The “study tour” is a signature feature of the program I lead in Luxembourg at Miami University Dolibois Center. Every semester, as part of their requirement for the Center, students go on a field trip with some of their instructors. Each tour is embedded in a specific course of the program for which it represents a field component. The goal of a study tour is (and here I quote my official Dean’s prose) to engage “in a direct experiential learning in a European context and apply in-class teaching to the actual European situation”.
I took my class of communication in Belgium (Brussels), and in France (Rouen, Normandy, Versailles, Paris). These are some verbatim reflections of mine during our trip.
« Have a message » says John Holland in his presentation of the role of new media in the unrest of the Arab world, comparing it to the fall of the communist regimes in the late 80’s. Political powers, even brutal powers, fail to keep their grip on society when they fail to have a message.
A most remarkable message was delivered by a student at Omaha beach, while we were enjoying the cold waves of the Manche sea on our bare feet. As I was reflecting on the flagrant contradiction between the beautiful weather we were enjoying and on this peaceful beach and the cold hell of D-day, I was answered: “they died then so that we can enjoy it today”. Very profound.
Mothers in law sometimes score excellent points: in Brussels the Head of the European Commission Representation told us about his. A well educated French Eurosceptic, she called him after having viewed a TV news program showing the French President Nicolas Sarkozy among fishermen complaining about fishing quotas. She saw the image, was moved by it, and also complained about irresponsible European policies. However, she did not listen to the—actually correct—commentary of the journalist noting that those quotas had been voted by France and approved by the same president who criticized them after they were implemented. It is a well known truth that the audience of a media is active—despite many “critical” depictions of the media as feeding with superficial news audiences of passives viewers and listeners. However, this activity also leads to selection, and selection often discriminates against what people just do not believe and do not care to change their opinion about.
Endeavors to communicate or at least some of them may be doomed to fail. Though I was overly impressed during our visits by the many efforts of European institutions to reach out to European citizens, I doubt that this will create much more interest about Europe. American students very easily notice when they meet with European officials that there are many flaws in the democratic ideals of the EU. After many discussions on the topic, I am always struck by the fact that Americans see the fact quite clearly while European tend to skip serious issues in that area.
A long discussion is never really easy to turn into a news subject. One thing that was noted by many of our interlocutors (including a Vice-President of the Commission, but it was also mentioned during our visit of the parliament): the type of politics going on at the European level does not fit easily with media news. This is, I believe, a very important fact to understand what modern public opinion is made of. Democracies have developed as communication was able to picture in a media format important decisions regarding collective life. This empowered citizens with the feeling they understood what was going on and with the sense that it was legitimate for them to have an opinion and express it. Critical analysis when it shows how biased the media format is just misses the point: the main fact of modern public opinion is the coalescence of political democratic interests and cultural and economic interests of a new industry—the media. Whatever goes on that cannot be on a media format is just lost to democracy. And most of what goes on at the European level is not media formatted.
The most beautiful American flag I have seen was drawn by students in the sand of Omaha Beach.
In Versailles, it is not difficult to realize that media are far from being responsible for show-off attitudes in communication. Nowhere more evidently the “medium is the message” than in a palace designed by a king who knew he had to defend his power.
