So we've spent some time in class talking about early foreign relations between the U.S., Great Britain, and France. Remember that the Federalists were for trade and good relations with Britain; the republicans under Jefferson and Madison favored France. The direction the country went in, despite Jefferson's influence, was towards Britain. Part of the reason why there was a preference for Britain, was that France was seen as a dangerous influence because of the French revolution and the radical forces it unleashed. Even to the present, French politics have been much more volatile as these videos show. This just illustrates the importance of political history once again, the French revolution started a pattern of political development that continues into the present, and it also shows why conservatives like Hamilton were afraid of the French influence. By the way, which social groups are protesting? What tactics are they using? What are they fighting about?
Now reason #2 for watching these videos. This gives you an example first of the political function of news in society (in other words how political messages are delivered through the news), and how news content is analyzed (this is for you communication majors out there especially but it applies to all social science disciplines). Content analysis, is the name of the method and basically it is a means of unearthing messages that are sometimes obvious, sometimes more hidden in content or texts. Texts themselves, although the name suggests written documents, can be almost anything, in this case we are looking at televised news reports. Answering the questions above is one way of analyzing the content, or what is called the manifest content, what is immediately apparent or noticeable about a text.
Content analysis as a method is usually used to bring out the latent content or the more hidden messages in the text. For example, notice how in both reports the journalist starts off saying "just a two year increase in retirement age". You could interpret that to signal a lack of sympathy for the protesters, it would then be coded as a negative statement. A very simple content analysis would look for that same phrase in several samples. If there was a distinctive pattern of that phrase showing up you could infer from that evidence that the media is unsympathetic to the French protesters. Now a real content analysis would basically follow the same principles, except you would be looking for several phrases not just one, and you would apply this process to hundreds or even thousands of samples. You would then aggregate or combine your results to see if any patterns of behavior emerge, in this case a pattern of bias. If you can do that, then you can write a book on media bias towards French radical politics or something like that.
Can you pick out anything else that could be interpreted as a message? Content itself can be almost anything, it can be what the reporter says (how does she compare American workers with French workers?), the headlines (age of entitlement sounds negative as well), interviews, visual imagery, the sequencing of images, etc. You can analyze all of these categories, or one of them depending on how relevant it is.
Just to bring everything full circle: we know the importance of the press. Freedom of the press is protected in the Constitution, we know from the battles over the Alien and Sedition Acts that control over the press and control over information is crucial. It was crucial for Jefferson's victory which relied on the press, and crucial for the Federalists who were trying to censor the press. We should almost envy the simplicity of the tactics of the Federalists and how obvious they were (although don't forget there was an undeclared war with France going on at this time, crises are used to justify extraordinary laws). Now you have to apply content analysis in order to understand how information is manipulated in today's society. But even content analysis as a method can only tell you what is in a text, it cannot tell you about things which are excluded from the text in the first place.
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Q: which social groups are protesting? What tactics are they using? What are they fighting about?
ReplyDeleteA: In these video we see students and seniors protesting about the government decision of increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62 yrs of age. Students are confronting police by violent actions, such as burning cars. The union employment also set up a march to protest against this action, which they belief is unfair.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would increase the retirement age from 60 to 62. Some people including High School Students disagree with this new law. They had been doing big protest and clashed with police officers. According to the videos, their labor hours cannot be comparing with the USA. For example, they just work 35 hours a week maximum. Also, tend to have more vacation than people in the here. Maybe people are practicing too much the violence and challenging the authority, but it’s their rights and it’s in the constitution “freedom of speech and press.”
ReplyDeleteBesides the student's its the workers who are striking as well. When large groups of workers strike it is known as a 'general strike'. A general strike is much more disruptive because it aims to paralyze the government by shutting down the key areas that keep society going, like oil and transportation. If you listen closely there are fuel shortages now and some of the major airports are practically shut down.
ReplyDeleteWhats Crazy Is There Is Not One old person in these videos. The people who seem to be the most worried are the people who will suffer this law in the far future and no one that will suffer the law in current or near present times. Students in high school probably took this strike as a way out of class, the burning of cars just seemed to force the point.
ReplyDeleteThe sad truth is that the report was obvious when it came to their attempts to subliminaly make the American worker seem better then the French worker. If a French person were to watch the report they would be immediately offended, without long thoughts of what was REALLY said "between the lines."
Right the message is the American worker is better, even though the French worker has more vacation time (a full month), a shorter work week (35 hours compared to 40 here) and an earlier retirement age ( 60 or maybe 62 compared to 65). At no point does the reporter ever question that American working conditions are just crappier than French working conditions. It is assumed, but never stated outright, that American working conditions are "normal" and that the French deviate from this norm. But why? what if French working conditions are the norm, what would that say about American working conditions?
ReplyDeletewe can clearly see a dislike between French protesters and the american media. The press is a very important source to manipulate people's idea. since early times the press has taken a critical role in american society, disliking the french. it's funny how the press can change opinions so fast and contradict itself, espeically in war times. anyway, I think american press should respect the way the french approach this issue, not judge them. we do not know how much they are paid hourly, what are they unemployment rate, working conditions as you mentioned above professor. so i think to criticize them you got to come out with more facts than only mentioning "they work 35 hours every week and got more vacation than us". if you can work only up to 60 years of age why work till 62? i wouldnt want that neither
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of riots going on in Paris, because the retirement age was increased to 62 from 60 years old. I think there shouldn't be riots over things like that because in the United States, people work way more and they vacation less than the French. American workers work about 40 hours a week and they take two week vacations once a year. French workers work an average of 35 hours a week and take a vacation once a year for a month.
ReplyDeleteIn these videos, there isn't even ONE elderly person. I can see that the people who are really worried about this new law is actually teens. I also think that the reason there are no elderly adults is because they don't really have the energy to cause such noise and damage to the city as the young people are doing.