A WEAPON OF MASS PERCEPTIONS PLACED IN OUR HOT SUMMER
Por Miguel Machado • 12 Ago , 2010 • Categoria: 02. OPINIÃO
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By Francisco José Leandro
Summer and especially the month of August are in terms of news the so-called silly season, the dull season or simply cucumber time. This summer is indeed faraway from the most tedious time of the year.
There was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response, the Iceland Volcanic Eruption that hampered the European air traffic, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the Pope positions on catholic sex abuses, the summer forest fires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan, the concern on the global economy, the following up regarding the raid on a Turkish ship sailing towards Gaza, and Naomi Campbell has been subpoenaed to testify at the Charles Taylor trial.
Besides all of this, two perceptions related facts, came to the public domain at the beginning of August regarding the Afghan conflict: the new counterinsurgency guidance from General David Petraeus (1) and the cover of the Time Magazine: words and images together.
Both documents are capable of reaching the heart and the feelings of enormous audiences, both documents are holding a huge potential to change perceptions, and both documents will fight in the immaterial domain, standing as valuable assets, which are bringing an immediate measurability of a distant reality of a modern battlefield.
Media holds the potential to become a weapon of mass perceptions and understanding this, both documents took the opportunity, which represents the summer time, to draw the attention to the battle, where conventional weapons are very short in terms of range and effects.
(1) Available at www.stripes.com (COMISAFs Counterinsurgency Guidance – 1 Aug 2010)
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