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Author: Paulene Andrea C. PalaganasTitle:Comparative Study on the Documentary Response of the International Community to the Syrian Crisis and to the Paris AttackTotal number of words: 2, 312Documentary on International RelationsThe Paper’s FrameworkAs documentaries have been covering the issues in the global community, this may show the discrepancies on how it is delivered by its journalists and how its audience/viewers of the international community respond to the happenings and/or drastic events in a certain place and race. This paper comparatively examines the documentations and the response of the international community (as the audience) of the Paris Attack and of the Syrian Crisis in accordance with the notion of International Relations being dominated by the lens of the West as to how the Rest are being regarded as minorities and to relate whether this status of IR has an impact to this concern. The research questions of this paper are 1) Do documentaries possess power to be able to affect the response of the International community to the two happenings to be compared? If so, to what extent? 2) Is there any discrepancy in the documentation? If so, what factors contribute to the discrepancy?The methodology of this paper is analytical approach to the findings that will be presented later. The ontomology of this paper is interpretivism wherein social phenomena, in this case the Paris Attack and Syrian Crisis, are created from perceptions and consequent action of those social actors (documentaries) concerned with their existence. The lens to be used to guide the paradigm of this study is critical realism. The researcher’s standpoint on this paper, for the epistemology, is from the perspective of an empiricist who believes that all knowledge is ultimately grounded upon experience. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Ideas from the Two Fields*West and the RestIR has been studied around the world but the discipline still needs to overcome a central challenge related to its British and North American roots (Acharya 2014). The main theories of the field were formulated in consideration only of the history and other aspects which revolved in the West reason as to why IR theories are Euro-American dominated. The current establishment of IR is Western dominated; same goes with documentaries. This is because main media network in the globe namely; CNN, CBS and BBC which normally covers international news for documentation and broadcast are seated in the West. *Documentary for Social IssuesDocumentary, when comes to mind, is a film covered by journalists focusing on a specific event and/or topic. But for the purpose of this study, the researcher would mainly use the documented news which is broadcasted real time to the international community. Bill Nichols (2010) provided three ground works for a documentary: 1. Documentaries are about reality; they’re about something that actually happened. 2. Documentaries are about real people. 3. Documentaries tell stories about what happens in the real world. He also stated that documentaries are not a reproduction of reality; it is a representation of the world we already occupy. With this there is an unresolved tension between ‘creative treatment’ and ‘actuality’ as from John Grierson’s proposed definition of documentary in the 1930s which is ‘creative treatment of actuality.’ Although, journalists would have to balance their license of fiction and their responsibilities in their profession to avoid extremities to be able to properly document a certain social issue/event.Further discussion on the variables in this study in order to answer the research questions are to be presented with the following findings.WEAPON OF INFLUENCEPower of DocumentariesImagine eating dinner at night and turning on the TV to watch the latest news around the globe brought to you by renowned news agencies like CNN and BBC. These two document not only domestic events, they cover news and/or happenings in the international spectrum. These established and powerful media agencies are capable of reaching almost the whole human race, they even cover remote areas in the planet. Documenting and relaying it to the people surely is a powerful weapon. It is a great weapon of influence as people rely on the documented news to be of fact and this will involve the occurrence of delivery of a documented event to the people of the international community. According to Susan Sarandon (2014), “As both activist and actor I understand the profound power of a story well told. Storytelling is what makes us human; it is our common currency and as such can be a powerful tool for positive change. Compelling narratives have the ability to bring us together, to galvanize us into action. Documentary makers commit years of their lives in an effort to bring us these vital and often complex stories and in doing so they make the issues we face as a society both more tangible and increasingly urgent.” In another article entitled ‘Reel to real: can documentaries change the world?’ which was in relation with the newly created award of Puma Creative Award, Ellen Jones (2011) stated that its creators has the aim of honoring the documentary film creating the most significant impact in the world. “…As the documentarist?Morgan Spurlock, a juror for the award, says: "There's real power in a documentary, and there's real power in movies to begin with. Movies transcend culture; they transcend countries, and to?be able to have something that can create global awareness is necessary today."” “…As a despairing character comments?in Hotel Rwanda, a 2004 drama about the Rwandan genocide: "If people see this footage, they'll say, 'Oh my God, that's terrible,' and they'll go on eating their dinners."Documentaries are not just encompassing of films. There is the notion and practice of documenting events for broadcasting news parative Determinants: Syrian Crisis and Paris Attack Documentary-Based ResponsesSince these two events happened in the modern era, the researcher relied more on online sources as news that are printed on broadsheet are also uploaded online by these broadcasting agencies. The Syrian Crisis is an ongoing conflict for almost 6 years now while the Paris attack was series of attacks in various places of Paris, France in November of 2015. First noticeable discrepancy on the two is the number of search results. Entered on the search bar is ‘Syrian Crisis news’ for a vague scope before narrowing it down, the result is about 10,800,000 results while for ‘Paris Attack news’ it is about 68,000,000 results. On the main webpage of the two media agency, the number of article results for Paris Attack is bigger than the articles on Syrian Crisis. In addition, as the researcher mainly focused on these two broadcasting agencies (CNN and BBC) as variable for the documentary makers, the articles conducted by these two provide more spice by the manner of usage of words in delivering news. Images are added to give the audience a preview of the setting of the event that happened. Of course, pictures visually tell an angle but imagination can rise up in the minds of the viewers and stir up their emotions. CNN and BBC have more articles for the Paris attack which capture the most attention from its audience.In terms of business reasons, these broadcasting agencies see that more traffic arise in the news for Paris attack, possibility is that people are more interested to that than the Syrian Crisis due to reasons that they may be over it or they don’t care as it has been ongoing for years so they no longer care while the Paris attack does not have that kind of scenario. Therefore, they’ll create more articles in relation to the Paris attack to attract more income for the benefit of their business.In social media, people all over the world sympathized with the people of France who were victims of the terror attack that happened in November of 2015. Active users in Facebook had added a tri-color p000alette, colors that are on the flag of France, on their profile pictures. This option was not available for Syrian Crisis even though there were emerging disturbing pictures of people and children who died on the shore of the sea trying to escape their motherland. In Twitter, the #PrayforParis went viral and trending. This also was not the case for the Syrian Crisis. Leaders from all over the world personally went to France to express their support to France. They have officially declared statements of support and assistance. While for the Syrian Crisis, world’s leaders have non-stop discussion of what to do instead of providing resolution to spare innocent lives of civilians living in Syria.UTILIZATION OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY AND ITS RISING COMPLEXITIESDocumentary as a Weapon of setting the Discourse of PerceptionPower is usually classified into two: Hard Power and Soft Power. The first is normally related to military prowess and capability; the strength of a state’s military and machineries with the most advanced technology. On the other hand, the latter is usually related to economic sanctions and diplomatic rifts whenever states encounter conflicts with one another. In today’s era, the advancement of technology gives individuals power they can possess. Power is no longer solely entitled to States; an ordinary person, a professional, an agency, a private sector, an organization, etc. may also have power if they know how to utilize the resources accessible to them for the pursuance of their interests. The researcher considers documentaries powerful as it can manipulate, influence and set the discourse for the perception of the people towards certain issues cultivating on the world’s modern society. Broadcasters/documentarists have a required standard of being neutral, unbiased and facts-oriented. However, there is the art of professionals in the field as to how they deliver as communications major to get the attention of their viewers. Emotional factors can be used to touch its audience and leave an impact to them.Multi-factored Documentary-based ResponsesNumerous aspects can affect and/or result to a situation. In this paper, a factor to consider as to why this is the situation for documentary-based response to these two happenings is for business purposes. The people, audience or viewers of these documentaries are the market. The documentaries are the product to be sold for profit. Benefit for pursuance of interests comes first before anything else for the business to survive. The world is divided to the: 1) Public sphere where these happenings, Paris attack and Syrian Crisis, occur. And 2) Private Sector, in this case the broadcasting agencies, where these actors take advantage of such events for self-interest.Another factor to consider is the focus of interest of the viewers; even those from the East are looking more on the life and events in the West. Plus, these agencies are based in the West so they will more likely put highlight on the events and issues in their area. In addition, the misconception of unpleasant scenarios being normal in the Middle East and so conflict is not an issue to be considered is evident from the perspective of most people.These compress the analytical idea that the researcher perceives from this study.CONCLUSIONA lot of number of people point accusatory fingers to news agencies not giving both tragedies equal coverage yet this is not a confirmed scenario as it will be subjective for the viewer. A factor may be that news agencies decide what the people should watch or be aware of in the happenings of the international arena as most of these news agencies/journalists that cover the international spectrum are from the West. It is a possibility that the audience will be exposed only to the news of the West and those may be given more highlight than those issues of the East (e.g. Middle Eastern issues) neglecting what is happening to these countries deemed not newsworthy and will always be not front page material but mere footnotes. The audience, then, who is being sold to sees that what happened in Paris is more tragic and more important for we are already used to the violence of the Middle Eastern Region and that latest happenings in the place are no longer ‘fresh news’. Media, in addressing political and social issues and/or events, requires neutrality to fully perform the role of unbiased documentation of said issues and/or events. This obvious description of the expected media functions is challenged by the disparity of coverage given to two similar tragedies that concurrently occurred: the Paris attacks and the Syrian Crisis.Considering the timeline of these two happenings as a factor for basis to determine the discrepancy of the documentary-based response of the international community, the findings clearly shows; the attack that happened in Paris which represents the Western political world was given more highlight by the media regardless of its short timeline. In contrast, the Syrian Crisis which represents the ‘Rest’ in the political world is much longer in timeline however, was given less spotlight and broadcast.The documented news of the two had strongly showed discrepancy on how they were documented and on how the international community reacted to it. For the Paris attack, people were touched; they stood up and took action in various ways. While for the Syrian Crisis, people feel sympathy but not empathy. They seem to have the conundrum that conflicts in Middle East, in this case Syria is a normal thing and that it is something that the world should get used to reason as to why they often neglect. There is no denying that documentaries have power. This power is of great capability. Influencing the mass number of people is something that can neither be done by arms nor weapons of mass destruction. The ability to influence to the extent of not needing the use force to have the people agree rather these people can be acquired through the information presented with filtration as they agree willingly. As these broadcasting agencies, as well as other big broadcasting agencies, are based from the West, highlight will really be provided more to the happenings in the Western political world which would result to discrepancy. References:Acharya, A. (2014). Global International Relations and Regional Worlds: A New Agenda for International Studies. International Studies Quarterly, 58, pp. 647-659.Alcuaz, C. (2015) Paris Attacks: Timeline of Terror and Response. International Business Times November 14, 2015. (accessed Sept. 16, 2016)Amnesty International (2014) The World's Pitiful Response to Syria's Refugee Crisis. Press Release December 5, 2014. (accessed Sept. 16, 2016)Barnes, P. Entous, A., Lee, C. (2015) World Leaders Pledge Strong Response to Paris Attack. The World Street Journal November 15, 2015. (accessed Sept. 16, 2016)BBC Middle East (2016) Syria profile – Timeline. 14703995 (accessed Nov. 12, 2016)BBC News (2014) Syrian children enduring 'unspeakable' suffering. Middle East February 5, 2014. (accessed Sept. 16, 2016)CNN Library (2016) 2015 Paris Terror Attacks Fast Facts. Retrieved Nov. 12, 2016 (accessed Nov. 12, 2016)Epistemology (accessed Nov. 12, 2016)Jones, E. (2011) Reel to real: can documentaries change the world? (accessed Nov. 12, 2016)Mejia, P., (2015). International Community Responds to Paris Attacks. Newsweek November 14, 2015. (accessed Sept. 16, 2016)Nichols, B., (2010) Introduction to Documentary. Second edition. Indiana University Press 2010.(1)pp. 6- 13Oxfam International (2016) Syria Refugee Crisis: Is your country doing its fair share? Press Release February 01, 2016. (accessed Sept. 16, 2016)Sarandon, S. (2014) Susan Sarandon the Power of Documentaries. (accessed Nov. 12, 2016) ................
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