Cyber politics in International Relations

Cyberspace is a fact of daily life. Because of its ubiquitous nature and vast scale and scope, cyberspace including the Internet and the hundreds of millions of computers the Internet connects, the institutions that enable it, and the experiences it enables

 It has become a fundamental feature of the world we live in and has created a new reality for almost everyone in the developed world and for rapidly growing numbers of people in the developing world. Cyberspace was considered largely a matter of low politics a term used to denote background conditions and routine decisions and processes. By contrast, the matters of interest in high politics have to do with national security, core institutions, and decision systems critical to the state, its interests, and its underlying values, Nationalism, political participation, political contentions, conflict, violence, and war are among the common concerns of high politics.

 But low politics do not always remain below the surface. If the cumulative effects of normal activities shift the established dynamics of interaction, then the seemingly routine can move to the forefront of political attention. When this happens, it can propel the submerged features into the political limelight. In recent years, issues connected to cyberspace and its uses have vaulted into the highest realm of high politics. We now appreciate that cyberspace capabilities are also a source of vulnerability, posing a potential threat to national security and a disturbance of the familiar international order.

 The global, often nontransparent interconnections afforded by cyberspace have challenged the traditional understanding of leverage and influence, international relations and power politics, national security, borders, and boundaries as well as a host of other concepts and their corresponding realities. Many features of cyberspace are reshaping contemporary international relations theory, policy, and practice. Individually, each feature is at variance with our common understanding of social reality and with contemporary understandings of international relations. Jointly, they signal a powerful disconnect. Cyber politics, a recently coined term, refers to the conjunction of two processes or realities  those pertaining to human interactions ( politics ) surrounding the determination of who gets what, when, and how , and those enabled by the uses of a virtual space ( cyber) as a new arena of contention with its own modalities and realities. Despite differences in perspectives worldwide, there is a general scholarly understanding of the meaning of “politics.

It is the complexity attending the prefix cyber that distinguishes this newly constructed semantic. This book asks several questions. How can we take explicit account of cyberspace in the analysis of international relations and world politics? What are the notable patterns of cyber access and participation worldwide? What new types of international conflicts and contentions arise from activities in cyberspace? What are the new modes of international collaboration? What are alternative cyber futures? In sum, how do we address the new imperatives for international relations theory that emerge from the construction of cyberspace? Historically, the social sciences were formed into disciplines by first separating humans from nature and then separating various aspects of human activities for knowledge development. This strategy allowed detailed and focused inquiry into one sphere of human activity while ignoring others, a practice that contributed to the rapid advance of knowledge. Empirical evidence subsequently compelled us to expand beyond discrete areas to appreciate society-nature connections

Conclusively that same adjustment or transition has not yet occurred with respect to the cyber domain, however. International relations theory has yet to recognize the implications of cyberspace for the conduct of international relations, notably in relation to the pursuit of “power and wealth” (Gilpin 1987)

BY JOSHUA HELENA M

BAPRM   42571                                                                            

Hactivism

Hacktivism or hactivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is the subversive use of computers and computer networks to promote a political agenda. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to the free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.^[1]

The term was coined in 1994 by a Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) member known as "Omega" in an e-mail to the group. Due to the variety of meanings of its root words, hacktivism is sometimes ambiguous and there exists significant disagreement over the kinds of activities and purposes it encompasses. Some definitions include acts of cyberterrorism while others simply reaffirm the use of technological hacking to affect social change

Forms of hacktivism

In order to carry out their operations, hacktivists might create new tools; or integrate or use a variety of software tools readily available on the Internet. One class of hacktivist activities includes increasing the accessibility of others to take politically motivated action online.

1. Code: Software and websites can achieve political purposes. For example, the encryption software can be used to secure communications, communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications^,it seeks to keep governments open.
2. Website Mirroring: is used as a circumvention tool to bypass censorship blocks on websites. It is a technique that copies the content of a censored website and posts it to other domains and subdomains that are not censored.
3. Geo-bombing: a technique in which netizens add a geo-tag while editing YouTube videos so that the location of the video can be displayed in Google Earth.
4. Anonymous blogging: a method of speaking out to a wide audience about human rights issues, government oppression, etc. that utilizes various web tools such as free and/or disposable email accounts, IP masking, and blogging software to preserve a high level of anonymity.
5. RECAP is software that was written to 'liberate US case law' and make it freely available online. The software project takes the form of distributed document collection and archiva

Media hacking

Media hacking refers to the usage of various electronic media in an innovative or otherwise abnormal fashion for the purpose of conveying a message to as large a number of people as possible, primarily achieved via the World Wide Web.  A popular and effective means of media hacking is posting on a blog, as one is usually controlled by one or more independent individuals, uninfluenced by outside parties.

Media hacking is commonly employed for political purposes, by both political parties and political dissidents.

Mobile technology has also become subject to media hacking for political purposes. SMS has been widely used by political dissidents as a means of quickly and effectively organising smart mobs for political action. This has been most effective in the Philippines, where SMS media hacking has twice had a significant impact on whether or not the country's Presidents are elected or removed from office. The earliest known instance of hacktivism as documented by Julian Assange.
   By Mbogo Tausi
    BAPRM 42611

Impacts of technology on creative industries

Creative industries refer to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. Creative industries comprises of various things like music, radio, television, films, publishing, art, architecture etc. Creative industries are seen to have become increasingly important for the economic wellbeing, proponents suggesting that human creativity is the ultimate economic resource. The industries of the 21st century will depend on the generation of knowledge through creativity and innovation.

Creative industries are those companies or organizations which produce or use knowledge and also included are those which use advanced scientific knowledge, they are the cycles of creation, production and distribution of goods and Services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs. For example media, arts and design organizations and universities. The term creative industries also overlap with cultural industries and media industries. These include advertising, television, radio newspapers, internet publishing, magazines, book publishing, film and theatres.

Certain common features of creative industries are; They all involve the management of creativity; the production of material is dependent on individuals like writers, scriptwriters, journalist etc; the individuals are not directly employed; most of the things are outsourced and the unpredictability of sales.

The quality of a product of creative industries has two implications:

first, the consumption of a media product by one person does not mean that another person cannot consume the same product. These products are public good. Second, most creative goods especially media goods cost very little to produce and distribute to increasing numbers of consumers the internet further lowers the cost of distribution and digital technologies lowers the cost of production.

Impacts of technology on creative industries;

Technology can bring about changes in creative industries. The change is in the form of “digital convergence”, which can be of three types: technological convergence (a shift in patterns of ownership of media, such as film, television, music and games), media convergence (allowing users to consume different media at the same time using a single personal computer) and access convergence (all production and distribution Of media and services are being reengineered to work on

a distributed network platform; i.e., everything is becoming available or doable on the Internet).

Digitization creates a number of new possibilities for distribution. With digital formats, reproduction is free of degradation and incurs no extra cost per item. This opens up the possibilities for infinite expansion of markets and reduces or eliminates the need to warehouse or store products. In a digital age, however, it is potentially possible for producers

and consumers to be in direct contact, thereby bypassing the control of the gatekeepers of the distribution system, which are economically powerful .

Therefore, ICTs may play a major role in this transformation process, reducing costs, improving productivity in the value chain and making companies more visible in the global market. The impact of ICT is visible in those creative industries depending on technology at their very core (software, games, multimedia content).

   By Segesela Blandina

     BAPRM 42663

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

BY JOSHUA HELENA M

BAPRM 42571

 Creative industry refers to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries (especially in Europe (Hesmondhalgh 2002, p. 14)) or the creative economy (Howkins 2001), and most recently they have been denominated as the Orange Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean (Buitrago & Duque 2013)

Creative industries have been seen to become increasingly important to economic well-being, proponents suggesting that "human creativity is the ultimate economic resource," (Florida 2002, p. xiii) and that “the industries of the twenty-first century will depend increasingly on the generation of knowledge through creativity and innovation" (Landry & Bianchini 1995, p. 4)

 According to Caves (2000), creative industries are characterized by seven economic properties:

Nobody knows principle: Demand uncertainty exists because the consumers' reaction to a product are neither known beforehand, nor easily understood afterward.

Art for art’s sake: Workers care about originality, technical professional skill, harmony, etc. of creative goods and are willing to settle for lower wages than offered by 'humdrum' jobs.

Motley crew principle: For relatively complex creative products (e.g., films), the production requires diversely skilled inputs. Each skilled input must be present and perform at some minimum level to produce a valuable outcome.

Infinite variety: Products are differentiated by quality and uniqueness; each product is a distinct combination of inputs leading to infinite variety options (e.g., works of creative writing, whether poetry, novel, screenplays or otherwise).

A list/B list: Skills are vertically differentiated. Artists are ranked on their skills, originality, and proficiency in creative processes and/or products. Small differences in skills and talent may yield huge differences in (financial) success.

Time flies: When coordinating complex projects with diversely skilled inputs, time is of the essence.

Some creative products have durability aspects that invoke copyright protection, allowing a creator or performer to collect rents.

The properties described by Caves have been criticized for being too rigid (Towse, 2000). Not all creative workers are purely driven by 'art for art's sake'. The 'ars longa' property also holds for certain noncreative products (i.e., licensed products). The 'time flies' property also holds for large construction projects. Creative industries are therefore not unique, but they score generally higher on these properties relative to non-creative industries.

Globally, Creative Industries excluding software and general scientific research and development are said to have accounted for around 4% of the world's economic output in 1999, which is the last year for which comprehensive figures are currently available. Estimates of the output corresponding to scientific Research and Development suggest that an additional 4-9% might be attributable to the sector if its definition is extended to include such activities, though the figures vary significantly between different countries.

Taking the UK as an example, in the context of other sectors, the creative industries make a far more significant contribution to output than hospitality or utilities and deliver four times the output due to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. In terms of employment and depending on the definition of activities included, the sector is a major employer of between 4-6% of the UK's working population, though this is still significantly less than employment due to traditional areas of work such as retail and manufacturing.

Within the creative industries sector and again taking the UK as an example, the three largest sub-sectors are design, publishing, and television and radio. Together these account for around 75% of revenues and 50% of employment.

The complex supply chains in the creative industries sometimes make it challenging to calculate accurate figures for the gross value added by each sub-sector. This is particularly the case for the service-focused sub-sectors such as advertising, whereas it is more straightforward in product-focused sub-sectors such as crafts. Not surprisingly, perhaps, competition in product-focused areas tends to be more intense with a tendency to drive the production end of the supply chain to become a commodity business.

CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Corporate communication.

According to Hurt, corporate communication is a very different prospect from what was 20 years ago. Priory to the adverts of the computer in corporate life ,everything done with paper , face to face or by telephone the computer and then internet added new facets to corporate communication by allowing near instantaneous communication over long distances without the need of their being actual person at the other end. However, the core principles remain the same moving information from one place to another within the corporation or out the public arena.

     

1.      Meetings

This is the one of the method of corporate communication where by whether one- on- one or in groups, meeting are the most personal way of corporate communication within the corporate structure. They require face to face interaction, allowing the person to read facial expression and body language along with the information presented. 

2.      Telephone / Teleconferencing

This is the second method of the corporate communication, tells that while the person does face to face meetings, telephone conversation are still more personal than emails or electronic memos. Telephone conversations were once upon a time the fastest way to communicate with a person. It has since fallen by the wayside as a primary form of communication.

3.      Emails

The thirdly method is this one which is the consistent use of computer throughout the corporate world has become a large party of corporate communication structure. It is faster than a telephone conversation but doesn’t require immediate response less personal than face to face meetings though it can be close to being just between two people. Mass emails can be used to contact several people with the same information at the same time, allowing you to receive ideas from one number of resources and distance is not an issue through time zones may still be a problem.

4.      Manuals

This is the fourth one whereby corporation use manual to train and they can be of both the paper and electronic variety. They allow information to be collected in one place and kept as reference materials.

5.      Press releases.

The fifth one is exactly as the name implies, press releases both corporation’s communication with the main stream media, such as newspaper. In order to disseminate information.

6.      Websites.

This is usually used by the corporation to show the cases themselves to their clients. An interactive advertisement and information centre rolled into one, they can also allow a member of public to purchase a product or service form the company vice electronic means.

7.      Advertisement.

This comes in several different forms, though the common one is commercial. Commercial are seen every day in television and heard on the radio. Banners appear all over the internet to draw the public’s attention to the corporation. These are certainly not the only available advertisement but only a few examples.

    By Shayo Issah

Innovation

Is defined simply as a "new idea, device, or method" However, innovation is often also viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements. And being innovative does not only mean inventing. Innovation can mean changing your business model and adapting to changes in your environment to deliver better products or services. Successful innovation should be an in built part of your business strategy, where you create a culture of innovation and lead the way in innovative thinking and creative problem solving. Innovation can increase the likelihood of your business succeeding. Businesses that innovate create more efficient work processes and have better productivity and performance.

The following are the characteristics of new idea

1. Relative Advantage is the degree to which an idea or product is perceived as better than the existing standard. Just how much of an improvement is it over the previous generation, the higher the Relative Advantage, the greater the chance of adoption. Many of the most renowned works of art are heralded for the way in which they dramatically moved their genre forward. Relative Advantage is what most people think of when they visualize something being “innovative.

2. Compatibility. How easily can I use my past experience to understand how this new product functions or what this new work means, the higher the similarity with existing norms, the better the chances of adoption, Ideas and people that miss the Compatibility factor are often described as “ahead of their time

3. Simplicity is how easy it is for people to understand the new idea or use the new product. Is this idea a simple extension of logic? Is it an easy-to-use product? If the work or product is seen as highly complex or difficult to grasp, people will shy away from engaging with the product or adopting the idea, let take an example of Instagram, the app actually started as an unpopular called Burbn with the photos as an added bonus. It was only after the complexity was reduced to a single-purpose that its popularity took off. 

4. Trialability How effortless it is for the target audience to interact with the new concepts or experiment with the product, How easily can they try it out, The more potential users or patrons can test the product or view the work, the more likely individuals will adopt it, Listeners try for free and demonstrate their support afterward. The more they can try it, the less uncertainty there is around committing to it.

5. Observability is the noticeable results of trying or consuming the idea. When new products are highly visible, it drives more people to share it and increases the likelihood of mass adoption.

BY JOSHUA HELENA M

 BAPRM   42571

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Mediated interaction

Mediated interaction is a concept in communication science that describes a monological interaction between people, which is oriented towards an indefinite range of potential recipients. It involves a fundamental asymmetry between producers and receivers. Some examples of Mediated Quasi- Interaction are television, radio and newspapers and other forms of mass media.

Basic premises and approach

Mediated interaction is monologicial in character and involves the production of symbolic forms for an indefinite range of potential recipients. Mediated Quasi-Interaction creates a certain kind of social situation in which individuals are linked together in a process of communication and symbolic exchange. It is a structured situation in which some individuals are engaged primarily in producing symbolic forms for others who are not physically present, while others are involved primarily in receiving symbolic forms produced to whom they cannot respond, but with whom they can form bonds of friendship, affection or loyalty.

Mediated interaction is based on social relations established by media of mass communications^. With mass media being impossible to be genuine interactivity, Mediated quasi-interaction is simulated interaction. It is typical for the mass media to try to simulate interpersonal communication and to personalize their communication (ex. Call-ins).Another focus of Mediated Interaction is also on its space-time constitution. It is described as a separation of contexts with extended availability in time and space.

Mediated Interaction can also be combined with other interaction such as face-to-face. For example, people can sit in a room together and have a discussion while they are watching television. In a similar relation, a television program may involve face to face interaction with a panel and an audience, although the program remains primarily a form Mediated Quasi-Interaction.

History

The concept was developed by sociologist John Brookshire Thompson, a professor at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College. The concept is first documented in his book “The Rise of Mediated Interaction”, which was published in 1995 in Cambridge, UK. Thompson developed a conceptual framework for the analysis of the forms of action and interaction created by the media. He wanted to focus the types of interactional situation created by the mass media He also wanted the analytical framework to examine some of the interactional features of the social relationships established by the media. He created the concept in part of his theory of interaction. The 3 steps theory consisted of Face-to-Face interaction, Mediated Interaction and Mediated Quasi-Interaction. Face-to- people share time and space, since they are co-present and mediated interaction the sending of the message and its reception are separated in time and space.

By Mbogo Tausi

BAPRM 42611