Week 5 September 28 October 4

(Tuesday) Communications. The Media, History of writing

Journal

Journal Part One is due Thursday 9^th October (four weeks)

This is due Tuesday 7^th October

Go to a foreign chat site – try one of these larger foreign servers:

http://www.alamak.com/login.phtml

http://www.chatinternational.com/

or find one in Yahoo, Excite etc.

In the chatroom carry on a discussion with others. When you have finished your chat (it should have lasted at least an hour) discuss five things you have discovered about the other person’s culture, this could be the result of a number of people talking about anything or a few – but get past the ‘hi’ ‘any girls in here’ stage and talk about a topic that has something to do with globalisation. For your journal you will need to save the whole log of the conversation. I realise this could be a few hundred lines long. [Note: if you are using a java chatroom you will not be able to cut and paste the log. You will either have to type out your dialogue the best you can plus capture a screen shot by holding (at the same time) alt+shift+printscreen to capture and Shift+Insert to save it for printing.]

NOTE: If you cannot find a chat site for the country your group is doing then find another one. What I want is for you to communicate with someone with a different mind-set and background than yourself.

This will be the last week of the Part One half of this assignment. There will be no assignment due during week six – you will have that week to format and assemble your journal. How that should be done will be in next week’s assignment.

Discussion Board:

Discuss in a few sentences what communicative device you use to interact with another culture or country (i.e. phone, Internet: chat, e-mail, etc, post [mail], and one example/experience doing so. Secondly respond to something someone else has written.

Tuesday Class

The topic for this class is ‘How the media reports the news’. As we are discussing globalisation it is important to be aware of how we see other cultures and countries. See: MEDIA IN THE MIDST OF WAR http://www.tbsjournal.com; The Information Revolution in the Arab World http://www.georgetown.edu/research/arabtech/mch397.htm;

Questions from readings

5/1. Your biological footprint

You are to do your biological footprint and print a copy to hand in with the other questions. Go to: http://www.lead.org/leadnet/footprint/intro.htm
What are some of your personal reflections on how your life may affect other ‘less-prosperous’ societies?

For example print the whole page including how many earth-like planets it would take for everyone to live like you do: i.e.

YOUR RESULTS:
Food Footprint	1.9 hectares or	4.7 acres
Transportation Footprint	21.3 hectares or	52.7 acres
Housing Footprint	13.5 hectares or	33.5 acres
Other Footprints	13.6 hectares or	33.5 acres
Total Footprint per person	50.3 hectares or	124.3 acres
IN COMPARISON: Your Eco-Footprint measures 493.3 % of an average American Footprint.
Worldwide, the biologically productive space available per person is 2.2 hectares or 5.4 acres.
Your choice means the following: You maintain that every person should be able to live a satisfying life within an average of hectares or acres.
Hence, it requires Earths to support each member of the present human population at your standard of living.

5/2. Information and communication technologies

From web viewing, Bechtel, Marie-Franise. Public Administration between Globalisation and Decentralisation. Istanbul, TURKEY, 17-20 JUNE 2002 http://www.iiasiisa.be/schools/aeistanbul/KeynBechtelA.pdf

Do new information and communication technologies introduce changes in the exercise of democracy, notably with reference to globalisation and decentralisation that they facilitate?

5/3. Compare news stories

You will need to go to the follow five sites. Each one has an entirely different (agenda?) way of telling ‘the way it is’ in the world today. Write a few sentences on whether you believe the news source is telling the truth and whether you would trust their reporting of current affairs.

a. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi.html

b. http://www.rense.com/

c. http://www.cnn.com/

d. http://www.davidicke.com/ take the red pill to - (http://www.davidicke.com/icke/index.html)

e. http://www.cursor.org/aljazeera.htm

5/4 From Thursday videos

From the video ‘Something to Hide’ (for next week’s question five - )

What is a Free Trade Zone?
What are three things that multinational companies look for in a cheap work force
Do the workers want a union and if so why?
What is the difference between a prison and a Nike factory in a Free Trade Zone?
What does S.A.M stand for? (In relation to the chart shown of how many pieces of clothing need to be made)material
What is the minimum wage for El Salvador?
What percent of the workers are female? What percent are female?

From the video ‘Global Assembly Line’ (for next week’s question five - )

What is the difference in buying cost between the minimum wage in the States compared to the minimum wage in the Philippines?
Besides the cost saving why do companies move offshore?
What protections do the companies shown in Mexico use for their workers against toxic fumes etc?
What do workers in the Philippines leave their rice fields for? (to aspire to get what?)

Thursday group

(Thursday) Bring to your group one kind of printed material that you often tend to read: magazine, novel, webpage, newspaper etc. In your group you will discuss how you use this material, how you learned to use it, and what purpose it serves you. What are the ranges of tastes and reading practices among the members of your group? Are there certain reading practices found among particular groups of individuals, or among women as compared to men, younger people compared with older and etc?