Arab Media Revolution - The War of Ideas
"America has never been less influential, and nobody needs to understand that more than Americans."
-from Frontline World, "News War"
According to Greg Barker, the U.S. State Department has 30,000 employees, of that only twenty are fluent in Arabic and another 150 conversant. Television is as much entertainment as it is a weapon, and television networks complete for market share as much as they compete for political influence.
Assuming the trend toward long tail marketing comes about, effecting the growth of a plethora of content niches and fluid distribution, tell me, how will this effect the social dimension and disruptive factional power of art and ideas?
Lest we forget, creative content has a social impact as well as an economic value. I have always argued on this site, that media and entertainment sectors are undervalued assets in the American consciousness (both in terms of the economy and in terms of their social benefit in a global war of ideas).
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government." -Publius, Federalist No. 10, Federalist Papers
