Responsibilities of businesses in supporting online activism against white privilege

These days I have been overwhelmed by the two names: Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I heard about them on the TV, I read their stories on the Internet. What I wanna talk about today is white privilege and online activism. Activism is known as intentional action to bring about social and political changes which is similar to advocacy or speaking on behalf of groups usually in relation to legislative changes. The kind of activism associated with social media today is known as online activism, which are totally different from the “traditional” activism. While the “traditional” activism is built on strong relationship among activists, online activism is dependent on weak ties. Doing activism online “seldom leads to high-risk activism”. (Gladwell, 2010). It does not require people to take “financial or personal risk”, and you also don’t have to “confront socially entrenched norms and practices”, so it might involve a larger number of people. 

The topic of racism in general and white privilege in particular has been ignored for a time because of the belief in the existence of post racial society (To remind you, that is the time when people of color no longer have to face the obstacle of race. The inequality in the society now is thought to exist because of the economic or political reasons, and does not base on ethnicity anymore. Privilege is defined as particular advantages, permissions, rights or benefits that just an individual, class or caste could afford. This means that when the white has privilege, they have access to many things that people of other skin colors don’t). However, because the real problem has not been solved, activists once again raise the awareness of people about the existing issue. 
But this time, “the new tools of social media have reinvented social activism”.(Gladwell, 2010), they used another tools, that is social media in general and in this case, Twitter in particular.  Twitter seems to be a more effective channel to do the online activism because it has unique advantages of speed, the short reporting structure, the ease of use and egalitarianism (Marfo, 2014) On Twitter, there are some typical hashtags might be considered resistant to the the racism and white privilege:
#Fegurson: The hashtag is used to express people’s anger to the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson. The hashtags shows the opposition of people to the white privilege and the inequality justice system which allows white police officer to do such action with black people. It calls for change in polices in particular and the equality for the black in general.

#Iftheygunnedmedown : The hashtags is used to criticize the biased media portrayal of Michael Brown in particular and the black in general. In the case of Michael Brown, the boy was portrayed with the image as a “gang sign” instead of his true image in everyday life as a “gentle giant” or with any photo of him in daily activities.

#CrimingWhileWhite are created when grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer who put 43-year-old Eric Garner into a chokehold, killing the black man in New York City in July for selling untaxed cigarettes.

White privilege is why the black see the society with anger and struggle for justice and curse our unfair society, which drives them to create such hashtags to create a larger conversation. But why do companies should care about this? Companies should recognize the multiculturalism, diversity (awareness and appreciation of difference) and social justice (examine how systems impact individual) existing to not only support their business to have cultural competence (skill development for work across cultural lines) but also join the multicultural conversation as a part of the society. It is impossible for enterprises to join the conversation with hashtags on Twitter as an individual, but this does not mean that they have no other way to join it. In many of my blog posts, I have analyzed many cases of companies which fails to join the conversation by making mistakes in their ads or media products. For example, the biased portrayal of black people in the Suits series of Universal Cable Productions or in the Huffington Post, or the reinforce of white privilege when using most of white models in the ads of Triumph International Vietnam fanpage in particular and many other businesses  in general. What businesses could do is solving the problem of white privilege by their own power such as avoiding the reinforce of white privilege in their ads and supporting the multiculturalism in their organization like increasing the diversity of their staff.

Triumph International Vietnam on social network

When I want to buy a new bra for my mom, I decided to visit the Facebook fan page of Triumph to choose one whose name is “Triumph international Vietnam”. As many other businesses, Triumph run their fan page as one of the most effective channel to reach the customers. Many special events and promotion campaign are created on this social network only to attract customers to follow their fan page. However, there is a huge number of followers does not mean that you could make them keep buying your products.

The first impression of me is the cover of the page:

Every day on TV or magazines, I have seen a tons of photos of perfect model girls with long legs, sexy curves, and especially big busts. Of course such images are really charming and attractive that make customers want to buy the products. However, as an Asian girl, I don’t really expect and want to see that photos when I really need some “real” image to find a suitable products for myself. You know, bra is a “secret accessorize” of women which needs to fit perfectly to its owner. If I am finding my own bra, the illustration for such product is some kind of “biased” because the size of busts of white women and Asian women is much different. Looking at it, I don’t even realize that whether the product has the push-up part or not, or how its thickness is. I do believe that many Vietnamese will have some disappointment when they try a bra because what the products bring are not the same with what they really expected. But the point here is that you might feel it is acceptable to find such kind of image in an international web pages used for all customers over the world, but that should not be the case of the page of “Triumph international Vietnam”. The first problem here is that the target customers will not find much common thing between the model and themselves, which discourage them to buy the product. Secondly, the customers might find this kind of marketing like “cheating” them when they realize the differences between what is advertised and what is selling. The biggest problem in this case is that if the company still use the same images of white model for all markets they sell the products, they are wasting partly their effort in creating and managing different pages with the same content.

The second issue is that it is really hard for me to choose a suitable bra for my mom, not because they don’t have any, but because all the models are young. I don’t know what is exactly the type of bra that both young and older women could use when I look at those images. In this case I could see that the hegemonic standard of beauty is being reinforced greatly thanks to the development of the internet. Beauty is when you are white, you are young, you are thin and you have big busts! As a company providing products that makes the most sexy part of women become more attractive, Triumph should bear in mind that women in different ages with different shapes have their true value of beauty. By using such images, the company are eliminating a large number of customers with different ages and shapes.

People might think that Triumph aims to target young customers only when they use that image on Facebook fan page because young girls have more access and skills to the internet and especially social network. However, that is not true that people without access to the page should not be concerned because in fact people in marginalized group (in this case, that’s older women) still have capacity if they have the access. Do you want to lose a part of your customers when you still have suitable products for them but you have marginalized them from your advertisements? What if I never visit the page again to find bra for my mom just because I find no images of the product I am finding even when you still have it?

Facebook is a social network that allows you to have detailed demographic information of a part of your customers which helps you to do the specific segmentation. In some case it helps you know what exactly your customers love and what they are finding. The solution for Triumph, of course, is that if they want to take advantage of social network to create a network for specialized group, they should also think about taking advantage of such valuable sources of information. Triumph should turn their concerned of customer demand as said on the cover picture into not only products but also how they manage their advertisement on the page in particular and the whole page in general. By doing that they also could maximize their benefits when creating a specific fan page for each group of customers. Moreover, Triumph should find the purpose of using Facebook of customers in each market to know what they really want on such social network. If Facebook is used much for relationships only, the company might want to shift their effort to do marketing on other pages to save time and money. If Facebook is a site that people also want to buy things, they should know how to update their pages in a good frequency to attract the customers effectively. 

Heineken, you could do better than this !!!

Heineken is one of my favorite brand, though I am not their target customers and also do not drink beer at all. Each year, especially the time near holidays, I am excited to watch their advertisement on TV. I really love the combination between the creative content they create and the music they use in each TV commercial. It is really attractive and also impressive. However, Heineken still made mistake in their “seems-to-be-perfect” TV commercial. The typical example is one of their latest advertisings that I watched when I was in Vietnam.

We could find that drinkers in the ads come from different countries and are portrayed with different typical characteristics. The campaign shows that the company has seen the increase in multicultural buying power and what Heineken did here is trying to take advantage of multicultural opportunities which remain underleveraged and underfinanced in targeted and total market platform. That could be seen when they target customers from diffirent cultures including marginalized group such as Asian in their ads. In their casting, we also could see their attempts to bring the image of people from some specific countries into their commercial to make their TVC becomes familiar with some such group of customers. Moreover, they also show that they realize the importance of insight in making TVC to align better with the values, culture and the tradition of population they trying to reach. This could be seen in the way they emphasize the legend of all their drinkers in the ads. Another success of Heineken is that they have eliminated their limitation in sending their media messages to customers from different groups by not using any specific languages in the ads. However, people could easily realize that the images of characters here is a typical example of stereotypes.

In this post, I want to take a deeper look at the part of the TVC with the image of a kung fu assassin. I think that in this part, the target population of Heineken is the Asian in general, not the Chinese only. However, what they portrayed in the TVC is the legend of Chinese which is not really familiar with people from many Asian countries. As an Asian audience, I could bear no resemblance to this part. I find that Heineken failed to address the cultural awareness in this part because they did not corporate the values of their target customers (the Asian culture in this case) in their ads. The root cause might come from their unawareness of the Asian cultural value. Additionally, I have met a lot of people who think that Asian people are mainly as the same as Chinese which comes from the stereotype of people about Asian people. That might be the reason why Heineken only use the legend of Chinese in this ads, which eliminates a large number of their target population as Asian people. By doing this, the effectiveness of their TVC in reaching Asian customers reduces significantly.

Heineken seems to have no choice in correcting their mistakes in this ads right now. But what is more important is that they should never make this kind of mistake again if they do not want to lose their position as one of the most popular beer producer in the world. How could they maintain that position when they keep eliminating a large part of their customers? It is necessary to know and understand about your customers, but it is much more essential to understand deeply about them when you aim to specialize your advertisement to a specific group of consumers and maximizing the effectiveness of the ads. If Heineken want to address the message of "Open your world" as what they use in their slogan, the understanding of the real different worlds of customers is the first thing the company should keep in mind. Moreover, it is impossible for the them to target many groups of customers in one TVC. They might think about producing seperate TVC for specific group of people so that they could avoid both stereotypes of a big group and the wrong portrayal of their customers group. By doing that, the connections between the company and the underrepresented group will be strengthened which might create more brand loyalty. 
Nowadays, we have much more opportunities to approach different kind of customers and make profits from that. We are living in a multicultural society and I think that you don’t want to lose your own chance just because of the basic mistake: being unaware of the culture of your target customers.

Romanticize the stalking

Facebook is one of the most popular social networks we use every day because it could help us to know what our friends are doing and feeling. It is also famous for the understanding of customers when keep improving and adding many functions for users to optimize their benefit when using it. One of the special functions of Facebook is the Close friend list, which helps you to keep track of what those in the list are doing on other Facebook pages, from a "like" to any comment of them to public posts. This act of keeping track may be considered as a kind of showing care to your beloved people when you do it with a good purpose, but let imagine if whatever you do on Facebook now is known by your haters or anyone with bad purposes, you might fell annoyed, hostile or scary of what could hapen to you, right? In this case, Facebook is helping people to do such things called “Stalking” which is a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person.

Actually pop music has used the troupe of stalking in a long time and marked this action as “romance”. But there is a fact that pople who are “followed” by stalkers do not see that action as sweet and feeling good about it at all. Recently,  Robin Thicke has been criticized for his new video as a kind of stalking to his ex-wife (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/25/robin_thicke_s_get_her_back_video_why_the_blurred_lines_singer_looks_like.html). However, the action of stalking is still considered not a dangerous thing in many movies and such actions even usually are "romanticized" in films. One of the typical example is “Wall-E” cartoon of Pixar Animation.

From the first time Wall-e and Eve met each other, audience could see Wall-e fell in love with Eve, and what he does after the first-met is exactly “stalking”. Let’s take a look at the script of the film:

LOUIS ARMSTRONG'S "LA VIE EN ROSE" PLAYS

         

          Eve scans through the market.

          Wall-E follows from a safe distance.

          A stray puppy-dog.

          (…)           

         

          EXT. BNL REFINERY - NIGHT

         

          Wall-E perched on the roof.

          Patiently watches Eve fly.

          She scans the ground below her, like a searchlight.

         

          Eve comes in for a landing below.

          Shuts down for the night.

          Wall-E waits.

          Quietly sneaks down the refinery fire escape.

          Accidentally trips. Tumbles to the ground.

          Eve doesn't wake.

          Wall-E creeps up to her.

          Opens his arms wide...

          ...and measures her.

(…)

                                                              

         

          EXT. BNL REFINERY - NEXT MORNING

         

          Eve powers up again.

          Does a double take.

          A TRASH SCULPTURE OF EVE stands in front of her.

          She hovers away, unimpressed.

          Doesn't notice Wall-E hiding behind a PILE OF PIPES.

          (….)

         

Pixar Animation has created the scenes of Wall- E’s stalking as a romantic one when using the “Lavie en rose” songs and make the audience see how embarrassed Wall E is when he does not dare to approach Eve. The problem here is that by “romanticizing ” the stalking action, Pixar Animation are now reinforcing the norms that people engaging this behaviors are admirable, desirable, romantic, persistent or excusing for that action as just falling in love. Additionally, this male the seduction and abuse become indistinguishable. With the accumulation of acceptance of "stalking"through films overtime, the action might become acceptable in some ways in real life. When making a cartoon film, Pixar Animation of course know that a main part of their audiences is children in general and girl in particular, which are still naïve and know little about the world. However, in real life, seduction and abuse is really popular and could become a danger to any girl, and the action of promoting such kind of conduct implicitly like that is not really good at all. 
What if any abuse or seduction happened to any girl who is the watcher of the film because she does not notice that the action of anyone following her in real life is dangerous, due to what she has seen in cartoon movies like “Wall- E” ? If that happens, will Pixar Animation and their fame be “safe” when parents realize the negative impact of the film to their kids? While parents suppose the producer to make a movie with meaningful and good lessons of life for their kids, what Pixar Animation did here is in an opposite way: they portrayed a dangerous action in real life as a sweet expression of love in their movie. This could makes parents dissatisfied with that film in particular and many Pixar Animation in general so that Pixar Animation sales could be reduced by losing their current customers when parents do not want to let their children to watch Pixar Animation films. 

Now Pixar could do nothing to change the “Wall E” film, but they could take action to avoid “Stalking” in next cartoons. This sounds difficult because love is always the best theme for films and the image of a man try to approach his girl is really popular which seems to be unavoidable. The suggestion for Pixar now is that they could change the scene of “stalking” to other ways of showing love such as the image of the men thinking about his crush, or coming to talk to her. The point here is to promote the idea that love could still be sweet when emotion is expressed and people all know about it. True love is not just when "being- in- silence". The  long-term solution to Walt Disney is that they should make a good balance between what is in reality and what should be “romanticized” to be used in any product. Once again, the problem of portraying the truth in media should be carefully taken into account.

A message to any new band

In most of my blogs, I have used many examples from many countries such as India, America. It might be an obstacle for me to write about something that is not really familiar, but it is a good news to me if some problems in media in other countries are  more popular in other countries than in mine. One of the main reason is that in a developing country as Vietnam, the gap among social groups is still smaller than other developed countries. Another factor is the media in Vietnam has just developed significantly in recent 10 years, when there are many private media business founded and decide to buy the copyrighted programs from other countries. Vietnamese now could watch a national version of famous TV shows on the world like The Voice, So you think you can dance, etc. It’s such a good news for Vietnamese audience to enjoy a variety of TV shows, and of course for Vietnamese new bands too, because they now have more opportunities to show their talent and gain success. However, talent is not the only thing that they are supposed to offer the TV watcher.

F-Band is one of the most successful bands in X-Factor Vietnam, who are famous for their performances with cover versions of different types of songs, from the Southern traditional songs to latest pop hits. Here is one of the hits cover versions of them:

Another impressive but controversial performance of F-Band is a mixed cover versions of traditional songs of Tay Nguyen people- one of the minority ethnicity of Vietnam:

Overall, this is such a good performance of the band when they have prepared carefully for it from the quality of the songs to the theme of their performance. As the theme is about the Western Highland area in Vietnam, many popular and beautiful images of this area are portrayed on their performance such as the image of elephants, the famous waterfall  which is one of the most beautiful waterfall over the world, the fire which is often considered as the spirit and the friendliness of people there, and many traditional dances are also used. However, what affected strongly their performance is the performance costumes they wore.

One of the popular costumes of men in Tay Nguyen is loincloth. In the performance of F-Band, they did use the Pieu brocade, a traditional scarf which is a cultural symbol of the Thai ethnic group in the northwestern mountains in Vietnam, in the form of a loincloth. Thai people expressed their angers and disappointments to the performance because the Pieu scarf is one of the most meaningful thing in their culture, which is used as the headwear of any Thai girl- not a kind of loincloth. To Thai people, a girl is taught to weave and embroider a Pieu scarf since she is 6-7 years old to ensure that she could finish her own scarf before getting married. That scarf is a gift of a bride to her groom’s family and the quality of the scarf is used as a standard to evaluate the quality of Thai women.
The F-Band claimed that their stylist is quite young and have no knowledge of the community;s traditional costumes. This means that they chose to use the Pieu scarf just because they love its pattern and they believe that it is something related to the Tay Nguyen culture- what they want to express in their performance. What they did here is known as cultural appropriation- the act of taking elements of another culture which is often sacred and symbolic and presenting it in a shallow manner. The intention is rather often inconsequential because their acts usually stem generally from the privilege. In the case of F-band, they used the traditional scarfs of Thai people as beautiful costumes for the benefit of their performances without intentional offences to the minority group. Their unaware of the offence they caused has strongly affected the love of audience for them and also strongly affected their career in the future.

The F-Band has tried their own best to save their image by officially apologized for their mistake, and of course, that’s all they could do now. The point is that any band- especially the new band wanting to join the media market should bear in mind that any act of them will affect their long-term career. Keeping your image beautiful and “clean” to the audience is not such an easy task at all. It’s not your own talent that makes your success. You have to show a good combination between what you have and what you know about the audience. In this specific case, it is that you should be aware of what you are doing could cause harm to a part of your audience. It is your task as a part of entertainment world to make sure that your performance is suitable with your audience if you want to survive; and it is your responsibility to unpack your own privilege as people with privilege of majority, to stop doing things that you don’t understand the consequences related to the majority.

Asian American and the history in media

It’s not easy at all for movie makers to create characters in films which could portray various kinds of people in the society accurately, and it’s really challenging for them to create the image of marginalized groups. That might be the reason why you might not list many names of TV shows with the image of Asian American, and I couldn’t either. The most impressive film to me is Wendy Wu - Homecoming Warrior of Disney Channel.

In spite of being an Asian African, Wendy Wu is a girl who knows very little about the history of China and is not interested in it while she is supposed to know at least the basic things about China where her ancestors come from. You are taught to show respect to your ancestors by that way, right?.Wendy’s family are portrayed with losing many cultural traits when they do not know what is the mooncake- the traditional cake in mid-autumn festival and also do not know when the festival is. You know, to a Vietnamese (like me) or Chinese, mid-autumn festival is one of the most important one in a year. The grandmother is really surprised when Wendy asks her about the history :“I've never seen you this excited about Chinese history before.” They also admit that they did not care about that when they were kids. Moreover, Wendy rejects to put Chinese on her cupcakes to gain more votes from friends in a competition. It might be because she does not find the link between her and the culture heritage. Even her mother has troubles with “Chinese stuff”. She did a lot of the research, but feels like” missing some of the folklore and legends”. When the granma emphasizes that she had told her the stories, Wendy’s mom says that “It was too little to appreciate them. Anyway, it's not like I missed having that chinese culture in my life.”. And the grandmother, who appreciates and knows about the Chinese culture the most in the family emphasizes the fact that “Just because you don't miss it doesn't mean it isn't missing.” What Wendy and other family members experience in the film is called cultural assimilation which means that someone was losing themselves, giving up their original cultural identities and moving into full participation in the new culture. That is the process of absorption into an established and larger community.

When Disney did well in presenting the assimilation of many Asian American, they present the sterotypes of them as people who do not care much about their origin and do not appreciate the tradition. Because the number of films about Asian American is not much, I hope that the stereotypical portrayal of them should be minimized or avoided as much as possible. The film might make the audience think that Asian American people (including parents) do not pay attention to their traditional culture any more while it’s just part of the case. Additionally, the film raises the issue of assimilation, but does not offer any effective solution to it. It just focuses on the image of how little Wendy knows about the Chinese history and she finds no interests in studying it. The purpose of learning the traditional culture is just for the exam, which does not emphasize the real importance of learning the history. Each culture has its own value and the differences between them actually build a society and make it stronger. By creating the stereotypes people especially children will find that the it’s something normal and acceptable when they don’t know much about their ancestors, what they should do might be just study hard to get high scores in exams. The movie also does not make American to show respect to other cultures because even when Asian American don’t really care about it, or some way they underestimate it and take it for granted, why American need to appreciate it and they also might have the chance to promote their hegemony.

I think that Walt Disney should explain the importance of the traditional culture for audience in addition ways. What about promoting the cultural diversification by let Woo have more votes from friends by offering them moon cakes? That might attract the interest of American with other cultures too. Or at the end of the film, the whole family could make mooncakes together, so that family members could foster the solidarity (one of the best characteristics of Asian people). The long-term solution may be that Walt Disney should invest more in producing films about the marginalized group and bringing a closer look of them to the audience, so that watchers could know more about the culture of marginalized group.

Post-Coby Show Era and the case of "Suits" series

The time when black people are portrayed as not qualified to have equality in the society might have partly gone, as we are trying to achieve the “post- racial” society. The progression could be seen on TV shows and movies. There is a time when enlightenment racism (Jhally) promotes the myth that the black could not achieve the equality is because they have not worked hard enough and they have just themselves to blame for that. One of the remarkable point in the film history with a “new” black representatives is the TV's biggest hit in the 1980s - The Cosby Show- an American television sitcom about an upper middle class African- American family. The Post-Cosby era witnessed a lot of changes in how the black are represented on TV and today I will take “Suits” Tv Series by Universal Cable Production  as an example.

Jessica Pearson is a character in “Suit” series. She is portrayed as a black lawyer who appears cold- hearted and strong. Working as a Managing Partner in Pearson Hardman- a law firm in New York city, Jessica Pearson is the most powerful and smartest woman on the show. She helped to built the firm and try to protect it as her own family. She is the women who is not just driven by money and power, she acts to be respected by people. Jessica Pearson is a typical example of representation of the black in Post-Cosby era when there are more African American characters on network television than before. Those characters are represented as people from upper middle class. They might be lawyers, doctors, etc, but they are rarely from the working class. The images of large African American families on TV are now replaced by the image of individual characters. Most of the African America characters on TV show now do not involve in intra-racial romantic relationship and pairings or exist in positive relationship with family. (For example, How to get away with murder or Scandal series or Grey's anatomy.) In the case of Jessica Pearson, she has divorced with her husband Quentin Sainz and kept fulfilling her ambition alone. She has the familiar relationships with Harvey Specter, Louis Litt and Mike Ross who are the three white lawyers of the firm. We could see that the workplace of Jessica is disconnected from other African America.The problem is that in the Suits show, the connection between race and class is obscured when in reality that’s not the case. Another problem is that the show reinforces the idea that the black could do things well when they have worked hard and do it in the separation with their community. By doing this, the film series do not portrayed the real experience of African America which might fit into the stereotype of black women.With 4 seasons from 2011 till now, Suits has received approximately 8.2/10 rating scores. This means that the series are confirming the stereotype of black women with unreal images to a large number of audience over time. More series with the same stereotype of black people might make the audience lose their interest in the film because it is supposed to make a progression in portraying the true image of African America in particular and the society in general in comparison with the previous era.
We might turn back to the familiar issue of the media about stereotype. Is it fair to the African American people to be portrayed apart from their own community to be successful? Is it really progressive to reinforce the myth that the black could make their dreams come true by just working hard and class and race do not have any impact at all? It’s high time Universal Cable Productions (UCB) to make the real progress to speed up the development of company. The media is supposed to bring the truth to audience, you know, and that’s what film producers should focus to put it on their products. So the question is what could UCB do? One suggestion is that the black female characters should be “on aired” with a variety of representations, ranging from married to single characters, and their family and communication should also be portrayed more frequently. Another suggestion is that the divorced characters such as Jessica or other single ones need to be married or find their new sources of happiness along with their current jobs in upcoming episodes. Their characteristics could be displayed their more clearly and the character could become more attractively. A variety of characters with different types of personalities portrayed will make your movies more interesting. I think that that’s enough to show the characteristic of black women who are just good at their jobs. Black women do well than that, you know, and alienating representations of various types of them should be avoided.

The Hufflington Post and social responsibility

As a Vietnamese girl, I was really surprised when I was asked about top 5 most popular topics covered on the news. The answer from American friends and mine is likely to be the same: Politics, War, Education, Tax and Poverty. However, when I look at American mainstream newspapers such as New York Times or USA today, things is much different. On the column of Hufflpost’s big news pages, we could find Politics, Media, Entertainment, Business, etc, but poverty even is not in this list of The Huffington Post.

Poverty, which is known as a severe social problem, is not reflected in the media as accurately as we think. The percentage of poor people in reality is much larger than what is portrayed on The Hufflington Post. What did you think of when reading a post mentioned “the poor”? Is it the image of a group of thin people living in houses in bad condition? Or are they the black? There is a fact that when you enter the Poverty part of The Hufflington Post, you could find nearly a half of posts using the image of the black, especially black kids. By selecting some images of the reality of the black poor family and making them more noticeable to the audience, the reporters make us pay more attention to that image rather than others. This explains why when we talk about the poor, people have tendency to think about black family with many children. Poverty is also portrayed as a threat or suffering of the whole society on the media. Here are titles of some typical posts on The Hufflington Post: “Low Poverty Rates Mask Deeper Despair In Many States”, “More Cities Are BasicallyMaking It Illegal To Be Homeless”, “45 Million Americans Still Stuck Below Poverty Line”, etc. Such words as “despair”, “illegal”, “stuck” partly frames what the audience think about the poor. By framing, I mean when the media focuses attention of audience on some events provided with certain meanings.

The Hufflington Post is known as a liberal website, whose audiences are expected to care much about the social situations. When one of the issues of society is framed in such particular way (that might be found in other pages but not expected to be shown on The Hufflington Post), this becomes a problem. On many pages, stories of the poor are often represented without the social context. There are many reasons causes poverty, such as the lack of basic resources, or the consequences of earthquakes, floods, or when poverty is handed over from generations to generations. But these outside factors is barely mentioned on many online newspapers. The poor, in general, is also portrayed as experiencing their own culture instead of having no other options. The Hufflington Post- as one of the mainstream media channels- did a good job in reflecting the social issue with its underlying cause. However, that’s just the case with the context of their posts. By framing through images of black people and the title of the posts, The Hufflington Post implicitly reinforce the stereotype of the poor on their page. By doing that, audience who wants to access the accurate information about poverty and who are willing to take actions to solve the problem could be misled to feel sympathy for the poor instead of taking actions as soon as possible to manage the problem.

As one of the mainstream newspapers, The Hufflington Post should make a change to give the audience the good frame of the reality. It might be really difficult for small and unpopular pages to do that because they did a bad frame for their post, but to The Hufflington Post, the task is much easier. They just need to change their frame in some ways, such as using more suitable images for their posts, or considering the match between posts and images more carefully. Treatment recommendation for the problem or calling for actions is also needed in their posts so that their goal of doing social outreach could be attained. The media plays an important role in shaping public opinion and the media channel hold a part of responsibility to improve the social condition. By representing the real problem with the adequate image and providing the good treatment recommendation, The Hufflington Post could not only keep it position as one of the mainstream media channels but also fulfill their social responsibility.

Columbia Pictures and agenda setting

I am a Vietnamese student and I arrived Fort Collins about 2 months ago. Actually, America is not really like what I have imagined, or at least what I have “known” about it through the media. With the impression that violence might occur anytime and anywhere (as what I saw in many American films with my dad on Star Movies, HBO, etc), I have some fear before coming here. However, I finally realize that what arouses my anxiety is not the USA itself but things called “cultivation”. And one of the most popular American film production and distribution studio I know and wanna send message to today is Columbia Pictures Industries (CPII).

Cultivation is known as the theory about the impact of media on audiences. When we watch entertainment programs repeatedly, we begin to internalize what is portrayed on TV. What I have observed from films especially the products of American films in general and CPII in particular is that brutal scenes take places very often. You could easily find a film with the scene of killing people, fight, hijack, kidnap, etc on the internet, the cinema or on TV. Of course, this has huge impacts on people from all ages. In my opinion, watching violence film could help adults release stress in some ways because we could reveal our hidden emotions inside when stress in our daily life could be accumulated over time However, in daily life, people try to keep calm and avoid the “explosion” as much as possible. Through imitation of films, adults might have the tendency to get into fight and “explode” his stress in many ways including violence when he loses his temper. They might not be aware of that watching violent films on regular basis could cause them to act more aggressively and uncontrollably. Violent films also raising fear of the society on audience. Is there much violence in reality as what is shown in action films? The answer might be “Yes” if we take a look at the online news. The main topics founded from different online news pages are politics, taxes, wars and violence. If the real world is portrayed exactly on the online news channels, we are living in such a dangerous world! Actually, what we see on those media has been affected by the agenda setting theory.

The theory of Agenda setting said that press and media does not reflect the reality. They filter it and shape it. The media concentrates on few issues, make people believe that something is more important than the others. That’s the reason why by the exposure to news about violence on the media, people tend to pay more attention to violence and we may believe what is portrayed in entertainment programs.

But why should CPII show concern about the relationship between cultivation theory and agenda setting? That is because their products are negatively and directly affected by the frequency of news about violence on the media. How many action films of Columbia Pictures Industries are produced each year and on TV every month? What is the number of violence news that a citizen catches in a day? The audience might be getting more and more tired of the “violence-everywhere”. We could easily find many violent movies in the list of Columbia Pictures Industries : Salt, Django Unchained, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Ghost Rider, Total Recall, The Equalizer, etc. As one of the biggest film industry in America, CPII is supposed to offer an escape from the stress of everyday life by their products. They are expected to bring more love, friendship, hope and happiness to their customers instead of too many brutal scenes. The short- term gain could be the increase in sales and revenue from such films, but what might be the long- term lost when people are fed up with the world full of aggressive behaviors and conflicts? What if adults realize negative impacts of Hollywood films on themselves and their children?

The suggestion is that Columbia Picture Industries should try to estimate and control the frequency of their violent products. The simplest solution, of course, is to reduce the number of violent films and scenes in their products. In such films, the cost of violence and punishments should be shown more obviously, the contextualization should be better. What about reviews from the customers? Yes, they also play an important role. The producer should pay more attention to the rating and comments of the audience so that they could know what they should focus on when making their products. We live in a stressful world, you know, and entertainment programs should offer a way out of tough time instead of being stuck in violence and crime. If CPII do realize that our lives are “boomed” by enough violent news, and many other producers are producing the same tons of action films, and if they considers about introducing films with more “peace” and happiness, they might become a leader for a new trend. It does sound good, right?

When the expression troubles

Race is one of the most controversial topics over years. I’m glad to see that the racist ads have significantly decreased on the media recently. But it is still a good choice to use carefully any image related to this sensitive issues to promote your products. Today I wanna talk more about this with the example of Dove’s Visible Care Body Wash advertisement.

We are in post-racial society today, that’s what many people say! By “post- racial”, I mean the time when people of color no longer have to face the obstacle of race. The inequality in the society now is thought to exist because of the economic or political reasons, and does not base on ethnicity anymore. To an advertiser, the idea of making our advertisement to match and reflect this new era sounds great.

Let’s take a look at the advertisement of Dove’s Visible Care.

The background is divided into 2 parts: “before” and “after”. The before part on the left describes the skin in bad condition and the “after-Dove” skin on the right is smooth and moisturized. In addition, there are 3 women- one black, one possibly Latina and one blonde- standing in front of the background from left to right respectively. In the view of a customer, this design implies that using this product will make the black women skin “visibly more beautiful” and might turn her into the white women. This advertisement is said to insult customers having dark skin because it implicitly suggest that lighter skin is much better than dark one. The reply of Dove's PR in this case is: "The ad is intended to illustrate the benefits of using Dove Visible Care Body Wash, by making skin visibly more beautiful in just one week. All three women are intended to demonstrate the "after" product benefit. We do not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience.”

By taking advantage of the ideology of “color blind”- the deliberately effort to not pay attention to thoughts about race in the post- racial society- using models from various ethnic groups to emphasize the idea: “real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes, colors and ages” in the advertisement seemed to be a smart choice. That buyers appreciate the effort of the company in supporting the social equality could earn more love for the product in particular and the firm in general. When using this idea, Dove has to consider the negative aspect of the color blind ideology that it ignores and overlooks the privilege in the society. (Privilege is defined as particular advantages, permissions, rights or benefits that just an individual, class or caste could afford. This means that when the white has privilege, they have access to many things that people of other skin colors don’t). According to "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, one of the most popular white privileges on the media is people having it could “easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazine featuring people of their race, while others could not.” Congratulations! Dove did a good job to avoid this privilege! Unfortunately, they fail to put that interesting idea in an appropriate context. There is no direct link between two messages of the advertisement when they try to inform the effectiveness of the product and appreciate the real beauty of women from different races simultaneously. The combination of these two does not make much sense to the customers. Moreover, the truth is that, race is still a controversial topic and using racial image needs much more attention even when we are considered to be in a “post-racial” era. It might be a waste of effort and money to spend on advertisement for the “post-racial” society when our society have not reached that yet.

So the only advice for Dove is: Stop using this advertisement as soon as possible. The explanation to correct the misunderstanding of this advertisement should be clear and widespread on the media. Dove should never make this kind of mistake again if they do not want to lose their world’s top cleansing brand right now and affect the leading position of Unilever on the market. What is written binds the writer, be careful with whatever you pose to the public. It is much better to look at the “real” society rather than the ideal one when making advertisement. Catching the new social trend is good, but please ensure that you convey your message clearly to the customers. If you are not sure about this, please focus on the product itself, any irrelevant extra information shouldn’t be added.

Barbie dolls in a critical analysis

Have you ever seen a Barbie girl? Is she beautiful? Is she charming? Oh, it sounds so obvious. A pretty and smart girl always stays in shape and looks fashionable, what could be more perfect? Barbie is really a successful case study in doing marketing. To capture the bigger market, Mattel- the producer has come up with a variety of designs and changes for their dolls. Today I wanna uncover some secret about one of the latest version of the collection “Barbie Dolls of the world 2013”.

With the intention of creating “the significance of introducing new cultures to girls in a relatable way”, the collection helps “exploring the world and learning about different cultures through play”. However, while it might be clear that the producer concentrated on “celebrating the cultures and diversity represented within each country”, it’s not a good idea to me when only featuring the native fashions in the collection. There are many different types of dolls in “Barbie Dolls of the world 2013”: Mexico Barbie is “dressed for a fabulous fiesta” in a pink dress with ruffles, ribbon and lace; China doll wearing a red sink embroidered gowns, India Barbie with a sari…Let me be frank, how many times have you seen this image of a India or Mexico girl on daily magazine wearing the same outfit as the dolls? Have you met any Chinese girl recently? Oh God, I could not remember what is the last time I see a “normal” people wearing such kind of clothes daily, maybe just on some films or old pictures. Foreign women is now fashionable and much more different.

Barbie is considered as a life inspiration of smart feminist who could do everything she wants: an astronaut, an army ranger, a presidential candidate, etc as long as she is assumed to be an American. But when she takes on the cultural appearance of others, she is very restricted. The question is why Barbie dolls from other countries have to wear the native clothing (especially in comparison with US where there is no traditional costume)? That is exactly when these dolls plays into stereotype.

Stereotype is known as an unintentional activation of the fixed image or response shaped from the past coming up in your mind when understanding a type of people or things. By using the image of those “foreign Barbies”, buyers might believe in the image of people in other countries as the same as what dolls represent while it might not be the case. If I were a kid who knows nothing about the world but what is described by these dolls, I could not realize is not the cultures but the differences in lifestyle and people among countries. It’s not progressive to implicitly suggest that others could not keep up with the changes in our modern world through those outdated image, right?

Could you imagine “To what extend did the producer unHave you ever seen a Barbie girl? Is she beautiful? Is she charming? Oh, it sounds so obvious. A pretty and smart girl always stays in shape and looks fashionable, what could be more perfect? Over 50 years of development, Barbie has come out with a variety of designs and changes. Today I wanna take an in-depth look at one of the latest version of the collection “Barbie Dolls of the world 2013”.

With the intention of creating “the significance of introducing new cultures to girls in a relatable way”, the collection helps “exploring the world and learning about different cultures through play”. However, while it might be clear that the producer concentrated on “celebrating the cultures and diversity represented within each country”, it’s not a good idea to me when only featuring the native fashions in the collection. There are many different types of dolls in “Barbie Dolls of the world 2013”: Mexico Barbie is “dressed for a fabulous fiesta” in a pink dress with ruffles, ribbon and lace; China doll wearing a red sink embroidered gowns, India Barbie with a sari, etc. Let me be frank, how many times have you seen this image of a India or Mexico girl on daily magazine wearing the same outfit as the dolls? Have you met any Chinese girl recently? Oh God, I could not remember what is the last time I see a “normal” people wearing such kind of clothes daily, maybe just on some films or old pictures. Foreign women is now fashionable and much more different.

Barbie is considered as a life inspiration of smart feminist who could do everything she wants: an astronaut, an army ranger, a presidential candidate, etc as long as she is assumed to be an American. But when she takes on the cultural appearance of others, she is very restricted. The question is "Why Barbie dolls from other countries have to wear the native clothing?" (especially in comparison with US where there is no traditional costume). That is exactly when they plays into stereotype.

Stereotype is known as an unintentional activation of the fixed image or response shaped from the past coming up in your mind when understanding a type of people or things. The image Mattel created for dolls are some kind of "outside of history", "something that is placid and still and eternal"- "which is simply contradicted by the fact of history." (Edward Said) . By using the image of those “foreign Barbies”, buyers might believe in the image of people in other countries as the same as what dolls represent while it might not be the case. If I were a kid who knows nothing about the world but what is described by these dolls, I could not realize is not the cultures but the differences in lifestyle and people among countries. It’s not really "friendly" to implicitly suggest that others could not keep up with the changes in modern world like us through those outdated image , right? 

Could you imagine “To what extend did the producer unintentionally affect our products and company?” Let’s put ourselves in the position of a foreign buyer who finds that the doll does not express his"real" and up-to-date image in the society. If I were him, I will seriously consider not to buy the product or even deny using it as a gift for my kids or especially international friends. Moreover, overseas purchasers could feel that the way people making and designing Barbie is not respectful enough to their culture when using such old- fashioned images, which could lead to the rejection of buying any Barbie doll. Nowadays, when the producer tries to reach the overseas market as much as possible, that product itself limits the accessibility to foreign consumes is not good at all. And maybe, the feedback or complains about the product available on webs could also negatively impact the decisions of American consumers to buy the collection. Moreover, using the outdated image of others in a big series of products revealed the poor understanding of the producer in cultures, which discourage purchasers to buy the product when they are willing to learning about the "real culture".

Is it fair to foreign countries when creating such kind of staying- the-same images like being stuck in the history and force other culture to stop developing in our mind while Barbie is well-known as a dare-to-do model? Is it really progressive to implicitly emphasizing the differences by comparing between modern and traditional images of nations? It’s time for differences to be truly respected and fully comprehend by offering more “real” products. I might just have come up with some constructive ideas about dolls with the more modern clothing such as vest and skirt suit with the national symbol on it or cultural gesture that both offer the “real-world” view and the cultural characteristic.

P.S : “Dear Mattel,

Please, never underestimates the importance of researching and understanding what you are representing in products!”

intentionally alienate their potential customers?” Let’s put ourselves in the position of a foreign buyer who finds that the doll does not express their "real" and up-to-date images in the society, I will seriously consider not to buy the product or even deny using it as a gift for my kids or especially international friends. Moreover, overseas purchasers could feel that the way people making and designing Barbie is not respectful enough to their culture when using such out-of- image, which could lead to the rejection of buying any Barbie doll. Nowadays, when the producer tries to reach the overseas market as much as possible, that product itself limits the accessibility to foreign consumes is not good at all. And maybe, the feedbacks or complains about the product available on webs could also negatively impact the decisions of American consumers to buy the collection. Moreover, using the outdated image of others in a big series of products revealed the poor understanding of the producer in cultures, which discourage purchasers to buy the product when they are willing to learning about it.

Is it fair to foreign countries when creating such kind of staying- the-same images like being stuck in the history and force other culture to stop developing in our mind while Barbie is well-known as a dare-to-do model? Is it really progressive to implicitly emphasizing the differences by comparing between modern and traditional images of nations? It’s time for differences to be truly respected and fully comprehend by offering more “real” products. I might just have come up with some constructive ideas about dolls with the more modern clothing such as vest and skirt suit with the national symbol on it or cultural gesture that both offer the “real-world” view and the cultural characteristic.

“Dear Mattel,

 Please, never underestimate the importance of researching and understanding what you are representing in products!”