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Silver Tongued Devil: Defamation through the Looking Glass

“Silence”, the Queen wailed condemning Alice. “Off with her head!” (Carroll 1994) Freedom of speech, the right to express oneself, and civility has always been in conflict. Transcending ritual and honour from the Middle-Ages, historically, Britain is a culture where the deeds of the individual determine the value of life. Dishonourable actions like defamation, a statement that diminishes an individual, "in the estimation of right-thinking members of society”, is now punishable by law (Sim v Stretch 1936).  Today, the United Kingdom’s modern defamation laws have been influenced by Germany idealism and Grundgesetz, or the power of the state to ameliorate itself through legislation (Jones 2012). Why is it that greater freedoms of speech are made by limiting certain forms of it, and how does this affect professionals working in the communications industry?
 In the United Kingdom, the concept of free speech is derived from Emmanuel Kant’s metaphysical Looking Glass approach to speech t…

Transcending Culture: Culture Translation in Expanding International Media Markets

Our Story
At this very moment, as your eyes glaze over the endless black letters upon the page, a story is being written. A story that transcends time, language, and culture which until now you were likely unaware to be a part of. The character you play, which you’re likely to believe is an autonomous player of free society, is actually a scripted personification of every single media exposure you’ve had since you were a child. From the first children’s fairy-tale read at bed time to you by your mother, to your daily thumbing of the daily news and gossip, to the superhero you idolized in the lasted blockbuster film, we create our own realities from the stories, both fictionalized and real, that we’re told everyday of our lives. How do media outlets expand their story within the global marketplace? How do we sell our brands and our media across geographic borders to expand reach and improve profitability?
Today the story of global media is one in an ever-expanding international market. N…

Survivor: The Story of Global Companies in Foreign Cultures

Every story must come to an end. Businesses too are perishable commodities that live and die within the business lifecycle. However, in 1983 Theodore Levitt coined the word Globalisation, and with it outlined how multi-national companies could escape their own death by participating in the global market (Levitt 1983). Indeed, technology would soon allow previously unimaginable exponential growth compared to old-world style business (Ibid.). Suddenly, saturated domestic markets weren’t a death sentence, and marketing turned globally to create demand for Western products in foreign lands. As a result of globalisation, companies began to recognize that early market entrants carried a significant advantage, and soon global invasions around the world began as companies were forced to compete within the international arena.  Today, Mcdonaldization (selling the same product everywhere) has given way to glocalisation and companies are constantly changing their products to meet market need (St…

North Face and Brands as a Symbol Of Success

We have this joke, called the North Face Gang. Using ASL (American Sign Language), several of my friends have adapted the "N" and "F" to symbols for this cheeky club. It's amazing how none of us noticed it before, but once you start looking for it, you're going to see it everywhere: North Face products. They're taking over this world. In fact, if you don't own at least one North Face item then you're a completely loser, incapable of anything and unlikely to ever amount to anything in this world.

Think I'm lying? Try this the next time you're in a restaurant or a public place, start looking around and count the North Face apparel. I think you'll be very astonished by how many people are adorned with this symbol of capitalism: a  form of fashion called wilderness chic.

I first became aware of the phenomenon in Belgium while travelling with about twenty Americans all from much more expensive U.S. Universities than I arrived from. I'…