Author Archives: shirui zhou

Saudi Arabia is an episode of the Patriot Act, a show hosted by Hasan Minhaj. In the second segment of this episode, Minhaj puts emphasis on the social framing of the Indian Americans. Firstly, he describes how society expects Indian people to behave well and have outstanding achievements, for example, to be engaged in the professional occupation. It seems that American society has the impression of Indian immigrants to be “good”. But then, he gives some instances of “bad” Indian Americans, such as John Kapoor and Dinesh D’Souza, to show facts that are against the social framing effect. Kapoor, for example, as an Indian American pharmaceutical entrepreneur, has bribed doctors and committed wire fraud. Minhaj satirizes that maybe these people have set Indian Americans free for high expectations, but actually they have destroyed the good figure of Indian immigrants. Lastly, a video describes how Indian parents expect their children to have stable and eminent jobs and how the bad Indian Americans have an influence on children to lead them to a “bad” road to do whatever they want is shown. We can get the conclusion that how the prior framing of Indian Americans has been changed through some famous weighted minorities.

By putting this segment after the Muslim case, Minhaj proves and also strengthens the idea that it is unavoidable that society can have simplex framing to a group of people, Muslim and Indian Americans for example, but it can be reconstructed by weighted minorities. Just as he claims that Saudi Arabia is only 2 percent of the whole Muslim population, but when Saudi Arabia does something wrong, Muslim all over the world have to take the consequences. It is easy for Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to do something simple, such as lifting the ban on women driving, to leave a good impression to America for the reason of the Islamic tropes that have been framed in the American minds, in this case—Muslim as sexist. However, the impression only changes towards him, the individual only, but not the whole Muslim society. It is also easy for the society to change their perception to Indian immigrants after knowing those bad famous Indian Americans. Considering that Minhaj actually has the identities of both Indian and Muslim, it might seem strange to him that how easy it is for a person to leave a good impression with a specific background, Muslim for example, but also how easy it is for a few people to ruin the impression of a whole group of people. But it sounds a little relaxing to him and the children in the video to live without the high social expectations.

This Song is a Museum (2011), provided by Peter Morin, who is a member of the Crow clan of the Tahltan First Nation in northwest British Columbia, is placed in a tall case near the entrance of the Multiversity Gallery in the Museum of Anthropology. Five painted octagonal drums and a wood drumstick with fur, skin, beads, and paint are exhibited in this conspicuous case. After reading the information in the accompanying plates, I can understand how this work is made and why it is named This Song is a Museum. In 2011, after dipping the drumstick into the black paint, Coast Salish singer Hwieumten, invited by Peter Morin, gave a performance with this drumstick and five drums. The drums with paint made by the drumstick actually have recorded the performance of the Indigenous people and are seen by Peter Morin as a fluid structure to carry Indigenous ideas. Actually, this work acts perfectly as “figurative repatriation”, for the reason that it has the function to tell the “non-native audiences” the mysterious but real life of the Tahltan in this case (Kramer 164).

Just like This Song is a Museum, cases around it are almost about Tahltan, and as introduced by a plate, Tahltan, a First Nations people, are original inhabitants of the Stikine River Watershed, which is also clearly shown in a map. Take a Dagoji (Dagger) for example, which is put on the back of This Song is a Museum, I can tell that it is used for war by Tahltan from the information provided. But different from the This Song is a Museum, this dagger is just a normal museum exhibit, to show a history or life of Indigenous people and is still. By saying “still”, I mean that I cannot tell any story from the dagger except it should be used in war. But when I see the drums with paint and the information given, I can almost see Hwieumten playing the drums and singing in the Tahltan way. Moreover, compared to the dagger, a physical object belonging to the Tahltan, This Song is a Museum just uses the drum provided by Peter Morin to record the Tahltan music.

After looking around the museum, I am wondering that what kind of work can be called as a “good work” in the museum. Does it need to have a long history? Does it need to be the property of the Indigenous people? Actually, This Song is a Museum and the Tahltan dagger are both good works from my perspective, for the reason that they both recognize the life of the Indigenous people and then inform us by showing the objects and the information given on the plates.

Reference
Kramer, Jennifer. “Figurative Repatriation: First Nations ‘Artist-Warriors’ Recover, Reclaim, and Return Cultural Property through Self-Definition.” Journal of Material Culture, vol. 9, no. 2, July 2004, pp. 161–182

Before the debate, as a member of the assessing team, I read the Dean’s article to find evidence for both FOR and AGAINST perspectives. I actually used to believe that social media is a kind of platform that enforces sociopolitical change, but when I was reading the Dean’s article, I found out it was easier to provide evidence for the FOR side, for the reason that Dean actually, in her whole article, emphasizes on how social media inhibits sociopolitical change. For example, as for the technology fetishism, people believe that they are contributing a lot online—making their opinion known by others, while they actually do not have the ability to change legislation or start a revolution (Dean 31-32). As for the AGAINST side, Dean actually focuses on American politics, but we, as assessors, argue that whether it is true when applied to the international environment.

During the Dean’s debate, it is undeniable that both teams give abundant examples and strong arguments. As for the FOR side, they provide recent examples such as Ice Bucket Challenge. And the AGAINST side, they mention the Me Too, which is a perfect example to support that social media actually does make a huge change, but in my opinion, they go off the topic a little bit for the reason that they have put too much emphasis on the argument that social media has raised social awareness rather than made any substantial changes.

As for the Castell’s debate, I realize that Castell actually supports social media for the reason that social media help to inform the world about the Egyptian Revolution. But Castell seems to only focus on a small area in the world—Egypt. I think the main difference between Dean’s article and Castell’s article is that Dean puts her emphasis on the US politics while Castell puts his emphasis on the Egyptian Revolution. Different emphasizes and different examples used in these two articles help to support the completely different opinions of Dean and Castell.

After the debate, I believe that social media actually have an important role in the socio-political change, no matter positive or negative. Social media function as a perfect platform for people to know and share their opinions about the sociopolitical events. But it is still obvious that social media only raise our awareness, and it is difficult to change the sociopolitical environment dramatically just by commenting or following others online.

Reference
Dean, Jodi. “Ch.1.Technology: The Promises of Communicative Capitalism.” Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Duck University Press, 2009. 19-48.

WeChat is one of the most popular ways to communicate with others and one of the most popular social media in China. Phone numbers are the only thing you need to set up a WeChat account. Not only sending messages, but you can also share pictures on Moments, which is one section of WeChat, and comment or like the pictures posted by your WeChat friends. You can add others as friends just by their phone numbers, their WeChat names or if you are in the same group, you can add each other as friends.

Recently, WeChat has become one of the most popular platforms for selling goods. We even create WeChat Business to describe the WeChat accounts, no matter individuals’ or official, that use the massive market of WeChat and sell goods by sending information to individuals or showing items on Moments. Tmtpost points out that WeChat becomes popular for business for its large business scale, low set-up cost, convenient business model and high revenue potential.

But actually, the massive amount of business account has changed the WeChat I enjoy using. As Shuai Yang, Sixing Chen and Bin Li claim on Journal of Global Marketing, WeChat “can be considered as a marriage between traditional e-business and social networking communications”. We used to use WeChat as a way to communicate and show our daily life to others and see others’ lives. But now, we use it as a way to make benefits. It has changed the relationships between users and their WeChat friends. For example, I used to communicate for sharing thoughts, but now, I communicate for my own benefits—buying cheap goods or selling goods for money. The relationships are now being tied by self-interests. In the Moments, sellers like and comment their buyers’ pictures. It seems like a win-win choice, but the intrinsic quality has changed. Furthermore, according to Shuai Yang, Sixing Chen and Bin Li, there are results suggesting that development of friendships with new customers can help the strategy of developing business relationships; but developing friendships and business relationships with experienced customers negates each other. This has proved the opinion that WeChat Business actually has changed the human relationships on WeChat.

From my perspective, WeChat Business has revealed a social dynamic that people are willing to make money through the internet using relationships with others but not as in the past—learn a skill and work hard. People are adjusting to the internet era, struggling to make money, even inventing many kinds of jobs we could not imagine in the past. It is undeniable that using social media such as WeChat to make money is a good choice, but we cannot forget the original purpose of this kind of social media—communicating. With more and more beneficial friends on WeChat, whether the future of WeChat is a marketing platform?

References
http://www.tmtpost.com/233233.html

What is WeChat? Intro to WeChat Marketing for Business

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08911762.2016.1184363

There is a Chinese economic talk show named Brainstorm, which is famous for its all-sided design. Let me just take one edition for example— what is the future of the brick-and-mortar bookstores? . With a short video, which is the encoding part of this program, sending the message that the brick-and-mortar bookstores face a lot of difficulties recently and probably do not have a bright future. Firstly, the host asked for the opinions of the owners of brick-and-mortar bookstores and online book retailers. It is obvious that the owners hold an optimistic opinion for the brick-and-mortar bookstores, but the online retailers do not. Then some commentators argued that both brick-and-mortar bookstore and online bookstore have advantages and need to reform.

According to Encoding, Decoding written by Stuart Hall (1973), there are three hypothetical positions of decoders, to be exact, the receivers. The first one is the dominant-hegemonic position, ‘perfectly transparent communication’, as Hall stated, which means that the viewer receives the information exactly as the sender means and agrees with it. Negotiated code or position is the second one, which contains both adaptive and oppositional opinions. The last one is the oppositional code, which means that the receiver’s understanding of the information is contrary to the sender.

Although most of the viewers are from the negotiated position, there are still a large number of people who hold the dominant-hegemonic or the oppositional code. This talk show, just like a debate, perfectly meet needs of all kinds of the viewers. With the same encoding—the message sent by the short video, people have different understandings and opinions because of different ages, genders, etc. If the Brainstorm only invited online retailers to ask for their opinions, this show would be extremely one-sided, which might lead to the loss of audiences. But by inviting holders of brick-and-mortar bookstores, online retailers and economic commentators, whatever position the viewer holds, he or she has one side to agree with. The viewer with the oppositional position will agree with the opinion of the owners of brick-and-mortar bookstores, while the one with the dominant-hegemonic position support the online trailers and the viewer has negotiated position agrees with the commentators.

A media object should cover all the opinions the viewers might have, who decode the information with three possible positions—dominant-hegemonic position, negotiated code or oppositional code. One another possible way for the media object is to provide some specific ways for the viewers to state their different ideas. By doing so, a media object can be integrated well-rounded, in order to attract more audiences.