Racial Hatred against Syrian Kurds in Opposition’s both (Political and Media) Speeches
“I have decided to stick with love. Hatred is too great a burden to bear.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Give me a media without conscience; I will give you a nation without awareness.”
Joseph Goebbels
Osman Ali: A researcher at Al-Furat Center for Studies
Al-Furat Center for Studies- Translation Department
Also Available in (Arabic)
Introduction
Qualitative transformations on the political, economic and technical levels have caused a digital revolution into Media structure in terms of performance, function and means, as it was freed from the formats of imitation and rigidity to pluralism and live activism. It was based on two basic pillars: the first one; is the freedom from Legal restrictions that restricted the media work to limited spaces by serving the political decision-makers, and the second one; is the transformation of the public into an active and participant element of the communication process. Because of having been a one-sided communication, in which the sender views the receiver in a negative and superficial way.
As a result, media plays an important role in the life of societies and in making ideology and public opinion, and this role has become more and more important with each development in media technology. Specifically, in the context of the traditional transformation of the media thesis and processing mechanism into innovation the same phenomenon in terms of the tool, coverage, and news circulation of political, economic, and social events and facts.
But this media development, despite its positive effects on the public level, and its creation of Communication revolution into the information structure and visual communication, bridging the cognitive gap amongst the strata of society to some extent; by satisfying the needs of the individual for news, education and entertainment. However, it was accompanied by new media methods to mislead the public opinion and take the content out of its natural context based on the agendas of the powers and blocs. They use the media window to undermine each opinion opposing its orientations (an individual or a group), in order to portray it in a negative stereotype that harms both material and moral levels. It may sometimes result into systematic campaigns of extermination and displacement against certain races, sects and regions, as in the experiences of Islamic State (ISIS), an extremist religious group around the globe, after framing the picture, the news, and its ideologization of the content by an explanation that stimulates violence and excessive hatred.
News services were stripped of the parameters of the ethical and professional system; due to the implantation of extraneous beliefs and values, in which the recipient personality crystallizes in line with the agenda of those in charge with the media, and to be replaced instead of previously stored opinions. Moreover, the images and words that are being disseminated on television screens become the foundation of mental values and images about the real world. In other words, in a more significant sense, the targeted group will gain a mass culture based on the cumulative impact due to its consistency of its watching of the visual material. This is what we call in the media the theory of (implantation i.e. Cultivation Theory, in which the long-term quantitative effect of visual material on a social category, which is subjected to three main stages (learning, construction, and dissemination). it dissolves the perceptions and concepts of society in a manner that is consistent with the sender’s tendencies and orientations.
This is clear when the violence and bloody conflict are escalated, highly influential and important political facts float on the surface, in which the conflicting parties employ the media space as an outlet and a shelter for striking civil and societal peace among individuals of the same community. Accordingly, it can be said that the media crisis has gone beyond the concept of political polarization and entrenchment, and breaking down with human rights standards, often switching to a gun for rent, the catastrophic point is that the media are mobilizing against each other, permits people’s killing, and justifying attacks and even slaughtering on them)
