Quiz#4
Both Constructivism and Realism remained to be relevant in the discussion of the interests US government has on South Africa who was by 1948 to 1994 remained to be under Apartheid government. But the real question would be which of these two schools of thought would provide better picture of the situation in terms of wider scope of objective variables.
Using the approach in constructivism, we can see that the US government was aided by South Africa in their fight against communism that was spreading in the whole African continent. Added to that, we can see the economic context with the interest US had for South Africa especially with regards to the industry of mining. Then, later, since the government structure of South Africa allowed acts of violence against black to become at large, there had been movements that pressed the US congress to pass the law that promotes racial equality and abolish apartheid. If the perspective used is from a realist, we will just be rooting the innate human factors that are involved which will only deal with the generalization of the nature of the sociopolitical structure of the situation.
What were used in constructivism are the shared ideas which can be controlled in the study and analysis instead of just material forces that will limit the scope of the study. Realism is just guided by the idea that the nature of that structure always has flaws. Those are the mostly complex but the complexity it has can only be provided by constructivism.
The use of documentary as the medium to present sociopolitical ideas has always been a subject for a number of criticisms whether or not it provided contextualized facts. The documentary Control Room which is all about the link between Al Jazeera to US CENTCOM and other networks which gathered news from Iraq last 2003 when war arose.
The use of constructivism in this documentary can be seen with the way the Bias in the Media was tackled. There was a part where Fox news revealed some missing information and little sensationalism with the way Al Jazeera is handling the coverage. Thus this contributed to the impression that there has been lack of objectivity .
The ground of communication instead of having it purely objective can also be intersubjective. Intersubjectivity is a mean to provide analysis with the touch of having firsthand experience on the matter. This can happen with the situation involving the coverage of Al Jazeera since they were covering the setting right at their feet. How we construct social meanings required the intersubjectivity with the way of looking at the matters.
Works Cited
Noujaim, Jehane. Control Room. USA: Noujaim Films, 2004
