Richard Maxwell

Picturing the Audience

The story goes something like this: The average TV viewer wakes. She drives. She works. She drives some more. She buys things. Back home, she works some more, except this time she can’t buy things as a result of her labors. And then, if she has the time, this 18-to-49-year-old white woman rests—by watching TV shows about other people working (while gathering data on the things she will buy tomorrow). (P. 35)

Ethics and identity in global market research

Abstract The commercial process that matches global goods and services to local tastes demands knowledge, and hence surveillance, of cultural differences and identities. This article focuses on the strategic position held by market research within the global infrastructure of consumption and confronts the ethical problematic arising from the encounter between research interviewers and people. O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. (Psalm 139)

The Propaganda Machine Behind the Controversy Over Climate Science Can You Spot the Lie in This Title

The essay examines various communication strategies for advocating acceptance of climate science in the face of psychological and ideological impediments. It surveys some key literature, offers case studies of Lego, Shell, Greenpeace, Edelman, and public relations, and culminates with a hortatory logic based on the recent Papal encyclical. The focus is on issues pertaining to the United States but with examples and ideas from elsewhere.

Our dirty love affair with technology

It is time to recognise that the digital economy is a nlarge-scale contributor to ecological damage.

Honor among Patriots

On14November 2001, CNN showed a long, unedited part of Dick Cheney’s speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in which he rehearsed all the reasons that the White House “economic stimulus” package, and its twin bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate, was the right legislation to help make America “great” again after 9-11. Glossing over the legislation’s details, the vice president continued the administration’s policy of keeping Americans in the dark about the stimulus plan’s blueprint for the corporate plunder of the U.S. treasury. Although not “inflammatory” in the way Al Jazeera’s unedited replays of Al Qaeda messages were said to be, CNN’s frame on the “stimulus package” left the looming question of war profiteering well secreted from public view. Indeed, the networks’ blinkered coverage of this plan may be doing more to damage Americans’ understanding of post-9-11 U.S. policy than Taliban or Al Qaeda propaganda. The Bush administration first announced the proposal as part of a post9-11 assistance package for unemployed workers, later adding tax cuts as the primary feature of economic aid for America. On 23 October, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a version of this stimulus legislation, which included a

Global Hollywood 2

25 billion tax rebate for a handful of major multinational corporations (MNCs) as well as provisions for greater use of offshore tax shelters by MNCs. The Senate is currently deliberating on the final version. At this point, Senate Republicans have embraced the administration’s tax-