Magic Bullets Do You Know What Your Cusomers Want

By Lisa M CopeDo you ever wonder what your customers want? Most business owners ask themselves that question daily. I know I do and I bet you do too. I was watching one of my favorite marketers speak recently and he said something that struck a chord with me and got me thinking. He said "people want magic bullets". They want the answer to their problems. A quick fix for their woes. A simple solution that will make their world a better place and they want it now! That phrase made me ask, what magic bullets do my prospects want and do I have them? How can I turn my products into the magic bullets that my prospects can't live with out? Side note: The best way to find out what your prospects want is to survey them but, that is a whole other article. Now, asking these questions won't help you get inside your prospects mind but, it will get you in the right mind set. Think about it. When you have a problem, you want a solution right? You don't want to wait. Do you? You want a quick fix and you want it now. You want a magic bullet. Guess what so does your prospect! Have you ever watched an infomercial and felt every button they pushed. Felt like what they were selling was the answer to all your problems? You just want to rip out your credit card and say take my money! You can't wait until you can get your hands on that magic bullet. We all have and it's the magic bullets that get you every time. For instance let's say your target market is acne sufferers. If you have ever had acne you can identify with the pain and agony that acne sufferers go through. A sufferer will try and buy just about anything that offers relief from their suffering no matter what the cost. Magic bullets don't have a price cap. Are you starting to see? Put on your top hat and pull out your magic wand. Now start thinking. What you are selling? What solutions do you have to offer? How can you solve peoples problems? What magic bullets can you pull out of your product or service? Once you pull those magic bullets out of your hat and put them right under your prospects nose then the real magic will begin. About the author:Lisa M Cope - Starting your own online business? Find information articles and tools to help you on your way. http://www.flipidy.com

Learn To Make Money On eBay

By Jeff SchumanSo you want to sell stuff on eBay, but you have two minor problems: you don't know how and you don't have stuff. Not a problem. Keep reading for some tips to get you pointed in the right direction to learn to make money on eBay. Before you begin you’ll need some basic equipment: Computer, Internet access, digital camera, and some space to put your stuff. That’s really all you’ll need to get started. You’ll also need shipping and packing supplies but that is addressed later. Next you’ll need to learn how to list auctions. Go to the eBay sellers overview: http://pages.ebay.com/education/sellingtips/index.html. This will be your lifeline. There is a plethora of information there on everything you always wanted to know and more. Don’t be overwhelmed; just take it one step at a time. You’ll see there is information on listings, on bidding, on photos, on feedback – it’s all there. Next you’ll need to figure out what to sell. Before you zero in on a particular niche you need some experience and some feedback. Buyers are generally leery of buying from someone who is brand new and has a feedback rating of less than 10 evaluations. While you are getting your feet wet, look around your own house first. You’d be amazed at what people buy. You could list outgrown clothing, magazines, candle holders, CD, books, flannel sheets, recipes, the ugly old lamp that was Aunt Mildred’s, all those goofy Christmas gifts sitting in your basement, that old baby gate with a stain on it. Get the idea? You never know what someone will want. Although you need experience, you don’t want to list something that isn’t likely to sell. Do your research first before you invest the time in putting together a listing. An easy method to use is do a “search” on eBay, then look up COMPLETED ITEMS, then sort by HIGHEST price. Then you’ll see if your Tommy Bahama shirt is really worth anything. Or you’ll see that your old baseball cards had 23 listings and not one of them sold. Pricing is another challenge. Again, you’ll need to do your research. See what they’re going for. Don’t have overly high expectations. You know how you feel when you go to a garage sale and you see a pair of jeans for $15 or books for $4 each. Many people come to eBay to look for a bargain. Consider how much you have into the item. If you have an item from around the house, you may consider that something is better than nothing, so you may be inclined to start the bidding quite low. If you bought it with the specific intention to resell, you will, at the very minimum, want to break even, so take the price you paid for it and consider other costs, i.e. listing fees, final value fees (all explained in your lifeline – eBay seller overview above). People are much more apt to bid if the bidding starts LOW. Sometimes though, you will have collectibles that are worth a chunk of money. Don’t give away that vintage postcard that is worth $56! Do your homework. The next big question is how do you get paid? You determine what you would accept. Online payments such as PayPal (paypal.com) are very convenient. You can also decide that you’ll accept money orders or personal checks. The more options you leave your buyers, the more likelihood you’ll get more bids. You also need to decide how you want to ship your items to the winners. Many sellers use USPS, others prefer UPS. If you use USPS and ship via Priority Mail, you can get your envelopes and boxes free from USPS. If you ship First Class or Parcel Post or UPS, you’ll have to shop around for deals on boxes or envelopes and bubble wrap or packing peanuts. Overwhelmed yet? Yes there is a lot to learn, but it’s not nuclear science. Just take it one step at a time. It’s a learning process. Some yahoo groups (or MSN or AOL, or whatever your preference) are great sources for support and camaraderie with others who are doing the same. So in summary, if you want to just “start pushing buttons” and learn to make money on eBay on your own, YOU CAN DO IT. If you do better chatting with others, those resources are available too. Use what is available. About the author:Team-Schuman.Com contains the best make money online and make money websites available today. If you want to make money check us out here: http://www.team-schuman.com/learn-to-make-money-on-ebay.htmlCirculated by Article Emporium

Setting Up a Forum

By Paul JesseForums can be very useful marketing tools because they set a stage for individuals to converse about the topics set forth in the forum. Individuals can post responses, post new comments or simply read what others have posted. This provides multiple reviews for products and generally answers all the frequently asked questions and more. The way it can help you as a business owner is that it saves you time by simply posting answers to questions on the forum so all users can read the information and you don’t have to worry about answering the same question hundreds of times or more. Also, the forum provides new users with a significant amount of information in a short period of time, therefore providing an overview of your products, services or whatever is being discussed in the forum. Also, forums provide a meeting place for forum users and offers kinship because the forum is focused on a particular topic. This makes users feel comfortable communicating with others and often times create a form of friendship and exchange of ideas that keeps users coming back time and again. The bonus for your business is that if you have a free forum and people continuously return, it will increase the percentage that individuals will buy a service or product from you. Another important aspect of the forum, for users and yourself, is that when a large group of people are communicating new ideas are presented daily and old ideas are improved upon. Everyone gains from new and improved ideas, techniques and methods, and this source of information alone could dramatically improve your business flow. If you provide a forum that is monitored and has relevant information, subscribers and users will continuously return because the forum is a place to give and receive information. This is very important for the individuals using your forum as well as for your business. Basically, while you are providing a free service to users they are providing you with traffic to your web page and most likely increased sales and new ideas. This is an incredibly useful tool and should be utilized by business owners interested in reaching more individuals by creating a club like atmosphere in the forum with the exchanging of ideas, as well as increasing your own business. Setting up a forum will help you bring the same users back to your web page time and time again, which is important because it has been proven that over 70% of sales are made after the third, fourth or fifth customer contact. Also, continuously updating your web site and providing a relevant forum will help your web page be returned in free search engine results. As a result, the forum not only keeps users continuously coming back, but it helps get your web page noticed by potential users and subscribers, thus increasing your traffic even more. There is no reason for you not to start a relevant forum on your web page today and see the results of increased traffic and higher sales. About the author:Paul Jesse, Phoenix, Arizona USA Learn more about making money online. Paul Jesse is thr owner of Shea Marketing, published author, retired government employee, private pilot, and lifetime student of Internet Marketing. He created sheamarketing.com to help those interested in working from home on the internet. http://www.sheamarketing.comCirculated by Article Emporium

The golden road

By Itsik tzurWhen I first started looking for a home business opportunity, usually after carefully observing the offer I emailed the company or the owner of the website, not just to get more info but to acknowledge there is a real person behind the website who will be there to support and guide me. I can tell you that in most cases, either it took days and even weeks to get their answer or they did not respond at all accept for auto responders in some cases. There was however a few of them who did respond and did it very quickly (less then 24 hrs usually). The first thing I felt was confidence, my resistance and doubts where still there but they were getting weaker and gradually I became more interested and open to listen and learn about what they have to offer. In most cases home business owners are like a car on a highway. They quickly rush to get to their destination and the faster the better. They are busy optimizing their site for better search results, looking for the next place to advertise their site in; checking conversion rate, statistics and so forth… A simple thing like answering a prospect email becomes a hard task they prefer to ignore or get the job done by an auto responder. Looking at my own personal experience, I noticed that my resistance and doubts were fading away when I was getting an email back. At that moment I realized that creating a rapport with a prospect is essential and fundamental to the success of any home business. So how do you create a rapport with your prospect? The first step is: understanding that your prospects are your gold mine and the internet is the tool which you use to reach them. Your prospects are real people like you with dreams, desires and at the same time doubts, resistance and fears. It is vital to understand that they approach you in order for you to help them accomplish their goals and dreams. They are your most precious asset and without them you can't create a successful home business. A simple action like responding to a prospect email has far more impact then you can imagine! On the internet things happen much faster then in the real world. When an email is sent to you by a prospect a fast respond is needed. That kind of gesture lets him know his importance to you, and shows that you respect him. Let him know that you got his message; write a simple email back telling him you are there, willing to guide, serve and help him. Be ready to answer any question and provide all the support you can when he asks you for it. Remember: your prospects are people. They deserve your attention and respect. Create a rapport with your prospects and don’t forget to be patient and honest. In conclusion: It is true that Advertising, optimizing your site for better search results and all the other stuff are essential to your business. But you must understand that none of this matters if you do not create a rapport with your prospects. After all, they are the ones you build your site for. They look, buy and support you so be sure to give them back the same treatment. Then and only then will you be walking the "golden road". About the author:Itsik Tzur can help YOU Start your own profitable business on the Internet Within the next 24 hours! To learn more, visit: http://www.Karma4Success.com/pips.htmlIf you have any questions send your email to itsiktzur@yahoo.com Circulated by Article Emporium

Setting Up A Newsletter

By Paul JesseIt is a proven fact that companies that offer newsletters have more follow up sales than those who do not. As a result, setting up a newsletter is an incredibly effective tool that any business interested in making sales or increasing business should utilize. There are several pointers that will help you begin setting up a newsletter for your company. First, you will need a reason for a newsletter and a reason for potential subscribers to sign up. This can include offering a free sample, free e-book, specialized information and the like. Your newsletter can be about any number of things, it just needs to have a target market and provide the information the subscribers want and need. When you have a newsletter and are offering subscribers something for signing up, then you will have their contact information and will be able to follow up with these individuals. It has been proven that more than 70% of sales are made after the third to fifth contact, so having contact information will prove very valuable for your company. Once you have a reason to have a newsletter, you will need to begin formatting a professional newsletter to provide to your subscribers. Consequently, you will want to buy software that will help you format your newsletter so it can be easily read, distributed and look professional. There are many types of software on the market that can help you do this. However, look around for one that meets your needs. If you are not creating a very difficult newsletter, then there are plenty of programs that can create professional looking newsletters that do not cost a lot of money. The software program you buy should correlate with your newsletter design needs.While you are investing in this software. You will also want a software program that will automate your newsletter and provide subscribe and unsubscribe automatically to subscribers. This will make your newsletter dispersal and cancellations easier on you and it puts the subscribers in control of whether or not they receive the newsletter. If you do not have a program to do this for you then you will end up spending uncountable hours adding and subtracting people to and from your newsletter. If you don’t keep up with it, people will start sending additional and uglier emails to get you to remove them from the list, which further clogs your email system. What’s worse, once someone subscribes if they are not added immediately they might forget about it. A software program that is automated is certainly worth its cost if you are going to offer a newsletter. Finally, make sure you know your market and are marketing your newsletter to these individuals. If so, you will have more subscribers and ultimately more sales because of this. As long as you are aware and constantly trying to meet the needs of your target market through your newsletter and services, your business will continue to grow. About the author:Paul Jesse is the owner of Shea Marketing, published author, retired government employee, private pilot, and lifetime student of Internet Marketing. He created sheamarketing.com to help those interested in working from home on the internet. http://www.sheamarketing.com

Should You Be Selling Information Products?

By Benjamin ScottCopyright 2005 Benjamin ScottDo you know that selling information products is one of the best ways to earn money on the net? And information products don’t just refer to internet marketing strategies, or website design secrets. The surface has just been scratched!Here are just a few of the excellent benefits one will attain from selling information products on the net. The best benefit you’ll get from selling information products is you’ll be your own boss. You won’t answer to any higher authority except to yourself. You can assign yourself to research on ideas and subjects you feel passionate about or are extremely curious about. Or something you are an expert on! 100% of the profits are yours and therefore the sweat of selling information products go to you. You create the product, market and keep all the profits there in. You get to keep each penny of each information product you sell. The information comes from your thoughts. All you’ll need to do is set it down in PDF or other formats. Then – provide a downloading link to clients.No need to collaborate with a manufacturer or supplier. You won’t get behind schedules or need to adjust the selling price because you can’t control the raw materials prices. You won’t have to worry about the delivery or shipping schedules. Selling information products will just require a straightforward process between your computer and that of the reader. Another thing – you don’t need any employees. This means, you don’t worry about enhancing employee motivation or finding solutions about absenteeism. You can hire creative talent on the net, if you need collaborators.Run business where you are, or keep it running even when you aren’t home. Your website can take orders while you are sleeping or grocery shopping, or taking a day out in the sun. With reliable e-commerce applications, you can sell information products, on auto-pilot.Develop your own niche market in selling information products. If you have a passion or a deep interest on subject, you can make an informational product based on it. It would be unique, simply because you’ve put your personal imprint on it. People will flock to your website, because it offers something others don’t. Don’t think a niche market means small pickings. It just means a supplying to markets with a narrower focus. And because you are on the net, you’re selling to the rest of the world that’s connected to the web.Here are some ideas you can use as a springboard for your own information products. 200 Online dating tips and hints150 of the world’s best desserts How to cook Philippine dishes, using the available ingredients 10 secrets to keeping a successful and diversified investment portfolioFor reference purposes, check out the http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace, which claims to sell over 10,000 information products. It will give you an idea on the sheer variety.In case you’re wondering, people are buying these products. Why? Easy to read, and understand. Straight to the point, tell it as it is, based on the author’s and other people’s experiences. The customers surf the net for information that is readily accessible and e-books are it. This is why selling information products will get you a constant stream of profit. You can just as easily sell information products to a customer at Timbuktu or Iceland. If there are secrets or step-by-step processes, you can write about, you can sell these. The potential is there; all it needs is your brand of persistence, dedication, and passion to make it work!About the author:Benjamin Scott operates a successful internet business working from his home personal computer. Grab a FREE copy of his 9 lesson e-marketing course at: http://www.eazyhomebusiness.com/Copyright © 2005 Benjamin Scott Circulated by Article Emporium

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind,: Excellence is a Relentless Pursuit

This book delivers its promise in the following manner. The first four chapters have been written in a traditional business style, the hallmarks of success as outlined in the qualities of leadership that companies embrace for mastery. The first four chapters are the keys to excellence in corporate thought. The final twenty short chapters of one to two pages have been written as fables, stories and parables with lessons attached to them.
Chapter One: Excellence is the Chosen Path
Excellence in your Company
The chapter describes in detail;
Supporting risk through action and interpretation
Full partnerships with clients/ customers
Stimulating the individual
Leadership and motivation; entrepreneurship within the ranks
Motivating people whose productivity is for their own benefit
Hands on management teams shaping values
Letting management manage due to simplification of structures that embrace corporate productivity
Releasing the latent potential in staff through active participation
This chapter describes the characteristics of excellent companies, leadership within the companies that lead to balancing liberation of talent with support. The key point of excellence has always been the cohesion of the team in the grass roots belief of excellence on all levels. This chapter discusses balancing the process of leadership and how we get there through cohesion within the management team. It elaborates on the cohesion of the team through the integration of integrity and values.
Chapter Two
Excellence in Your People
How do we get excellence in the people that propel the company forward?
We look for : Levels of integration of effort
Levels of integrity of thought
Personal vision as to purpose within the company
They also understand that self initiated, self-directed experimentation is the key to success.
To create ownership, projects must be encouraged
Creativity means dreaming up new things; innovation is doing old things in a more efficient way.
Power to implement these ideas is critical to the entrepreneur and will stifle creativity and productivity if criticized.
Four entrepreneurs are introduced; all have stories that are impossible in the conventional thought. However, the desire and the drive for excellence propelled each of these people to outstanding results in there field, beyond the expectation of human possibility. They are Oprah, Deepak Chopra, Jim Carey, and Anthony Robbins. How can corporations learn from these folks who built empires on their own?
This chapter also discusses the true characteristics of professionals:
In sports
In values
In purpose
In the soul’s need to be the very best
Change is not created through illusions; it is created by the souls’ need for excellence. It is important to begin with the end in mind, to see the product before it is built, to believe in the dream before it becomes a reality. The entrepreneur builds the empire in spirit, harmony, and unity for financial immortality.
Chapter Three
Win… What is Important Now!
This chapter is just a story about a baseball player who knew what to do in the top of the sixth inning in a no win game against the Boston Red Sox. I then tell my own baseball story, and what happened to my team when I came back after an injury and went on to play the final game bandages and all. When we remember WIN…What does Important Now, life always give us the final inning? The champions know what it takes to win, and they pull out all the stops to get there in the last moments of the last inning of the last game. It is the reality of relationship that makes life and the WIN important.
Prologue
Wizards, Myths, fables, and Other Misnomers in Business
Why this book was written in the manner that it was. I combined the fables that my mother had read me as a child with the business savvy of my father. The wish was that that combination and small samplings of tales has the reader looking at life more than rose colored glasses in order to slay the dragons in any market.
Secret One;
Always follow the Dream
The biblical story of Joseph and the techni color dream color. The liberation of Joseph’s talent as a dreamier made all the difference to his family and to his nation. Without following the obstacles around the drams and over the hardships, through the rejection to final fruition of the vision, no glory is found.
Secret Two
You are Perfect… the Fable of the Tortoise and the Eagle
One of the greatest lessons and gifts of life is the present, which you are. Victory shows up in making the choices at the levels of performance in what we do our best selves, and by our true unique nature. Contributing to excellence in every interaction captures the magic of our very existence.
Secret Three
Passion is not a Four Letter word, Fear is
Complacency is a deeper rut than a tomb. This fun chapter discusses the blessings of stepping from fear to passion in the parable of the fable of the crow and the two seeds. In seeking challenges growth appears and fears disappears.
Secret Four
Time is of the Essence
The fable of the white rabbit discusses the value of time management. What is important now is just part of the equation, what is important in the future must also be considered. Point zero in business is where most business operate. How do we get past point zero in time, money, and effort to get into profit?
Reverse timelines, the calendar, and the Swiss cheese approach to life in order to put order into chaos of your personal, professional life. There is not point to carve out a living when you forget to carve out a life.
Secret Five
The Pain brings Gain Myth
Inspiration vs. Perspiration
Belling the cat is a hilarious tale from Aesop. The myth is that it takes pain to bring gain. Problems are never sent to give us perspiration, they are sent to give us inspiration. When inspired enough you will step out of your comfort zones to accomplish the vision and conquer the obstacles.
Secret Six
The Butterfly Theory, Making the Market work for you!
We all know and understand that the butterfly theory of chaos a butterfly’s wings fluttered in Rome cause an earthquake in Singapore. Therefore, it is with marketing. Once you have discovered the market and the possibilities of that market, each type of marketing feeds off the other or builds on the other as a another dimension of media . The secrets to marketing is exchange what can you exchange? You r know ledge and skill for another person’s knowledge and skill. Get rich in your niche and growing your business means growing your self?
Secret Seven
Walking the Financial Tightrope or Surfing the Net works
This chapter discusses the markets where you gain financial success. Newton’s law of gravity works in business as well as in physics… an object in motion stays in motion, and object at rest stays at rest. The object in motion should be you. The miracle of the internet quantifies this amount, an easy way to sell to millions.
Secret Eight
Promotion is Communication, or the Fable of the Goat and the Fox
The simple fable of using dramatic means to self-promotion to broadcast your business. The magic of the mix is the combination of broadcast. The bolder the more dramatic, the promotion the broader you market becomes. All electromagnetic frequencies alter matter, voice alters matter.
Secret Nine
Dialing for Dollars
Calling past clients, clients, geographic databases to ask for repeat and referral business, if you have served your clients well, you will serve them again and again. Matching and mirroring the clients gives maximum results. Continue to raise yourself and others to the standards of excellence that you envision.
Secret Ten
Lazarus theory or the Dead Client Walking: Know the difference
How to spot a dead client a mile away, and bow to handle the objections to make this client work for you and with you by setting your boundaries. The good angler can catch and release.
Secret Eleven
The Tale of St. George and the Dragon… or Dealing with the Dragon Client
Beware of the smoke screens, and much noise. A control freak at best that wastes your time and money in trying to please him/her. When the dragon client arrives, leave the crusade for change behind you and let him terrorize someone else. If you need the lesson, understand that this person is your greatest teacher.
Secret Twelve
Loyalty for Life or You don’t want the Business
The Tale of the Ugly Wife
Camelot found. When you discover that the mystery of the ugly wife holds for you all the wealth in the world will be yours. This very old tale discusses the marriage of Sir Gawain, royal knight of the Round Table a good and worthy servant of King Arthur to a HAG. In discovering her internal beauty and the lessons that she had for him, she became the most beautiful woman in the world. Discovering what the bride/client really wants, gives you riches beyond your imagination.
Secret Thirteen
The Fool Who is Silent Passes for Wise
The lesson of Silence is found in the story of Narcissus. When the Echo or Salesman repeats the needs of the client over and over, the client falls in love with him/her. Narcissus fell in love with the silent pool because the mirror in the pond was he. As we learn to be a reflection of what the client needs, business becomes endless. We look wise when we are silent rather than boastful.
Secret Fourteen
Practice, Practice, Practice
When we choose to change our definition of gratifying relationships to be long, lasting and mutual, not short term and empty, our businesses go up exponentially.
Secret Fifteen
Profitability to Die For or the Tale of Achilles
The riddle of Achilles hold the answers to real profit in business. When business crates energy with a four to one profitability of expenses to income. If the expense does not produce a profit in 45:1 return, you may be overlooking cast amounts of profit and where to earn these profits. Prune the roses for extra profit, cut off the dead wood, in your business for more profit.
Secret Sixteen
The Midas touch
Not all that glitters is gold. Midas pursuit of business was running him, because he abandoned all else for the pursuit of gold. Sometimes a profitable business is running you, rather than you running it, and the quality of your life disappears into it, heart disease, stroke and other disease are crated from this lust for gold.
Secret Seventeen
Be Proud of Who you are, or the Fable of the Millar, his Ass, and His Son
Probably one of the most humorous stories in this book is the fable of the miller, his son and the ass. Trying to please every one else, and not yourself is the key to failure. Being outstanding does not just take skill, it takes heart. In the willingness to contribute, to make a difference to society, to commit all to excellence, there creates a magical path to success. This path takes us beyond the Township of the Ordinary into the Country of Our Highest Purpose. There miracles and our destiny are found.
Secret Eighteen
Negotiation... Thor the Sledge Hammer, or the Count of Monte Christi Chisel
The tools that are required for excellence are always fine-tuned. They require a command of the facts, a list of the technical details, and finally the trust of the two parties to create a win/win situation in every circumstance.
Secret Nineteen
The Secret of Pandora’s Box
A Greek tale of love and lust. Again, the love of money creates disaster. What is in Pandora’s Box, the only redeeming quality left there was the element of Hope. Hope lives in the future, no matter how difficult and treacherous the past has been, hope gives us a promise of a new day tomorrow
Secret Twenty
The Buddha, the Traveler, and the Gift
Once upon a time, the Buddha was traveling and he came upon a traveler who wanted to walk with him. This traveler poured poison on the Buddha and after three days when he did not not respond, he asked the Buddha, why he had not retaliated. The Buddha responded with a question, this question is the great question of life and all teachers, healers give the same lesson, never retaliate in anger, and understand in love.
Epilogue Thoughts
Thoughts about the journey of success. The path is usually convoluted, unexpected and has no ending. The secrets are lessons learned over time for our amusement and personal growth. The lesson manifest at a time when we are ready to learn. Excellence is the relentless pursuit of the very best that we have to give to the universe, when we are ready to learn and ready to give. This is our very best, our relationships and our commitment to world service.

The Secret of Positive Thinking That Only Few Know

Through positive thinking, your power of subconscious mind and energy reach high levels through which you can achieve things very easily. This is the secret of positive thinking. Some positive thinking techniques are use more positive words in the place of negative words so that you will get positive energy. Self-talk to yourself positively 'I can do it', 'It is very easy', It is possible', then you can feel the difference.

The secret of positive thinking is that, if you motivate yourself positively, then you will definitely reach the goal. This is because your positive subconscious mind makes you act positively. If you think negatively and act negatively then the results will be negative. The way you think, the way you live. Eliminate positive thoughts from your mind and let positive thought dominate. Then see the difference in your life. Positive thinking not only bring success but also bring happiness in your life. Regular physical exercise like yoga, aerobics, etc. for at least half an hour a day is really helpful as it will boost positive thinking in your mind and helps to stay fit and healthy physically.

The secret of positive thinking is: Before you start a day, self talk to yourself that I am going to think positively this whole day, I will act and speak positively. If you do this, the day ahead will definitely be successful and positive. By changing your mind, you are changing your life. Only when you focus on positive things, positive words and positive thoughts you can live a happy and peaceful life. To gain happiness, success, good relationship, good health and wealth, all you need to do is to start positive thinking.

By Joel Chue

Rahasia Sukses Anthony Robbins

Rahasia Sukses Anthony Robbins

Jika anda ingin berbicara dengan perasaan, anda harus menjadi penuh emosi tentang topik anda

Inilah mengapa ketika anda berada di depan audien, dalam banyak kasus, anda berusaha mengalihkan perhatian audien ke slide di depan atau power point. Cara yang efektif adalah pergilah ke tempat duduk audien, sentuhlah sebanyak mungkin orang di pundaknya di sekitar anda berdiri. Ingat, mereka tidak akan menggigit anda, mereka akan senang dan menghargai anda. Dan jika memungkinkan, kunjungilah audien yang duduk dideretan paling belakang sekali waktu. Saya mengerti mungkin anda akan berpikir, saya nggak ada waktu jika sampai harus mengunjungi peserta seminar di deretan paling belakang.

Tetapi sekali lagi jagalah selalu prinsip ini di dalam pikiran anda bahwa “Saya harus melakukan segala sesuatu agar saya bisa membangun ‘ikatan batin’ dengan audien saya”. Apa artinya membangun ikatan batin? Baiklah saya jelaskan seperti ini, bila dalam cerita anda, anda menunjukkan perasaan sedih, audien secara spontan ikut juga merasa sedih. Jika anda tertawa keras, audien anda juga ikut bergembira tertawa seperti anda. Ingat jagalah selalu kedekatan dengan audien anda. Audien anda merasa dekat dengan anda, mereka akan merasa nyaman, dan mereka akan memberi perhatian penuh pada presentasi anda.

Jika ikatan batin sudah terbangun, bahkan Audien anda yang akan selalu ingin dekat terus dengan anda. Ini yang terjadi dalam seminar AR. Banyak peserta seminar yang datang dari negara selain Singapore, seperti Thailand, Hongkong, China, Malayasi, Indonesia bahkan beberapa dari Australia. Mereka juga rela membayar mahal untuk bisa duduk di kursi deretan depan. Padahal harganya dua kali lebih mahal dari harga tiket normal.

Salah satu ciri yang sering digunakan untuk melukiskan sosok Anthony Robbins adalah ‘Passion’. Dengan kata lain, AR memiliki ‘greget’ dan antusias yang cukup berlebihan ketika dia berbicara. Seperti beberapa contoh cerita tentang AR di tulisan sebelumnya. Bagaiman cara AR menyampaikan materinya dengan penuh semangat dan antusias?

Kuncinya : Jadilah Antusias tentang topik anda dan transfer-lah perasaan anstusias dan emosi tersebut kepada audien anda.

Kita sering mendengar seseorang berkata tentang seorang pembicara yang katanya ilmunya sangat mumpuni, tapi komentar yang bisa diberikan, “Dia membosankan, dia terlalu kaku.” Ini artinya adalah Dia sebagai seorang trainer tidak cukup mengekspresikan dirinya dalam setiap presentasinya. Dia hanya berkata-kata menyampaikan pesan presentasinya tanpa menunjukkan perasaan antusias dan emosi positip.

Kini selalu tanamkan dalam pikiran anda, Anda tidak akan berbicara dengan penuh emosi dan perasaan bila anda menghayati dan antusias yang tinggi tentang topik anda.

Itulah satu alasan mengapa AR berbicara dengan penuh perasaan, dia sangat bersemangat dengan materi yang dia sampaikan, dan dia berbagi teknik dan strategi cara merubah hidupnya.

Oleh Markus Tan

BUSINESS, CULTURAL STUDIES, MULTICULTURALISM, AND MEDIA CULTURE

CULTURAL STUDIES, MULTICULTURALISM, AND MEDIA CULTURE
Douglas Kellner
Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed.
We are immersed from cradle to grave in a media and consumer society and thus it is important to learn how to understand, interpret, and criticize its meanings and messages. The media are a profound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy: They contribute to educating us how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire -- and what not to. The media are forms of pedagogy which teach us how to be men and women. They show us how to dress, look and consume; how to react to members of different social groups; how to be popular and successful and how to avoid failure; and how to conform to the dominant system of norms, values, practices, and institutions. Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment. Learning how to read, criticize, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture. It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give people more power over their cultural environment.
In this essay, I will discuss the potential contributions of a cultural studies perspective to media critique and literacy. In recent years, cultural studies has emerged as a set of approaches to the study of culture and society. The project was inaugurated by the University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies which developed a variety of critical methods for the analysis, interpretation, and criticism of cultural artifacts. Through a set of internal debates, and responding to social struggles and movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Birmingham group came to focus on the interplay of representations and ideologies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture. They were among the first to study the effects of newspapers, radio, television, film, and other popular cultural forms on audiences. They also focused on how various audiences interpreted and used media culture differently, analyzing the factors that made different audiences respond in contrasting ways to various media texts.
Through studies of youth subcultures, British cultural studies demonstrated how culture came to constitute distinct forms of identity and group membership. For cultural studies, media culture provides the materials for constructing views of the world, behavior, and even identities. Those who uncritically follow the dictates of media culture tend to "mainstream" themselves, conforming to the dominant fashion, values, and behavior. Yet cultural studies is also interested in how subcultural groups and individuals resist dominant forms of culture and identity, creating their own style and identities. Those who obey ruling dress and fashion codes, behavior, and political ideologies thus produce their identities within mainstream group, as members of specific social groupings (such as white, middle-class conservative Americans). Persons who identify with subcultures, like punk culture, or black nationalist subcultures, look and act differently from those in the mainstream, and thus create oppositional identities, defining themselves against standard models.
Cultural studies insists that culture must be studied within the social relations and system through which culture is produced and consumed, and that thus study of culture is intimately bound up with the study of society, politics, and economics. Cultural studies shows how media culture articulates the dominant values, political ideologies, and social developments and novelties of the era. It conceives of U.S. culture and society as a contested terrain with various groups and ideologies struggling for dominance (Kellner 1995). Television, film, music, and other popular cultural forms are thus often liberal or conservative, or occasionally express more radical or oppositional views.
Cultural studies is valuable because it provides some tools that enable one to read and interpret one's culture critically. It also subverts distinctions between "high" and "low" culture by considering a wide continuum of cultural artifacts ranging from novels to television and by refusing to erect any specific cultural hierarchies or canons. Previous approaches to culture tended to be primarily literary and elitist, dismissing media culture as banal, trashy, and not worthy of serious attention. The project of cultural studies, by contrast, avoids cutting the field of culture into high and low, or popular against elite. Such distinctions are difficult to maintain and generally serve as a front for normative aesthetic valuations and, often, a political program (i.e. either dismissing mass culture for high culture, or celebrating what is deemed "popular" while scorning "elitist" high culture).
Cultural studies allows us to examine and critically scrutinize the whole range of culture without prior prejudices toward one or another sort of cultural text, institution, or practice. It also opens the way toward more differentiated political, rather than aesthetic, valuations of cultural artifacts in which one attempts to distinguish critical and oppositional from conformist and conservative moments in a cultural artifact. For instance, studies of Hollywood film show how key 1960s films promoted the views of radicals and the counterculture and how film in the 1970s was a battleground between liberal and conservative positions; late 1970s films, however, tended toward conservative positions that helped elect Ronald Reagan as president (See Kellner and Ryan, 1988).
There is an intrinsically critical and political dimension to the project of cultural studies which distinguishes it from objectivist and apolitical academic approaches to the study of culture and society. British cultural studies, for example, analyzed culture historically in the context of its societal origins and effects. It situated culture within a theory of social production and reproduction, specifying the ways that cultural forms served either to further social domination or to enable people to resist and struggle against domination. It analyzed society as a hierarchical and antagonistic set of social relations characterized by the oppression of subordinate class, gender, race, ethnic, and national strata. Employing Gramsci's model of hegemony and counterhegemony, it sought to analyze "hegemonic," or ruling, social and cultural forces of domination and to seek "counterhegemonic" forces of resistance and struggle. The project was aimed at social transformation and attempted to specify forces of domination and resistance in order to aid the process of political struggle and emancipation from oppression and domination.
For cultural studies, the concept of ideology is of central importance, for dominant ideologies serve to reproduce social relations of domination and subordination. Ideologies of class, for instance, celebrate upper class life and denigrate the working class. Ideologies of gender promote sexist representations of women and ideologies of race utilize racist representations of people of color and various minority groups. Ideologies make inequalities and subordination appear natural and just, and thus induce consent to relations of domination. Contemporary societies are structured by opposing groups who have different political ideologies (liberal, conservative, radical, etc.) and cultural studies specifies what, if any, ideologies are operative in a given cultural artifact (which could involved, of course, the specification of ideological contradictions). In the course of this study, I will provide some examples of how different ideologies are operative in media cultural texts and will accordingly provide examples of ideological analysis and critique.
Because of its focus on representations of race, gender, and class, and its critique of ideologies that promote various forms of oppression, cultural studies lends itself to a multiculturalist program that demonstrates how culture reproduces certain forms of racism, sexism, and biases against members of subordinate classes, social groups, or alternative life-styles. Multiculturalism affirms the worth of different types of culture and cultural groups, claiming, for instance, that black, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, and lesbian, and other oppressed and marginal voices have their own validity and importance. An insurgent multiculturalism attempts to show how various people's voices and experiences are silenced and omitted from mainstream culture and struggles to aid in the articulation of diverse views, experiences, and cultural forms, from groups excluded from the mainstream. This makes it a target of conservative forces who wish to preserve the existing canons of white male, Euro-centric privilege and thus attack multiculturalism in cultural wars raging from the 1960s to the present over education, the arts, and the limits of free expression.
Cultural studies thus promotes a multiculturalist politics and media pedagogy that aims to make people sensitive to how relations of power and domination are "encoded" in cultural texts, such as those of television or film. But it also specifies how people can resist the dominant encoded meanings and produce their own critical and alternative readings. Cultural studies can show how media culture manipulates and indoctrinates us, and thus can empower individuals to resist the dominant meanings in media cultural products and to produce their own meanings. It can also point to moments of resistance and criticism within media culture and thus help promote development of more critical consciousness.
A critical cultural studies -- embodied in many of the articles collected in this reader -- thus develops concepts and analyses that will enable readers to analytically dissect the artifacts of contemporary media culture and to gain power over their cultural environment. By exposing the entire field of culture to knowledgeable scrutiny, cultural studies provides a broad, comprehensive framework to undertake studies of culture, politics, and society for the purposes of individual empowerment and social and political struggle and transformation. In the following pages, I will therefore indicate some of the chief components of the type of cultural studies that I find most useful.
Components of a Critical Cultural Studies
At its strongest, cultural studies contains a three-fold project of analyzing the production and political economy of culture, cultural texts, and the audience reception of those texts and their effects. This comprehensive approach avoids too narrowly focusing on one dimension of the project to the exclusion of others. To avoid such limitations, I would thus propose a multi-perspectival approach that (a) discusses production and political economy, (b) engages in textual analysis, and (c) studies the reception and use of cultural texts.
Production and Political Economy
Because it has been neglected in many modes of recent cultural studies, it is important to stress the importance of analyzing cultural texts within their system of production and distribution, often referred to as the political economy of culture. Inserting texts into the system of culture within which they are produced and distributed can help elucidate features and effects of the texts that textual analysis alone might miss or downplay. Rather than being antithetical approaches to culture, political economy can actually contribute to textual analysis and critique. The system of production often determines what sort of artifacts will be produced, what structural limits there will be as to what can and cannot be said and shown, and what sort of audience effects the text may generate.
Study of the codes of television, film, or popular music, for instance, is enhanced by studying the formulas and conventions of production. These cultural forms are structured by well-defined rules and conventions, and the study of the production of culture can help elucidate the codes actually in play. Because of the demands of the format of radio or music television, for instance, most popular songs are three to five minutes, fitting into the format of the distribution system. Because of their control by giant corporations oriented primarily toward profit, film and television production in the U.S. is dominated by specific genres such as talk and game shows, soap operas, situation comedies, action/adventure series, reality TV, and so on. This economic factor explains why there are cycles of certain genres and subgenres, sequelmania in the film industry, crossovers of popular films into television series, and a certain homogeneity in products constituted within systems of production marked by rigid generic codes, formulaic conventions, and well-defined ideological boundaries.
Likewise, study of political economy can help determine the limits and range of political and ideological discourses and effects. My study of television in the United States, for instance, disclosed that takeover of the television networks by major transnational corporations and communications conglomerates was part of a "right turn" within U.S. society in the 1980s whereby powerful corporate groups won control of the state and the mainstream media (Kellner, 1990). For example, during the 1980s all three networks were taken over by major corporate conglomerates: ABC was taken over in 1985 by Capital Cities, NBC was taken over by GE, and CBS was taken over by the Tisch Financial Group. Both ABC and NBC sought corporate mergers and this motivation, along with other benefits derived from Reaganism, might well have influenced them to downplay criticisms of Reagan and to generally support his conservative programs, military adventures, and simulated presidency.
Corporate conglomeratization has intensified further and today AOL and Time Warner, Disney, and other global media conglomerates control ever more domains of the production and distribution of culture (McChesney 2000). In this global context, one cannot really analyze the role of the media in the Gulf war, for instance, without analyzing the production and political economy of news and information, as well as the actual text of the Gulf war and its reception by its audience (see Kellner, 1992). Likewise, the ownership by conservative corporations of dominant media corporations helps explain mainstream media support of the Bush administration and their policies, such as the war in Afghanistan (Kellner 2001).
Looking toward entertainment, one cannot fully grasp the Madonna phenomenon without analyzing her marketing strategies, her political environment, her cultural artifacts, and their effects (Kellner, 1995). In a similar fashion, younger female pop music stars and groups such as Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, or NπSync also deploy the tools of the glamour industry and media spectacle to make certain stars icons of fashion, beauty, style, and sexuality, as well as purveyors of music. And in appraising the full social impact of pornography, one needs to be aware of the sex industry and the production process of, say, pornographic films, and not just dwell on the texts themselves and their effects on audiences.
Furthremore, in an era of globalization, one must be aware of the global networks that produce and distribute cultural in the interests of profit and corporate hegemony. Yet political economy alone does not hold the key to cultural studies and important as it is, it has limitations as a single approach. Some political economy analyses reduce the meanings and effects of texts to rather circumscribed and reductive ideological functions, arguing that media culture merely reflects the ideology of the ruling economic elite that controls the culture industries and is nothing more than a vehicle for capitalist ideology. It is true that media culture overwhelmingly supports capitalist values, but it is also a site of intense struggle between different races, classes, gender, and social groups. Thus, in order to fully grasp the nature and effects of media culture, one needs to develop methods to analyze the full range of its meanings and effects.
Textual Analysis
The products of media culture require multidimensional close textual readings to analyze their various forms of discourses, ideological positions, narrative strategies, image construction, and effects. There have been a wide range of types of textual criticism of media culture, ranging from quantitative content analysis that dissects the number of, say, episodes of violence in a text, to qualitative study that examines images of women, blacks, or other groups, or that applies various critical theories to unpack the meanings of the texts or to explicate how texts function to produce meaning. Traditionally, the qualitative analysis of texts has been the task of formalist literary criticism, which explicates the central meanings, values, symbols, and ideologies in cultural artifacts by attending to the formal properties of imaginative literature texts ã- such as style, verbal imagery, characterization, narrative structure and point of view, and other formal elements of the artifact. From the 1960s on, however, literary-formalist textual analysis has been enhanced by methods derived from semiotics, a system for investigating the creation of meaning not only in written languages but also in other, nonverbal codes, such as the visual and auditory languages of film and TV.
Semiotics analyzes how linguistic and nonlinguistic cultural ≥signs≤ form systems of meanings, as when giving someone a rose is interpreted as a sign of love, or getting an A on a college paper is a sign of mastery of the rules of the specific assignment. Semiotic analysis can be connected with genre criticism (the study of conventions governing established types of cultural forms, such as soap operas) to reveal how the codes and forms of particular genres follow certain meanings. Situation comedies, for instance, classically follow a conflict/resolution model that demonstrates how to solve certain social problems by correct actions and values, and thus provide morality tales of proper and improper behavior. Soap operas, by contrast, proliferate problems and provide messages concerning the endurance and suffering needed to get through lifeπs endless miseries, while generating positive and negative models of social behavior. And advertising shows how commodity solutions solve problems of popularity, acceptance, success, and the like.
A semiotic and genre analysis of the film Rambo (1982) for instance, would show how it follows the conventions of the Hollywood genre of the war film that dramatizes conflicts between the U.S. and its "enemies" (see Kellner 1995). Semiotics describes how the images of the villains are constructed according to the codes of World War II movies and how the resolution of the conflict and happy ending follows the traditional Hollywood classical cinema which portrays the victory of good over evil. Semiotic analysis would also include study of the strictly cinematic and formal elements of a film like Rambo, dissecting the ways that camera angles present Rambo as a god, or slow motion images of him gliding through the jungle code him as a force of nature. Semiotic analysis of 2001 film Vanilla Sky could engage how Cameron Croweπs film presents a remake of a 1997 Spanish film, and how the use of celebrity stars Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz, involved in a real-life romance, provides a spectacle of modern icons of beauty, desire, sexuality, and power. The science fiction thematic and images present semiotic depictions of a future in which technoscience can make everyone beautiful and live out its cultureπs dreams and nightmares.
The textual analysis of cultural studies thus combines formalist analysis with critique of how cultural meanings convey specific ideologies of gender, race, class, sexuality, nation, and other ideological dimensions. Ideological textual analysis should deploy a wide range of methods to fully explicate each dimension and to show how they fit into textual systems. Each critical method focuses on certain features of a text from a specific perspective: the perspective spotlights, or illuminates, some features of a text while ignoring others. Marxist methods tend to focus on class, for instance, while feminist approaches will highlight gender, critical race theory spotlights race and ethnicity, and gay and lesbian theories explicate sexuality.
Various critical methods have their own strengths and limitations, their optics and blindspots. Traditionally, Marxian ideology critiques have been strong on class and historical contextualization and weak on formal analysis, while some versions are highly ≥reductionist,≤ reducing textual analysis to denunciation of ruling class ideology. Feminism excels in gender analysis and in some versions is formally sophisticated, drawing on such methods as psychoanalysis and semiotics, although some versions are reductive and early feminism often limited itself to analysis of images of gender. Psychoanalysis in turn calls for the interpretation of unconscious contents and meaning, which can articulate latent meanings in a text, as when Alfred Hitchcockπs dream sequences project cinematic symbols that illuminate his charactersπ dilemmas, or when the image of the female character in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) framed against the bar of her bed suggests her sexual frustration, imprisonment in middle class family life, and need for revolt.
Of course, each reading of a text is only one possible reading from one critic's subject position, no matter how multiperspectival, and may or may not be the reading preferred by audiences (which themselves will be significantly different according to their class, race, gender, ethnicity, ideologies, and so on). Because there is a split between textual encoding and audience decoding, there is always the possibility of a multiplicity of readings of any text of media culture (Hall, 1980b). There are limits to the openness or polysemic nature of any text, of course, and textual analysis can explicate the parameters of possible readings and delineate perspectives that aim at illuminating the text and its cultural and ideological effects. Such analysis also provides the materials for criticizing misreadings, or readings that are one-sided and incomplete. Yet to further carry through a cultural studies analysis, one must also examine how diverse audiences actually read media texts, and attempt to determine what effects they have on audience thought and behavior.
Audience Reception and Use of Media Culture
All texts are subject to multiple readings depending on the perspectives and subject positions of the reader. Members of distinct genders, classes, races, nations, regions, sexual preferences, and political ideologies are going to read texts differently, and cultural studies can illuminate why diverse audiences interpret texts in various, sometimes conflicting, ways. It is indeed one of the merits of cultural studies to have focused on audience reception in recent years and this focus provides one of its major contributions, though there are also some limitations and problems with the standard cultural studies approaches to the audience.
A standard way to discover how audiences read texts is to engage in ethnographic research, in an attempt to determine how texts effect audiences and shape their beliefs and behavior. Enthnographic cultural studies have indicated some of the various ways that audiences use and appropriate texts, often to empower themselves. Radway's study of women's use of Harlequin novels (1983), for example, shows how these books provide escapism for women and could be understood as reproducing traditional women's roles, behavior, and attitudes. Yet, they can also empower women by promoting fantasies of a different life and may thus inspire revolt against male domination. Or, they may enforce, in other audiences, female submission to male domination and trap women in ideologies of romance, in which submission to Prince Charming is seen as the alpha and omega of happiness for women.
Media culture provides materials for individuals to create identities and meanings and cultural studies detects uses of cultural forms. Teenagers use video games and music television as an escape from the demands of a disciplinary society. Males use sports as a terrain of fantasy identification, in which they feel empowered as "their" team or star triumphs. Such sports events also generate a form of community, currently being lost in the privatized media and consumer culture of our time. Indeed, fandoms of all sorts, ranging from Star Trek fans ("Trekkies") to devotees of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or various soap operas, also form communities that enable people to relate to others who share their interests and hobbies. Some fans, in fact, actively recreate their favorite cultural forms, such as rewriting the scripts of preferred shows, sometimes in the forms of slash which redefine charactersπ sexuality, or in the forms of music poaching or remaking such as ≥filking≤ (see examples in Lewis 1992 and Jenkins 1992).
This emphasis on audience reception and appropriation helps cultural studies overcome the previous one-sided textualist orientations to culture. It also directs focus on the actual political effects that texts have and how audiences use texts. In fact, sometimes audiences subvert the intentions of the producers or managers of the cultural industries that supply them, as when astute young media users laugh at obvious attempts to hype certain characters, shows, or products (see de Certeau, 1984 for more examples of audiences constructing meaning and engaging in practices in critical and subversive ways). Audience research can reveal how people are actually using cultural texts and what sort of effects they are having on everyday life. Combining quantitative and qualitative research, new reception studies, including some of the essays in this reader, are providing important contributions into how audiences actually interact with cultural texts (see the studies in Lewis 1992 and Ang 1996, and Lee and Cho and xx in this text for further elaboration of decoding and audience reception).
Yet there are several problems that I see with reception studies as they have been constituted within cultural studies, particularly in the U.S. First, there is a danger that class will be downplayed as a significant variable that structures audience decoding and use of cultural texts. Cultural studies in England were particularly sensitive to class differences -- as well as subcultural differences -- in the use and reception of cultural texts, but I have noted many dissertations, books, and articles in cultural studies in the U.S. where attention to class has been downplayed or is missing altogether. This is not surprising as a neglect of class as a constitutive feature of culture and society is an endemic deficiency in the American academy in most disciplines.
There is also the reverse danger, however, of exaggerating the constitutive force of class, and downplaying, or ignoring, such other variables as gender or ethnicity. Staiger (1992) notes that Fiske, building on Hartley, lists seven "subjectivity positions" that are important in cultural reception, "self, gender, age-group, family, class, nation, ethnicity," and proposes adding sexual orientation. All of these factors, and no doubt more, interact in shaping how audiences receive and use texts and must be taken into account in studying cultural reception, for audiences decode and use texts according to the specific constituents of their class, race or ethnicity, gender, sexual preferences and so on.
Furthermore, I would warn against a tendency to romanticize the ≥active audience,≤ by claiming that all audiences produce their own meanings and denying that media culture may have powerful manipulative effects. There is a tendency within the cultural studies tradition of reception research to dichotomize between dominant and oppositional readings (Hall, 1980b, a dichotomy which structures much of Fiske's work). "Dominant" readings are those in which audiences appropriate texts in line with the interests of the dominant culture and the ideological intentions of a text, as when audiences feel pleasure in the restoration of male power, law and order, and social stability at the end of a film like Die Hard, after the hero and representatives of authority eliminate the terrorists who had taken over a high-rise corporate headquarters. An "oppositional" reading, by contrast, celebrates the resistance to this reading in audience appropriation of a text; for example, Fiske (1993) observes resistance to dominant readings when homeless individuals in a shelter cheered the destruction of police and authority figures, during repeated viewings of a video-tape of Die Hard.
Although this can be a useful distinction, there is a tendency in cultural studies to celebrate resistance per se without distinguishing between types and forms of resistance (a similar problem resides with indiscriminate celebration of audience pleasure in certain reception studies). For example, resistance to social authority by the homeless evidenced in their viewing of Die Hard could serve to strengthen brutal masculist behavior and encourage manifestations of physical violence to solve social problems. Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, and Herbert Marcuse, among others, have argued that violence can be either emancipatory, when directed at forces of oppression, or reactionary, when directed at popular forces struggling against oppression. Many feminists, by contrast, or those in the Gandhian tradition, see all violence as forms of brute masculist behavior and many people see it as a problematical form of conflict resolution. Resistance and pleasure cannot therefore be valorized per se as progressive elements of the appropriation of cultural texts, but difficult discriminations must be made as to whether the resistance, oppositional reading, or pleasure in a given experience is progressive or reactionary, emancipatory or destructive.
Thus, while emphasis on the audience and reception was an excellent correction to the one-sidedness of purely textual analysis, I believe that in recent years cultural studies has overemphasized reception and textual analysis, while underemphasizing the production of culture and its political economy. This type of cultural studies fetishizes audience reception studies and neglects both production and textual analysis, thus producing populist celebrations of the text and audience pleasure in its use of cultural artifacts. This approach, taken to an extreme, would lose its critical perspective and would lead to a positive gloss on audience experience of whatever is being studied. Such studies also might lose sight of the manipulative and conservative effects of certain types of media culture and thus serve the interests of the cultural industries as they are presently constituted.
A new way, in fact, to research media effects is to use the data bases which collect media texts such as Dialogue or Nexis/Lexis and to trace the effects of media artifacts like The X-Files, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, or advertising corporations like Nike and McDonalds, through analysis of references to them in the media. Likewise, there is a new terrain of Internet audience research which studies how fans act in chat rooms devoted to their favorite artifacts of media culture, create their own fansites, or construct artifacts that disclose how they are living out the fantasies and scripts of the culture industries. Previous studies of the audience and the reception of media privileged ethnographic studies that selected slices of the vast media audiences, usually from the site where researchers themselves lived. Such studies are invariably limited and broader effects research can indicate how the most popular artifacts of media culture have a wide range of effects. In my book Media Culture (1995), I studied some examples of popular cultural artifacts which clearly influenced behavior in audiences throughout the globe. Examples include groups of kids and adults who imitated Rambo in various forms of asocial behavior, or fans of Beavis and Butt-Head who started fires or tortured animals in the modes practiced by the popular MTV cartoon characters. Media effects are complex and controversial and it is the merit of cultural studies to make their study an important part of its agenda.
Toward a Cultural Studies that is Critical, Multicultural, and Multiperspectival
To avoid the one-sidedness of textual analysis approaches, or audience and reception studies, I propose that cultural studies itself be multiperspectival, getting at culture from the perspectives of political economy, text analysis, and audience reception, as outlined above. Textual analysis should utilize a multiplicity of perspectives and critical methods, and audience reception studies should delineate the wide range of subject positions, or perspectives, through which audiences appropriate culture. This requires a multicultural approach that sees the importance of analyzing the dimensions of class, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexual preference within the texts of media culture, while studying as well their impact on how audiences read and interpret media culture.
In addition, a critical cultural studies attacks sexism, racism, or bias against specific social groups (i.e. gays, intellectuals, and so on), and criticizes texts that promote any kind of domination or oppression. As an example of how considerations of production, textual analysis, and audience readings can fruitfully intersect in cultural studies, let us reflect on the Madonna phenomenon. Madonna first appeared in the moment of Reaganism and embodied the materialistic and consumer-oriented ethos of the 1980s ("Material Girl"). She also appeared in a time of dramatic image proliferation, associated with MTV, fashion fever, and intense marketing of products. Madonna was one of the first MTV music video superstars who consciously crafted images to attract a mass audience. Her early music videos were aimed at teen-age girls (the Madonna wanna-beπs), but she soon incorporated black, Hispanic, and minority audiences with her images of interracial sex and multicultural "family" in her concerts. She also appealed to gay and lesbian audiences, as well as to feminist and academic audiences, as her videos became more complex and political (i.e. "Like a Prayer," "Express Yourself," "Vogue," and so on).
Thus, Madonna's popularity was in large part a function of her marketing strategies and her production of music videos and images that appealed to diverse audiences. To conceptualize the meanings and effects in her music, films, concerts, and public relations stunts requires that her artifacts be interpreted within the context of their production and reception, which involves discussion of MTV, the music industry, concerts, marketing, and the production of images (see Kellner 1995). Understanding Madonna's popularity also requires focus on audiences, not just as individuals, but as members of specific groups, such as teen-age girls, who were empowered in their struggles for individual identity by Madonna, or gays, who were also empowered by her incorporation of alternative images of sexuality within popular mainstream cultural artifacts. Yet appraising the politics and effects of Madonna also requires analysis of how her work might merely reproduce a consumer culture that defines identity in terms of images and consumption. It would make an interesting project to examine how former Madonna fans view the evolution and recent incarnations of the superstar, such as her marriage and 2001 Drowned World tour, as well as to examine how contemporary fans view Madonna in an age that embraces younger teen pop singers like Britney Spears or Mariah McCarey.
In short, a cultural studies that is critical and multicultural provides comprehensive approaches to culture that can be applied to a wide variety of artifacts from pornography to Madonna, from MTV to TV news, or to specific events like the 2000 U.S. presidential election (Kellner 2001), or media representations of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the U.S. response. Its comprehensive perspectives encompass political economy, textual analysis, and audience research and provide critical and political perspectives that enable individuals to dissect the meanings, messages, and effects of dominant cultural forms. Cultural studies is thus part of a critical media pedagogy that enables individuals to resist media manipulation and to increase their freedom and individuality. It can empower people to gain sovereignty over their culture and to be able to struggle for alternative cultures and political change. Cultural studies is thus not just another academic fad, but can be part of a struggle for a better society and a better life.
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Brunsdon, Charlotte and David Morley (1978) Everyday Television: "Nationwide." London: British Film Institute.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1980) On Ideology London: Hutchinson.
Certeau, Michel de (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Durham, Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner, editors (2001)
Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks. Malden, Mass. And Oxford, England: Blackwell.
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Fiske, John (1986) "British Cultural Studies and Television." In
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Fiske, John (1987) Television Culture. New York and London: Routledge.
Fiske, John (1989a) Reading the Popular. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Fiske, John (1989b) Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Fiske, John (1993) Power Play. Power Works. London: Verso.
Grossberg, Lawrence (1989) "The Formations of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham," Strategies, 22, pp 114-149.
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Hall, Stuart et al (1980) Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson.
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Jenkins, Henry (1992) Textual Poachers. New York: Routledge.
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Kellner, Douglas and Michael Ryan (1988) Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press.
Lewis, Lisa A. (1992) Adoring Audience. Fan Culture and Popular Media. New York: Routledge.
McChesney, Robert (2000) Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communications Politics in Dubious Times. New York: New Press.
Morley, David (1986) Family Television. London: Comedia.
O'Connor, Alan (1989) "The Problem of American Cultural Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication (December), 405-413.
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Notes
. For more information on British cultural studies, see Hall 1980b; Johnson 1986/7; Fiske 1986; O'Conner 1989; Turner 1990; Grossberg 1989; Agger 1992; and the articles collected in Grossberg, Nelson, Triechler 1992; During 1992, 1998; and Durham and Kellner 2000. I might note that the Frankfurt School also provided much material for a critical cultural studies in their works on mass culture from the 1930s through the present; on the relation between the Frankfurt School and British cultural studies, see Kellner 1997.
. On the concept of ideology, see Kellner, 1978 and 1979; the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1980; Kellner and Ryan, 1988; and Thompson, 1990.
. This model was adumbrated in Hall, 1980a and Johnson, 1986/87 and guided much of the early Birmingham work. Around the mid-1980s, however, the Birmingham group began to increasingly neglect the production and political economy of culture (some believe that this was always a problem with their work) and much of their studies became more academic, cut off from political struggle. I am thus trying to recapture the spirit of the early Birmingham project, reconstructed for our contemporary moment. For a fuller development of my conception of cultural studies, see Kellner, 1992, 1995, and 2001.
. The term "political economy" calls attention to the fact that the production and distribution of culture takes place within a specific economic system, constituted by relations between the state and economy. For instance, in the United States a capitalist economy dictates that cultural production is governed by laws of the market, but the democratic imperatives of the system mean that there is some regulation of culture by the state. There are often tensions within a given society concerning how many activities should be governed by the imperatives of the market, or economics, alone and how much state regulation or intervention is desirable, to assure a wider diversity of broadcast programming, for instance, or the prohibition of phenomena agreed to be harmful, such as cigarette advertising or pornography. (See Kellner, 1990.)
. Cultural studies which have focused on audience reception include Brunsdon and Morley, 1978; Radway, 1983; Ang, 1985; Morley, 1986; Fiske, 1989a and 1989b; Jenkins 1992; Lewis 1992; and Ang 1996.

Opportunity

Robert McChesney
IN CONVENTIONAL parlance, the current era in history is generally characterized as one of globalization, technological revolution, and democratization. In all three of these areas, media and communication play a central, perhaps even a defining, role. Economic and cultural globalization arguably would be impossible without a global commercial media system to promote global markets and to encourage consumer values. The very essence of the technological revolution is the radical development in digital communication and computing.
For capitalism's cheerleaders, like Thomas Friedman of the` New York Times, all of this suggests that the human race is entering a new Golden Age. All people need to do is sit back, shut up, and shop, and let markets and technologies work their ) magical wonders. For socialists and those committed to radical social change, these claims should be regarded with the utmost skepticism. In my view, the notion of "globalization," as it is commonly used to describe some natural and inexorable force, the telos of capitalism as it were, is misleading and ideologically loaded. A superior term would be "neoliberalism"; this refers to the set of national and international policies that call for business domination of all social affairs with minimal countervailing force. Neoliberalism is almost always intertwined with a deep belief in the ability of markets to use new technologies to solve social problems far better than any alternative course. The centerpiece of neoliberal policies is invariably a call for commercial media and communication markets to be deregulated.
Here, I should like to sketch out the main developments and contours of the emerging global media system and their political-economic implications. I believe that when one takes a close look at the political economy of the contemporary global media and communication industries, we can cut through much of the mythology and hype surrounding our era and have the basis for a much more accurate understanding of what is taking place, and what socialists must do to organize effectively for social justice and democratic values.
The global media system
Whereas, previously, media systems were primarily national, in the past few years a global commercial-media market has emerged. This global oligopoly has two distinct but related facets. First, it means the dominant firms-nearly all U.S. based-are moving across the planet at breakneck speed. The point is to capitalize on the potential for growth abroad-and not get outflanked by competitors-since the U.S. market is well developed and only permits incremental expansion. Second, convergence and consolidation are the order of the day. Specific media industries are becoming more and more concentrated, and the dominant players in each media industry increasingly are subsidiaries of huge global media conglomerates. The level of mergers and acquisitions is breathtaking.
In short order, the global media market has come to be dominated by seven multinational corporations: Disney, AOL Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and Bertelsmann. None of these companies existed in their present form as media companies as recently as 15 years ago; today, nearly all of them will rank among the largest 300 nonfinancial firms in the world for 2001. Of the seven, only three are truly U.S. firms, though all of them have core operations there. Between them, these seven companies own the major U.S. film studios, all but one of the U.S. television networks, the few companies that control 80-85 percent of the global music market, the preponderance of satellite broadcasting worldwide, a significant percentage of book publishing and commercial magazine publishing, all or part of most of the commercial cable TV channels in the U.S. and worldwide, a significant portion of European terrestrial (traditional over-the-air) television, and on and on and on. By nearly all accounts, the level of concentration is only going to increase in the near future.
Why has this taken place? The conventional explanation is technology; i.e., radical improvements in communication technology make global media empires feasible and lucrative in a manner unthinkable in the past. This is similar to the technological explanation for globalization writ large. But this is only a partial explanation, at best. The real motor force has been the incessant pursuit for profit that marks capitalism, which has applied pressure for a shift to neoliberal deregulation. In media, this means the relaxation or elimination of barriers to commercial exploitation of media and to concentrated media ownership.
Once the national deregulation of media began in major nations like the United States and Britain, it was followed by global measures like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the formation of the World Trade Organization, all designed to clear the ground for investment and sales by multinational corporations in regional and global markets. This has laid the foundation for the creation of the global media system, dominated by the aforementioned conglomerates. Now in place, the system has its own logic. Firms must become larger and diversified to reduce risk and enhance profit-making opportunities, and they must straddle the globe so as to never be outflanked by competitors.
Perhaps the best way to understand how closely the global commercial media system is linked to the neoliberal global capitalist economy is to consider the role of advertising. Advertising is a business expense incurred by the largest firms in the economy. The commercial media system is the necessary transmission belt for businesses to market their wares across the world; indeed, globalization as we know it could not exist without it. A whopping three-quarters of global spending on advertising ends up in the pockets of a mere 20 media companies. Ad spending has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, as TV has been opened to commercial exploitation, and is growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product growth.
There are a few other points to make to put the global media system in proper perspective. The global media market is rounded out by a second tier of six or seven dozen firms that are national or regional powerhouses or that control niche markets, like business or trade publishing. Between one-third and one-half of these second-tier firms come from North America; most of the rest are from Western Europe and Japan. Many national and regional conglomerates have been established on the backs of publishing or television empires. Each of these second-tier firms is a giant in its own right, often ranking among the thousand largest companies in the world and doing more than one billion dollars per year in business. But the system is still very much evolving.
The global media system is only partially competitive in any meaningful economic sense of the term. Many of the largest media firms have some of the same major shareholders, own pieces of one another, or have interlocking boards of directors. When Variety compiled its list of the 50 largest global media firms for 1997, it observed that "merger mania" and crossownership had "resulted in a complex web of interrelationships" that will "make you dizzy." In some respects, the global media market more closely resembles a cartel than it does the competitive marketplace found in economics textbooks.
This conscious coordination does not simply affect economic behavior; it makes the media giants particularly effective political lobbyists at the national, regional, and global levels. The global media system is not the result of "free markets" or natural law; it is the consequence of a number of important state policies that have been made that created the system. The media giants have had a heavy hand in drafting these laws and regulations, and the public tends to have little or no input. In the United States, the corporate media lobbies are notorious for their ability to get their way with politicians, especially if their adversary is not another powerful corporate sector, but that amorphous entity called the "public interest."
Finally, a word should be said about the Internet, the two-ton gorilla of global media and communication. The Internet is increasingly becoming a part of our media and telecommunication systems, and a genuine technological convergence is taking place. Accordingly, there has been a wave of mergers between traditional media and telecom firms, and by each of these with Internet and computer firms. Already companies like Microsoft, AOL, AT&T and Telefonica have become media players in their own right. It is possible that the global media system is in the process of converging with the telecommunications and computer industries to form an integrated global communication system, where anywhere from six to a dozen supercompanies will rule the roost. The notion that the Internet would "set us free," and permit anyone to communicate effectively, hence undermining the monopoly power of the corporate media giants, has not transpired. Although the Internet offers extraordinary promise in many regards, it alone cannot slay the power of the media giants. Indeed, no commercially viable media content site has been launched on the Internet, and it would be difficult to find an investor willing to bankroll any additional attempts. To the extent the Internet becomes part of the commercially viable media system, it looks to be under the thumb of the usual corporate suspects.
Global media and neoliberal democracy
I earlier alluded to the importance of the global media system to the formation and expansion of global and regional markets for goods and services, often sold by the largest multinational corporations. The emerging global media system also has significant cultural and political implications, specifically with regard to political democracy, imperialism, and the nature of socialist resistance in the coming years. In the balance of this review, I will outline a few comments on these issues.
In the area of democracy, the emergence of such a highly concentrated media system in the hands of huge private concerns violates in a fundamental manner any notion of a free press in democratic theory. The problems of having wealthy private owners dominate the journalism and media in a society have been well understood all along: Journalism, in particular, which is the oxygen necessary for self-government to be viable, will be controlled by those who benefit by existing inequality and the preservation of the status quo.
The attack on the professional autonomy of journalism that has taken place is simply a broader part of the neoliberal transformation of media and communication. Neoliberalism is more than an economic theory, however. It is also a political theory. It posits that business domination of society proceeds most effectively when there is a representative democracy, but only when it is a weak and ineffectual polity typified by high degrees of depoliticization, especially among the poor and working class. It is here that one can see why the existing commercial media system is so important to the neoliberal project, for it is singularly brilliant at generating the precise sort of bogus political culture that permits business domination to proceed without using a police state or facing effective popular resistance.
The global media and imperialism
The relationship of the global media system to the question of imperialism is complex. In the 1970s, much of the Third World mobilized through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization to battle the cultural imperialism of the Western powers. The Third World nations developed plans for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) to address their concerns that Western domination over journalism and culture made it virtually impossible for newly independent nations to escape colonial status. Similar concerns about U.S. media domination were heard across Europe. The NWICO campaign was part of a broader struggle at that time by Third World nations to address formally the global economic inequality that was seen as a legacy of imperialism. Both of these movements were impaled on the sword of neoliberalism wielded by the United States and Britain.
Global journalism is dominated by Western news services, which regard existing capitalism, the United States, its allies, and their motives in the most charitable manner imaginable. As for culture, the "Hollywood juggernaut" and the specter of U.S. cultural domination remain a central concern in many countries, for obvious reasons.
But, with the changing global political economy, there are problems with leaving the discussion at this point. The notion that corporate media firms are merely purveyors of U.S. culture is ever less plausible as the media system becomes increasingly concentrated, commercialized, and globalized. The global media giants are the quintessential multinational firms, with shareholders, headquarters, and operations scattered across the globe. The global media system is better understood as one that advances corporate and commercial interests and values and denigrates or ignores that which cannot be incorporated into its mission. There is no discernible difference in the J firms' content, whether they are owned by shareholders in Japan or France or have corporate headquarters in New York, Germany, or Sydney. In this sense, the basic split is not between nation-states, but between the rich and the poor, across national borders.
But it would be a mistake to buy into the notion that the global media system makes nation-state boundaries and geopolitical empire irrelevant. A large portion of contemporary capitalist activity, clearly a majority of investment and employment, operates primarily within national confines, and their nation-states play a key role in representing these interests. The entire global regime is the result of neoliberal political policies, urged on by the U.S. government. Most important, not far below the surface is the role of the U.S. military as the global enforcer of capitalism, with U.S.-based corporations and investors in the driver's seat. In short, we need to develop an understanding of neoliberal globalization that is joined at the hip to U.S. militarism-and all the dreadful implications that suggests-rather than one that is in opposition to it.
Prospects
It would be all too easy, given the above conditions, to succumb to despair or simply acquiesce to changes from which there seems no escape. Matters appear quite depressing from a democratic standpoint, and it may be difficult to see much hope for change. As one Swedish journalist noted in 1997, "Unfortunately, the trends are very clear, moving in the wrong direction on virtually every score, and there is a desperate lack of public discussion of the long-term implications of current developments for democracy and accountability." But the global system is highly unstable. As lucrative as neoliberalism has been for the rich, it has been a disaster for the world's poor and working classes.
While the dominance of commercial media makes resistance more difficult, widespread opposition to these trends has begun to emerge in the form of huge demonstrations across the planet, including in the United States. It seems that the depoliticization fostered by neoliberalism and commercial media is bumping up against the harsh reality of exploitation, inequality, and the bankruptcy of capitalist politics and culture experienced by significant parts of the population. Just as all) organized resistance to capitalism appeared to be stomped out, it now threatens to rise again from the very ground.
This leads to my final point. What is striking is that progressive anti-neoliberal political movements around the world are increasingly making media issues part of their political platforms. From Sweden, France, and India, to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, democratic left political parties are giving structural media reform-e.g., breaking up the big companies, recharging nonprofit and noncommercial broadcasting, creating a sector of nonprofit and noncommercial independent media under popular control-a larger role in their platforms. They are finding out that this is a successful issue with the broad population. Other activists are putting considerable emphasis upon developing independent and so-called pirate media to counteract the corporate system. Across the board on the anti-neoliberal and socialist left, there is a recognition that the issue of media has grown dramatically in importance, and no successful social movement can dismiss this as a matter that can be addressed "after the revolution." Organizing for democratic media must be part of the current struggle, if we are going to have a viable chance of success.
Robert McChesney is the author of numerous hooks on the media, including Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New Press), and is coeditor of Monthly Review. He is a professor of communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.