Audience Studies (3P18) Blog Post #1

The International Justice Mission (IJM) is the largest anti-slavery organization in the world. I had the opportunity to virtually listen to the president of this organization, Gary Haugen, as he spoke about global poverty and violence on a TED Talk he did back in March of 2015. While I was not physically present for the live rendition of this TED Talk, there was a physical audience that surrounded Gary as he spoke on his small red circular stage. 

There were four rows of floor seats filled, edging along half of the stage, followed by further seating behind these rows like in an auditorium. The audience was diverse as it was filled with women and men of multiple ethnicities, all dressed professionally. Ted Talks create a space for educational speeches on a variety of topics, creating an educational-type frame (Sullivan, 2013) for Gary’s talk on global poverty.

When Gary came onto the stage a loud applause followed, welcoming him to speak. The lights dimmed in the audience, focusing the audience’s attention to the little red stage Gary stood on. After a brief introduction, Gary begins to speak about global poverty, and his knowledge of and personal experiences with it, establishing himself as a strong opinion leader (Sullivan, 2013, p.43). He argues that the fight against global poverty is one of the biggest success stories of simple compassion, as it has probably been the longest running human manifestations of compassion in history. 
Gary proceeds to encourage the audience with decreased statistics due to compassion, for example, the drop in death rates due to malnutrition in the past 35 years, from 40,000 to 17,000 per year (see figure 2 and 3), in order to draw the audience in. 
Once he has their attention and has generated hope, Gary introduces the true issue that perpetuates global poverty: violence.

With a silent audience intently focused on him, Gary explains how the lack of law enforcement (i.e. police, 9-1-1b services, etc.) in many impoverished countries is the reason why community violence is at its peak.  Sullivan (2013) might argue that geneinschaft, or the “small rural communities that [are] increasingly disintegrating because of urban migration”(p. 30), is an example of this, as the lack of education, resources and protection in rural communities pulls people away to urban communities, leaving those remaining in poverty, disintegrating and unprotected. Gary continues to paint this picture, as his audience of primarily North Americans might have trouble relating to this idea, bringing attention to a situation that occurred recently in Oregon.

A woman in Oregon called 9-1-1 emergency services because a man who had attacked her only two weeks prior was trying to break into her home. The conversation between the woman and the 9-1-1 operator played, while the transcribed conversation panned on the screens behind, detailing the woman’s request for assistance and the lack of response she received to her request. The operator was unable to send her help because there had been budget cuts and it was the weekend, therefore law enforcement wasn’t available to help her and she was violently beaten up and raped. It is through this story that Gary is able to connect with the audience in a way that enables them to identify themselves with the situation. 
Brown (2015) calls this identification in the involvement process, stating that, “"identification requires that we forget ourselves and become the other" (p.268). The idea of someone in North America not being able to receive help when calling 9-1-1 is shocking to hear, and thus opens up the audience to imagine what this experience might be like for individuals sweeping the globe on a daily basis, stepping into their shoes.

By illustrating the impact of living outside of the rule of law and how it has perpetuated global poverty, Gary is able to change the audience member’s previously held opinions on poverty, creating a sort of bandwagon affect. Sullivan (2013) states that a bandwagon affect “occurs when individuals hear news reports of opinion polls that differ from their own opinion, which causes them to shift their outlook to match the majority opinion.” (p. 71). When this new found “opinion,” that the root of poverty is violence is stated, Gary hopes that the audience will hop on the bandwagon and realize that we as a collective must do something. Gary continues, “Now the truth is, the traditional experts in economic development and poverty alleviation, they don’t know how to fix this problem. And so what happens? They don’t talk about it.” Gary calls out the people who claim to be experts for not only remaining silent, but as Sullivan (2013) would say, having selective perception. 
Selective perception is “the process of re-interpreting the world to match one’s previously held beliefs” (p. 40), and comes from the theory of cognitive dissonance that argues individuals would rather rationalize their actions as opposed to changing them in order to maintain their cognitive consistency (Sullivan, 2013, p. 40). The experts are choosing to ignore the problem, but Gary uses this to persuade the audience to, in contrast, take action or agency. Sullivan (2013) argues that agency, or people’s actions in response to their environment, and structure “are closely related to one another, since through our actions we essentially alter and reproduce social structures” (p. 18), therefore it is through the pairing of these two that Gary is able to persuade his audience to make a difference. Specifically, Gary encourages the audience to take agency in two ways:

Number one: We have to start making stopping violence indispensable in the fight against poverty. In fact, any conversation about global poverty that doesn’t include the problem of violence must be deemed not serious. And secondly, we have to begin to seriously invest resources and share expertise to support the developing world as they fashion new, public systems of justice, not private security, that give everybody a chance to be safe. (Haugen, 2015)

This call to action can be understood in comparison to the agenda setting affect that Sullivan (2013) describes as “the ability of the mass media to transfer the salient’s of items and their attributes from the news agenda to the public” (p. 70). Though Gary does not have a news agenda, he is using the TED platform, broadcasted internationally, to create a similar affect. He is connecting with his mass audience and transferring the importance of this issue to them. After Gary’s call to action, he finished his speech and received a standing ovation of applause. Though I was not present in the physical audience for Gary’s TED Talk, because it was filmed and posted onto an accessible online platform I was able to be an audience participant in the mass audience. 

In this position, I become part of a larger group that is, “loosely organized and unable to act as a unified whole, because individuals are geographically dispersed connected only via their spectatorship of a particular medium” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 23), in my case the medium of the Internet. While I do not know the other audience members, I felt like I was apart of a group when I listened to Gary speak. He created a sense of unity, making it seem like “we,” whoever that is, can come together as people who care about other people, and fight for justice. 

This sense of unity can be attributed to emotional contagion, “the viral-like spread of emotional states and attitudes from one individual to another, facilitated through mass media” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 33).  Emotional contagion is powerful and helped Gary to persuade individuals to not only agree with what he was saying, but to join his cause. Others may not have been as persuaded, and similar to the experts who chose to ignore the issues of violence, will continue to use selective perception and put aside this information, continuing with their own lives. Upon reflecting on my personal experience as an audience member to Gary’s TED Talk, I wondered what the other online audience members’ experiences and responses might have been after listening to Gary, and if they matched mine. On the TED website there are comment sections available for discussion about the talks underneath each videos. I scrolled through and the first ten comments I read were all in unity with Gary, what he was saying and with me. It was so encouraging and uplifting to see such positive responses, responses that I shared and agreed with, furthering the sense of unity with these total strangers. Ron Hendricks had commented a few years ago when the talk happened, “Eye-opening to say the least. Just changed my perspective on how to fight poverty. Thank you so much.” 

I did not see any negative comments in response to Gary’s speech, but this does not mean everyone agrees with him. It is possible that individuals who disagree with Gary might not have written a comment in fear of being in the minority, and therefore isolated or ridiculed online. Sullivan (2013) refers to this as the spiral of silence, and argues “that individuals naturally fear social isolation and will therefore monitor the political views expressed in the media and repress their own opinions if they are in the minority” (p. 71). Therefore, while some might not agree with Gary, it was encouraging to see others who did agree, as I did. I recommend listening to Gary’s TED Talk to all, as Gary speaks truth and has is power in what he says. 

IJM TED Talk Link: 
https://www.ted.com/talks/gary_haugen_the_hidden_reason_for_poverty_the_world_needs_to_address_now?language=en

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Haugen, G. (2015, March). The hidden reason for poverty the world needs to address now. Speech presented at TED Talk, Vancouver. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from https://www.ted.com/talks/gary_haugen_the_hidden_reason_for_ poverty_ the_world_needs_to_address_now?language=en#t-1027468.