Mediaboss Marketing

Azly Rahman

Thinking of the still missing Malaysian airplane, contemplating on a Marxist theory of informational diffusion, I came up with these random notes on media oligopoly I am sharing in this weeks column:

Information wants to be free and wishes to leave the shackle of control and the kingdom of officialdom.

Marx once said that whoever owns the means of production owns/controls (re: Vladimir Lenins classic essay on commanding heights,) and control the production of consciousness, and further controls the evolution of the act of knowing and the contents of what is to be known because what is known is produced as artifacts with politics of control structuring them.

CNN, the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, Time-Warner AOL, and media corporations controls the production of what is to be known, albeit appearing to be producing objectivity hidden under the shibboleth of liberal-democracy whilst in essence governed by the hegemony of the tightly-controlled news and informational oligarchic empire of consciousness-production.

This might sound like a (Noam) Chomskyian analysis of the post-modern, post-information age paradigm of media production re: the reporting of the missing MH370. It could as well be a Chomskyian view in need of a further work of deconstructionism.

There are classes of control of knowledge-production and those producing information in the ongoing reporting of MH370.

Those who know the whereabouts of the aircraft, such as leaders of the game, such as presidents and prime ministers playing the role of chief-of-staff of armed forces, etc. in collaboration with the warrior-commander-Kshatriya class and the most elite of the intelligence unit and working in tandem and alliance with military and supra-intelligence allies, the secret must be kept (from Edward Snowden (right) or Julian Assange) as long as the national and international security is safeguarded the plot must be kept intact and the show must go on

Those who know the unsealed part of the story and will be playing the role of making sure the world and the public knows whats happening, in the name of freedom to know and freedom to profit from conflict or even the manufacture of conflict. The philosophy of news-reporting is simple: live and breathe the paradigm of liberal-capitalist informational democracy through sound-bite and blitzkrieg- technologies of cognitive dissonance and funnel in as much as possible issues versus non-issues and speculations and half-truths to feed the four-eyed viewers who are starved for information and drowned in speculations.

Thats the role of the media, whether in America or in Malaysia. The longer one gets glued to the TV, the higher the ratings, the more big advertisers will pour in money.

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Of Marxist media theory and MH370

Media accreditation now is open for U.S. and international news media interested in covering the launch of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California -- the second of NASA's five Earth science missions to launch in 2014.

OCO-2 is scheduled to launch at 2:56 a.m. PDT July 1 from Space Launch Complex 2 on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. U.S. Air Force policy requires that international media apply for accreditation at least 30 days before the launch.

News media should contact TSgt Vincent Mouzon in writing at 30th Space Wing Public Affairs Office, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., 93437; by phone at 805-606-3595; by fax at 805-606-4571; or by email atvincent.mouzon@us.af.mil.

International media are required to submit full legal name, date of birth, nationality, passport number and media affiliation. Information required for U.S. media includes full legal name, date of birth and media affiliation. A valid legal form of photo identification will be required upon arrival at Vandenberg.

OCO-2 is NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most significant human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change on Earth. OCO-2 will provide a new tool for understanding the human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions and the natural "sinks" that absorb carbon dioxide and help control its buildup. It will map the global geographic distribution of these sources and sinks and study their changes over time.

The OCO-2 project is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The agency's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for management of the launch vehicle program for the United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket.

For more information about the OCO-2 mission, visit:

http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014, visit:

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Media Accreditation Now Open for Launch of OCO-2 Earth Science Mission

Cambodian Police Beat Back Protests for TV License
Prime Minister Hun Sen #39;s government maintains tight media control.

By: RFAVideo

Excerpt from:
Cambodian Police Beat Back Protests for TV License - Video

Senate report: CIA has been lying about torture
The CIA has been misleading Congress and the public about its interrogation practices for years, according to The Washington Post. Post reporters spoke with ...

By: worldnewsstoday

Read more:
Senate report: CIA has been lying about torture - Video

Social media marketing firms Spredfast and Mass Relevance announced a merger today. Spredfast, whose CEO Rod Favaron will lead the joint company, helps brands manage their social content and plan engagement with their fans and followers.

Mass Relevance is a firm that helps brands curate social media content and display it on TV and on screens out of home. Mass Relevance recently committed to displaying strictly Twitter content on major network broadcasts, a deal that speaks to the social media rivalry for control of the TV.

We built Mass Relevance to connect relevant conversations from social networks and fuse them into a customer's brand story, CEO Sam Decker said in a press release today.

The companies shared an investor in Austin Ventures. The merged company will retain the Spredfast name.

The social media management space has been in consolidation mode with firms uniting to offer all the monitoring, activity and data needs in one place for advertisers. In another example, Sprinklr bought Dachis Group earlier this year.

Last month, Google shut down Wildfire, a social management platform that left a number of brands looking for new partners to help store troves of consumer data, which they harvest during digital marketing campaigns.

Brands increasingly need to take control of their social channels, which are ever changing and sometimes throwing up challenges, such as Facebooks evolving News Feed, which now limits the spread of unpaid messages.

The social media technology companies help brands manage the data about fans and followers in ways that make advertisers less beholden to a single channel to reach consumers.

Spredfast and Mass Relevance have worked with brands, including AT&T, Target, Whole Foods, Pepsi, GE, Campbells, Warner Bros. and Walgreens.

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Spredfast, Mass Relevance Unite Social Marketing Systems