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Week 4 Prompt 3

Prompt 3 (extended): At Teufelsberg this week you will see a huge amount of graffiti. It's a cultural phenomenon here - highly skilled artists have been allowed to paint the walls of this defunct spy station. Some murals have lasted years, while others are painted over from one week to the next. As Ledingham tells us, “Public relations is best defined and practiced as the active attempt to restore and maintain a sense of community.” How is this graffiti a function of community building/maintenance? How might this space be different in the U.S.? Would the owners of this property or the federal government be likely to allow this long-term graffiti haven to continue untouched by anyone who isn't part of the community? Post a selection of murals to illustrate your post.

Teufelsberg is located on the ruble of what used to be Berlin. It started out as a spy post during the cold war, and later people tried to develop the land into high-end flats. This plan did not work and now there today there are old buildings covered in graffiti and a whole network of artists who come there to paint. The community that currently occupies that land has a contract with the owner to keep up with the land and essentially prevent squatters from overtaking the area. In return the owner allows for artists to come there and paint their work. This contract between the owner and artists creates a community as Ledingham talked about in his article. The artists look out for each other and promote each other’s work. Our tour guide told us we couldn’t take pictures of any artists working because of the legal ramifications. They even maintain the property so that they can work and people can tour there. This trust between the owner and artists, and between the artists gives the artists a sense of community.

The artist’s experience a sense of community, but I do not believe a space like this would be possible in the United States. The government in the United States would not allow for artists to work on old government buildings, however, I do believe our government would allow for a similar arrangement in different circumstances. I think they would allow for an owner of a property to promote art in this manner, but I don’t believe they would allow this to happen on former government grounds. If this were allowed, I believe we would see art from a different viewpoint. In Teufelsberg, a lot of the art was anti American and anti war. I think in America you would see a different form of art that is not as anti American.

The owners of Teufelsberg clearly have a unique agreement with the workers to allow for this to continue, but as our guide mentioned, graffiti is outlawed everywhere else. Our guide also talked about the reasoning behind the contract with the owner was to maintain the land as well keep up with some form of security. In return the owner allows for the workers to continue their artwork.  I think the owners will continue to allow this agreement to continue as long as the property is not sold. Outside of the property though the government has placed restrictions on what the artists can and cannot do. Overall I believe the community put in place will allow for this artist’s haven to continue in the long run, but only to those a part of this community.  

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Week 4 Prompt 3

3. Metropolis present a dystopic, unequal society in which technology is used to control the masses. Pick a scene from the movie and compare it to a technology you observe in Berlin.

Throughout the movie Metropolis, the leader of this society uses a variety of the methods to try and control the masses. One specific example I found fascinating was a scene where the leader and his scientist created a robotic human. The leader then uses this robotic human, who happens to resemble the leader of the resistance movement, to manipulate the workers to destroy the city. In destroying the city the workers would end up killing not only there self, but also their families as well. This is related to the television and the computer that had all sorts of capabilities at Autostadt. This relates to the television because the television is also a medium that world leaders now use to control the masses. In some cases, leaders can control exactly what and when something is printed to be able to reach a target audience. The message over time will change how people think and in some cases lead to drastic events occurring, as we have seen ever since the invention of the television. In the movie, since televisions did not exist at the time they used this robot girl to control the masses. The computer relates to this because computers are another medium in which world leaders control the masses. Leaders have the resources to be able to watch what people do, and also control to an extent what can and cannot be seen. I found it fascinating that in a way, world leaders send messages to try and convince us to take action for certain causes, which is the same idea Metropolis tried to convey. The movie gave us an idea of what people believed could happen in the future, and I can only imagine what people believe about our future today.

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Prompt 2: Capture an advertisement that you think would be ineffective in the U.S. Tell me why it would be ineffective, and then describe how you might do it differently for a U.S. market. Post a photo of the advertisement so that your classmates and I can see what you're referring to.

The advertisement you see above is an ad I saw in Tübingen and at first I believed the ad was for mountain biking but after close examination of the photo I realized that it was actually advertising the sunglasses in this ad. This is an example of poor advertising because it makes it difficult to tell what product they are trying to advertise. At first, I believed it was an ad for mountain bikes, but then I realized it was an ad for sunglasses. This makes this advertisement extremely ineffective due to the fact that it does not give the viewer a complete understanding of what they are advertising. If I were to change this ad for the US market, I would make it so the sunglasses are center stage in the picture. The picture will have the person doing something that does not involve another product like a bike, so that it will avoid further confusion. This will allow for the consumer to truly grasp what the advertisement is trying to convey. I would also change the slogan because it seemed like it is more tailor made for other products. I would make the slogan encompass the durability of the glasses, as well as the style of the glasses. This will allow for the US market to truly understand that these are durable, stylish, and unique glasses that people should go and purchase. Overall I believe this ad was not only ineffective for America but also ineffective in Germany as well.

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Week 4 Prompt 2

2. Find an example at Autostadt that illustrates a quote from the Carrabine and Longhurst reading. How is VW making meaning about automotive consumption? What appeals do they make to youth culture – or not?

Autostadt is a revolutionary new automotive design company that specializes in the making of various different cars like Volkswagen, Lamborghinis, and Bugatti’s. Autostadt is designed to invoke excitement from the visitors as you can experience things like sitting in a brand new Porsche or feeling what its like to be in a Lamborghini. People believe these cars are top of the line cars and after visiting there I can see why, but after reading Carrabine and Longhurst’s article I realized that our media may play a part in why we believe these cars are so great. In the article it says this, “television, has relatively quickly in Western societies become more integrated into the routines of everyday life and, what is more, that our sense of security is maintained by the familiar routines of everyday life,” (pg. 186) This demonstrates that many people view television everyday and come to feel a comfort with things they see on TV all the time such as nicer cars. VW gives automotive consumption meaning through all the exhibits you can tour in your time there. This gives the consumer a comfort knowing what its like to sit in Audi and Porsches and, therefore, give the consumer meaning for the car. For example, I never thought I would want to by a Porsche until I saw them up close and were able to sit in them. I now want to purchase one because I now have some sort of meaning associated with the car. Autostadt also makes appeals directly to youth culture by showing the flashiest, most powerful cars. We are exposed to these types of cars through television and other media platforms, which make us already desire the cars in some way. The fact that we can experience the cars in the manner, which we did allowed for us to desire the car even further. They also even put like a Chrome Bugatti in an exhibit to show how shiny and cool the cars would look. I believe this directly targeted the youth culture.

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Prompt 1: How can cultural stereotypes hinder cross-cultural or international public relations? How is culture a factor in managing international PR? Find a person not from the U.S. (on the street or at a restaurant... somewhere outside the hotel) and ask them for one stereotype about people from the U.S.; ask their permission to audio or video record them answering the question - post the audio/video here. Open by explaining you're students and it's a class project, people are usually okay with it. A script I've found effective: "Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie Englisch? I am a student from the U.S. trying to learn about how people view the U.S. May I record you answering a question for me?"

Today while we explored the land of cars known as autosadt, I met the person you see above. I was not able to get his name, but I was able to give me a common stereotype that people think of when America comes to mind. As you can here in the video he talks about how we approached him and were willing to ask questions that a normal German would not ask. He first asked if we were Americans our self, so I think this effected his answer in some ways. After the video was over he did make a little conversation, and said that its reasons like this why the world views Americans in a negative manner. It was almost like he already hated Americans and we gave him more reasons too. This is one aspect that hinders cross-cultural relations is the cultural differences. In America, its almost normal to get asked these sort of questions where as here in Germany, people get almost offended that we approached them and essentially asked for them to describe us. This definitely serves as a barrier in international PR because what is acceptable in one culture might not be acceptable in others. I believe that if we had gotten to know him first then asked the question then the answer would have been a little more honest on camera.

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1. As we have discussed, there are many sciences and technologies involved in athletics. These sciences and technologies may or may not be communicated for various reasons. Briefly compare what each of the following governmental bodies were trying to communicate about sports science and technology, and to what public(s).- Nazi Reich and Olympia Stadium - Citystate of Berlin and the Füchse handball game, East Germany and the Olympics. Use the Olympia movie, stadium tour, and Dimeo reading to support your posts.

      During our time in Germany we have explored places like Olympia stadium, the handball game, and the Mercedes-Benzes arena. When Olympia Stadium was originally built, its massive size was used to demonstrate how the Third Reich wanted to tower over the competition. The German Reich used this same approach when they mandated each of their athletes to take steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. They wanted to show that their athletes were the superior race compared to the competition and used this method to further this ideal. This conveyed two important messages: one that the German Reich believed their athletes weren’t already better than the competition and two, that had good reason to believe this. This led them to implement their doping policy to try and create this advantage.        As doping used to be the policy in Germany, now it is outlawed by most leagues. The city of Berlin owns the Füchese handball team and supported outlawing this practice. More importantly the science behind the stadium and the ways it is used today is better suited to help the players and community. The design of the stadium was clearly to attract fans and make them want to come to the games. The court itself was also designed to give the players the best surface possible to play the game and not succumb to injuries.        East Germany, or the Soviet Union, used the Olympics in a similar manner to the third Reich. They tried to use the Olympics as a platform to show their dominance of the world. The USSR was known for giving their athletes steroids and not giving the athlete a choice in the matter. These steroids led to many side effects and in some cases even death. The USSR still gave their athletes steroids anyways and used this science to get ahead of the competition. This was evident in our reading when Dimeo says this, “It has been claimed that the GDR cheated its way to success, damaged the health of numerous athletes and left a legacy of cynicism around elite international sport.” This obviously shows that doping was a huge issue in sports then and as we know from sports today it still is a common issue.

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3. Automobilities Ask a stranger in Berlin about their favorite type of car or driving activity/experience/memory. Post a short video of this discussion. Find a quote in Featherstone and explain how it relates it to the response of your interviewee. The quote can support the interviewee, disagree with them, or be a mixture of both. Your job is to articulate a connection between the reading and your interviewee’s response. NOTE: This will be much easier if you read Featherstone BEFORE you conduct your interview.

        As you can see above we decided to interview Anest. At first he was reluctant to do the interview, but after some convincing he allowed us to interview him. We asked him what his favorite car first and as you can here in the video he really liked the Mercedes G- Wagon. It took him a little bit to decide on which car was his favorite car was but eventually he chose this car because he said he really like the design of the car and he also liked the feel of it. The second question we asked was what he favorite car experience, and he said he got to test-drive a Ferrari. It also took him a second to be able to come up with that answer but he quickly realized how that was his top experience.          The video leaves out some of the other things he talked about like how fed up he is with how long it takes him to get too work every morning. This relates to Featherstone’s article because he talks about how difficult it is to determine how long it should take to get from point A to point B. Featherstone talks about a tentative definition for traffic jams when he says this, “With the increase in traffic volume, as complexity theory suggests, a small fluctuation, can produce large disruptive effects which move across the system of traffic in ways which are difficult to predict.” (Featherstone 2) Anest and I both talked about how annoying it is when people slow down to look at accidents for no reason. This supports the theory talked about earlier.              Featherstone also talked about traffic accidents and how it is estimated that 1.2 million people are now killed in road crashes every year. That number is extremely high and it leads to more and more traffic jams every year. I also found it interesting how Featherstone talked about the difference in car cultures. Anest thought it was cool that he got to drive a Ferrari, whereas, in Germany it would not be seen as cool as it is in the states. Overall I think Featherstone pointed out some good points about traffic accidents and cultural differences as Anest also pointed out.

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Prompt 3 (extended): We visit Sachsenhausen this week. The holocaust undeniably was a crisis, and created a series of cascading crises for Germany, Europe, and the world over the following months and years. Thinking about the Guth reading, how does Sachsenhausen function as a response to that crisis? How does the organization utilize Sachsenhausen (and museums/memorials like it) to pursue healing, restoration, and a prospective vision for the future with the various publics affected by the holocaust? Make specific connections to both the Guth reading and the ECC (Effective Crisis Comm) reading - again, quotes are a good way to do this.

      During this week we visited Sachsenhausen, which is the site of one of the most horrific crimes in recent memories. Sachesenhausen is a concentration camp where it is estimated that over 2 million people came there to work. When you first walk into the grounds of the concentration camp you see a sign that when translated into English means “work will set you free.” Originally the prisoners believed they could eventually work their way to freedom, but as we have learned in history the only freedom they were working towards was death. This led to one of the biggest crisis we have seen to this point.  In Goth’s article, he defines crisis as, “characterized by surprise, high threat to important values, and a short decision time.” (Pg. 125) As you can see by this definition given the Holocaust was a surprise, threatened the world’s value system, and gave people a short decision time to decide how to react to this tragedy.        This crisis forced the world to realize what us as human beings are capable of and that things can get out of hand if the world does not pay attention to things occurring. This led Germany and the world to have to manage the biggest crisis experienced in the modern era. Sachsenhausen’s function is to help mitigate this crisis through various channels. One way they do this is by simply having it there to serve as a reminder of what humans are capable of. This hopefully will help prevent future situations like this one from occurring. Another function of Sachsenhausen is to acknowledge and educate the public about some key facts in its history. It accomplishes this goal by having a museum on its grounds to show the people some of the horrors of the Holocaust. The grounds also have a memorial for the former prisoners of the concentration camp, but as you can see by the picture above there is only one color of triangles on the memorial. These colored badges were used to identify the type of prisoner in the camp and the ones you see were for political prisoners. These are the only ones due to the fact that when the camp was liberated it fell into the East Germany side, which was controlled by the Soviet Union. They commissioned this memorial to be put up, and as you can see they only honored the political prisoners since the majority of Soviets in the camp were political prisoners.         Sachsenhausen has various memorials and museums on their grounds, but I found it particularly interesting that when we asked our tour guide about how the people in the community think about what happened and she replied by saying that the majority of people acknowledge a wrong doing occurred. This acknowledgement allows for the people to be able to move on as well as they can and not dwell on this monstrosity. I also thought it was interesting that during the 1930-1940s when the camp still operated, the community around the camp had very mixed reactions to the camp. Some of the people would meet the prisoners at the train station and throw rocks at them while others would leave bread out and other things for the prisoners. This camp has a unique way of interacting with its community by admitting what happened and educating its people on the horrors that occurred. Overall Sachsenhausen serves as a great crisis management tool through the way it interacts with its own community, and with other people around the world.

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Prompt 2: Luke Lalor from AlphaPool Content Marketing is coming to talk with us about his firm and what they do. For this post, you need to take careful notes during Luke's talk so that you can go out this week and find an example of something he discusses. Specifically, you need to identify a concept he discusses, then find an example of that practice (1) done well, and (2) done poorly.

Yesterday the executive producer of Alpha Pool, Luke Lalor, came and discussed a few key aspects of his company and what his job entails. He talked about how Alpha Pool is not a public reputation firm, but actually a branded editorial firm. I thought Alpha Pool was unique in the way that if the branded editorial that the firm produces does not work in the way they think it will, then the client is not required to pay. Most companies obviously would want to get paid regardless if the ad works or not. This allowed for them to truly guarantee their work because they would not accept the job if they did not believe is was possible to do. One aspect Alpha Pool uses to measure an advertisements success is to measure the scope of the audience reached by their branded editorial. For example, yesterday he talked about how one of his recent jobs managed to reach around 8 million people in one way or the other. As you can see in the picture above, it is a picture of a bus advertising for the basketball league in Germany and gives people a way to gather more information through their website. I thought this was a good way to be able to reach a large amount of citizens living in the area. This allowed for the maximum number of their target audience to at least see their ad. The second picture above is of an advertisement we passed by in Tübingen. I thought this was a poor form of advertising because it is stationary and I believe that most people would just walk by and not even notice this ad. I doubt even our entire class noticed this advertisement as we passed it. This was not an effective way for the company to reach their target audience. Alpha Pool is a very unique branded editorial firm, which allows them to stand out in the market, and to be able to produce the best work for the client. 

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2. At the Museum of Medical History Choose a quote from the Habermas encyclopedia article. Explain in your own words what this quote means. Apply this quote to a health science or technology, from any time period, you observe at the museum. Why does this science or technology need a public sphere to debate and discuss it? How it it an issue of relevance to the quality functioning of a democratic society? What is a contemporary health technology or science being debated in American public sphere(s)?

In Habermas encyclopedia article, the quote I found most applicable to the medical museum is, “A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.” At the beginning of our tour, our tour guide gave us a brief history of the museum and how it used to be used as a massive hospital during the 19th and early 20th century. One of the things that stood out to me is how they used to have seminars where surgeons, military personnel, and other people who could afford it to basically dissect a human being. This blew my mind, as they would all watch these surgeons dissect and collect different parts of the human body. It was estimated that at one point they had collected pieces from over 200 humans. This is clearly an example of a medical science by the way everyone is trying to gain knowledge about the human anatomy. The public sphere here is the group of individuals that met up to form a public for the surgeons performing the operation. In the 19th century, it was considered a crime to dissect already dead human beings due to the idea that they were “desecrating their soul” instead of preserving their spirit. This is why this public had to meet in this manner to discuss the findings of these operations.  I do not believe this issue was relevant to the quality functioning of a democratic society. Today a contemporary health science being discussed is vaccines. Some people do not believe in vaccines for one reason or the other, where other people believe it is in the public’s best interest for everyone to be vaccinated. These two sides to the argument create two forms of a public sphere.

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Prompt 1:Capture an image from the portion of the BMW Motorcycle factory where we’re allowed to have photos – anything you like (something cool, obviously). Discuss the concept of communicating/connecting with internal & external stakeholders, and how this tour accomplishes both of those things (refer to the entire tour and to things we learn from the tour guide and the promo videos). Draw specific connections to the Zerfass reading - quotes w/ page numbers are a good way to do this.

Throughout our tour of the BMW manufacturing plant, our tour guide gave us a basic rundown of how the plant worked and some of the markets they were in. He gave examples such as telling us the bikes final destination as well as letting us know the main target audience of BMW. The company is worldwide, however, the company has not forgotten where it originated as some companies do. This concept was discussed in Zerfass’s article when he says this, “A main challenge is the ability to make some cross-company priorities for communication and avoid getting lost in that everything is local.”(Zerfass p789) Our tour guide repeatedly said that the majority of their customers reside in Germany. The picture above is of the company’s sales growth over the past year in four different countries. This slide clearly is used to try and show potential investors, or external stakeholders, how well the company has been doing to try and coerce an investment. The company used a variety of commercials and brochures during our tour of the communications center. This suggested that the company was attempting to sell us on how great their bikes were and attempt to convince us to buy their bikes.   BMW also takes various measures to make sure that its employees, or internal stakeholders, are happy. One way they accomplish this goal is by giving each employee a pair of steel toed shoes as well as putting rubber matting down to help prevent injuries in the long run. The company also has a policy that if an employee comes up with an idea to save the company money then the employee will receive a percentage of the savings. BMW also gives the employees a 25% discount on BMW products, which is higher than most companies give employees. All these measures the company takes are to ensure that their employees are happy so that they will do the best work they possibly can.

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1. At the DDR (aka GDR: German Democratic Republic, East Germany) Museum: – Find an example of communication ABOUT a science or technology from the era of the DDR. This is not the museum communicating about sci/tech, but a communication from the time period of the DDR in which the topic of the public communication is a science or technology. What is the topic? What is the medium? (E.g., Waiting for the telephone to ring, as described in an East German pop song). - How was does this example part of daily life in the socialist state of East Germany? How do you think this similar to and/or different from daily life in West Germany, Germany today, or the USA Today?

As you can see by the example above, the picture is of an old advertisement of a camping set that includes a grill, shovel, and pans in the set. The way the advertisement is set up leads me to believe that it either was run in a newspaper or in a brochure. The picture here is obviously attempting to show a guy wearing bright red shirt, looking happy while using the equipment. This advertisement is very similar to the other ads I experienced throughout the museum. Whenever I think about the Soviet Union, I think about a grey almost dystopian society. The Soviets obviously felt people viewed the country in the same way because the majority of their ads and propaganda included bright colors that make people look happy. This was to send a message to people living there, that some people were happy with the way society operates during that time. This is clearly an example of a family activity that would promote the idea of people being happy living in East Berlin in that time. This relates to the daily life of the people their through the idea of Soviet Union trying to promote the same ideal of people being happy. I believe that advertisements in the United States and Germany today try to use this same technique by using bright colors to try and show how happy people are using their products, however, I think that the Soviet Union had a different intent by their advertisements. The USA and Germany are not trying to convince people that their countries are great to live in as the majority of the Soviet Union ads were trying to accomplish.

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3. Choose a useful or informative quote about advertising or social media from the Jaganathan or Okazaki readings. In Stuttgart, Schwäbisch Hall,or Tübingen find an example of advertising for health, sport, or automotive sciences or technologies and relate it to your chosen quote. How does it demonstrate—or not—the ideas in your quote? In other words, this could be a successful or unsuccessful example of the quote.

     Throughout Okazaki’s reading, I learned a great deal about how companies use the idea of Argumentation to try and illustrate a point to the consumer. He talks about how argumentation begins by articulating a claim and then essentially proving the claim with data that supports the claim. This data can come in the form of experience, statistics, or occurrences. He then talks about the warrant, which he defines as, “the hypothetical statement or justification, which upholds the claim and data of the advert.”  He then uses the example of luxury cars because the producers claim the consumer should chose their cars because of various data that is used to strengthen their claim.      As you can see, the above picture is of the Morris Garage (MG) logo on front of one of their older models we saw at the Tübingen museum. This logo is an example of why people chose the car. The logo gives the consumer the comfort of knowing that the luxury car they just purchased is a quality car. This is an example of warrants, as Okazaki talked about during his reading.  The consumer gets this comfort through a variety of reasons, which include certain data that further strengthens the claim of the company that their car is designed better than say Ferrari or Porsche. This notion, however, is dependent on the linguistic information presented to the buyer before they actually purchase the car.      This is successful example of the quote, but the second picture is of an old advertisement of cigarettes also found at the Tübingen museum. As you can see, it is a picture of a cartoon character holding a box of Cigarettes. This advertisement obviously did not work due to the fact that the company no longer exists. This advertising campaign also did not work due to the fact that there was no data to support the companies claim that their cigarettes were better than their competitions. The quality of the companies cigarette did not justify the data presented, so this violate the whole idea of warrants as presented in Okazaki’s work. As you can see from the examples presented here, it is very important to have some sort of data to help support the companies claim that their products are better than the competition’s.

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Prompt 3 (extended): Pick a concept from the chapter 14 reading on cross-cultural communication and PR that you have seen exemplified during our time here so far. Perhaps at a cafe you've witnessed differences in how space is used (Proxemics). Maybe on a weekend trip you've seen ways that people from some countries view time differently than we tend to (Chronemics). Or perhaps you've seen a really clever ad that bridges cultural/linguistic boundaries. Post a photo or video, and explain how it captures or illustrates the concept you choose.

     During our time in Germany, we have seen various cultural differences that many of us have not previously seen before. One clear example to me has been the Chronemics of the people in Germany. Many of our tour guides have mentioned that Germans are very punctual meaning that if they set a time to do something then that is the exact time they will do it. One example of this is when we were on the Bosch tour. Our guide was stressing out to make sure we were in certain spots at certain times. This was evident through the fact he only allowed 1 or 2 questions after each stop we made in the plant. In our reading it talks about how in general, Japan and the Western European countries had the fastest time-oriented pace of life, whereas, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East all had the slowest pace of life.      In this same study just mentioned, the United States were ranked 16th in terms of time-oriented pace of life and Germany was ranked third behind only Switzerland and Ireland. Mexico ranked number 31 in this study, which is the last country listed. This study takes into account walking speed, postal speed, and clock accuracy. As you can see by my picture, it is a picture of a clock located in Munich. I gathered this information from this pdf file http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Levine%26Norenzayan%20POL.pdf and the information is located on page 13 in the file. I chose this picture to symbolize the aspect of time in the different cultures around the world. I know from my time in Spain that when our tour guides gave us a certain time to show up for our tour, they would always show up 30 minutes to an hour late, whereas, here in Germany if we show up even 10 minutes late we risk not making our tour.      Another aspect I have noticed about Germany is how serious the country takes religion. For example, on Sundays here in Germany most stores and shops are closed and the reason most are closed is because the majority of people here are Muslim or Christians and in both religions Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. In the United States, as most of us know, most stores and restaurants remain open. Most places in the United States are not allowed to open until around noon, but they still remain open. The textbook talks about how Muslims get angered by an image of Muhammad is portrayed in the media, whereas, Christians do not get angered by images of Jesus. The second picture above is one of the closed restaurants on Sunday. I used this to show how the majority of places are closed on Sunday’s as mentioned before.

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Prompt 2: Guth and Marsh give us this definition of propaganda: “The attempt to have a viewpoint accepted at the exclusion of all others” (p. 66). Find an advertisement that can reasonably be defined as propaganda - post a photo/video of it - and explain why this fits the definition. [Update with unexpected parliament visit] Do you see examples of propaganda on our parliament tour? How does propaganda play into the way that governments manage relationships with their publics? (Note again that propaganda here is the definition presented by Guth and Marsh - be sure to refer back to ch. 3)

During our time at the museum in Tubingen, I saw many examples of old forms of propaganda. The example I have chosen here is an old advertisement for the HB cigarettes. This advertisement can be considered propaganda due to the fact that they were claiming that their cigarettes were better than all other cigarettes regardless of what you thought about other cigarettes. The managers of this company clearly believed their product was better regardless of what other people believed about their cigarettes or other company’s cigarettes. During Guth’s reading, Guth talks about how managers usually are wrong when talking about how interested the public is in their product, which is evident when he says this, “ In one study, 96 percent of the responding practitioners said they either ‘(strongly disagree” or “disagree” with the notion that the public interest is what management says it is.” This clearly shows that what management believes may not directly correspond to what the general consensus about their product is. While we toured Stuttgart’s parliament we did not come across any forms of propaganda. This is interesting due to the fact that most places you come across today have some form of advertisements or propaganda. I believe this was done on purpose to ensure that the members of the parliament would still have their own ideals and not be swayed by advertisements. The government here was clearly trying to remain as neutral as it could in terms of trying to convert people to one political party or the other.

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Prompt 2: Choose one of the common issues in miscommunication of science and technology that Sarah discussed with you. Find an example of it in Stuttgart, Schwäbisch Hall or Tübingen. Explain clearly and in detail how it exemplifies this kind of miscommunication. Relate it to one of the readings (Stobbe, Nebel or Sun): How is your example similar to or different from one of the examples from a reading?

During our tour of Africom, we got to listen to a number of speakers talk about how the organization operates, some of the missions they are involved with, and how women are treated throughout the organization.  Our speaker, Corey, talked about some of the difficulties she has seen and experienced being a woman in a predominately male organization. She talked about how she has to give her briefs in a very direct manner because if she even has one joke incorporated in her brief then the men there would automatically write her off as not being as competent. This is a clear example of denialism, which is when there is evidence something has occurred but the person or organization is so stuck in their way of thinking that they refuse to accept the new conclusion. She talked about how she is working to educate other members of Africom on the issues of women in the armed forces but some of these members were not receptive to the information she was presenting. This goes against what Stobbe said in the reading about how “The problem comes when we incorrectly assume that two characteristics connected to each other are “causally” related. In other words, one of the characteristics is responsible at least in part for the other one.” Here there is clearly a correlation between women not being well respected purely because of the fact that they are women. This implies that one directly correlates to the other, which in this instance is what is going on. For example, Corey was the only one employed at Africom to educate on these issues, which implies that the organization does not take problems associated with women in the armed forces as seriously as other organizations. She also gave some examples of how women have been mistreated and when these issues were brought up to management of the company, they did little to fix the issue. The science they are refusing to accept is the knowledge Corey gives about issues associated with being a woman in the workforce. 

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On our trip to Schwabisch hall, find one example each of transmission and ritual communication. Explain how it fits either the transmission or ritual model of communication: What information is being transmitted? What social group is being ritualistically created and maintained? Remember these are not 100% mutually exclusive categories. A communicative act can have both transmission and ritualistic dimensions.

Today we visited Schwabisch hall, where the Farmer Producer Association is located, and there we experienced various forms of communication. One form of communication was the advertisements we saw in the brochures as well as in the offices. These were examples of transmission communication through the way it directly contacts its market. In this contact they are trying to communicate the importance of 100% organic farming and the importance of fellow farmers helping each other out. We also heard various stories about actions taken by the chairman, Rudolph Burlich, like him walking with his heard of pigs every October to the butchers. He believes that sending the pigs with a friendly face allows for the pigs to remain calm and prevents other hormones from getting into the fat of the pig. He also has taken multiple trips to other countries to try and establish personal relationships with the people. He believes talking to the farmers on an eye-to-eye level allows for mutual respect and helps further the cause of the organization. These both are examples of ritualistic communication through the fact that his actions show what he is trying to communicate to the other farmers. Since he is trying to attract other farmers to his organization, he essentially creates a social group of farmers who all have the same goal in mind. This common goal allows for the group to maintain its members while also growing at the same time.