Kelley Trebilcock 36-39) The current criteria for migration in Canada was established during 1960s called the ‘point system’. The system requires assigning points to interested migrants for their education level, labor experience in specific occupations where the country faces shortages, and the ability to speak national language, to name some important features. The potential migrants- if meet the criteria- are allowed for admission to Canada (Kelley Trebilcock 36-39). In this way, Canad ian government ensures that migrant workers have necessary language skills and work experience so they can serve in the labor market without presenting