7 Billion

Written by - Theo Crellin, Dara Fu, Monica Lee and Nanda Sutrisno.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/world/humanity-reaches-a-s-global-milestone-with-population-to-hit-7-billion/story-e6frea8l-1226177738376

The article I analyzed was from an Australian news source, that touched on many of the facts regarding the population increase. Fertility rates, mentions of gaps between generations and wealth and even an interactive map of population projections were brought to attention as the pros and cons of the current population was discussed. Although it brought some interesting facts and figures, I ended up picking this article to analyze because it didn’t seem to have a stance, which is something that nearly every other article seemed to have. Statements like, “Already it presents a clutch of contradictions,” “Among the more disturbing findings...,” and “The labour shortage threatens even advanced economies,” imply their position. However, they never state what they mean.

According to the propaganda model, news needs to pass through five filters in order be presented into the Western democracies. Being that this article is written in Australia, presumably for Australians, there are some parallels to the filters that were mentioned by Chomsky and Herman. For instance, the third filter of sourcing is somewhat used in this article. They mention in the beginning of the article that they are using findings from the UN Population Fund, then ominously referring to it as “the report” past the first paragraph. Past that, there are no other sources mentioned and looks as if it were merely a ploy to make the article seem more credible than it actually is. The author is a political reporter with no higher standing than political report and the facts that he’s giving are no different from any other article that you can find on any other website. The joy of those other articles are that they offer a position, a stance, reasoning as to why they think the things they do. He doesn’t offer any of that and gives a fairly dull explanation of some aspects of the population milestone.

To me, the lack of multiple sources can be overlooked, but there is still a lack of opinion. Although it doesn’t explicitly state what kind of article it is, there is a poll on the left-hand side that asks the readers if they think that we are able to sustain an increase in population. While the majority of them believe no (about 1,000 out of 1,400 voters), it implies that there is an opinionated aspect to the article. However, there’s no opinion. It makes me think about what this article is trying to do. Why was it written? Who was it directed to? From what I understood and interpreted, there was little to no politics of representation in there anywhere. That, coupled with the minuscule amounts of information (minus the spiffy interactive map), makes me wonder if it was just an informational piece, but then why add the poll? Why apply negative terms to the facts? Are we stating an opinion or aren’t we? Then we throw in the map, a direct visual of how dense our population is getting and how it’s growing heavily in specific areas. Using the 1950s as a baseline, it darkens whatever countries are having the highest population grow and you get direct comparisons. Informational, but does that too add a certain bias to things?

Essentially the article is written in a relatively neutral tone, using the map as a tool coupled with the facts in order to bait an opinion from the reader. However, with the negative undertones, it’s hard not to think that the population growth is a problem instead of a blessing.

http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=36490

As the world population reached 7 Billion people, there were definite cries of anger, joy, fear and “who really cares.” From Youtube videos to news coverage to news articles, the story is one that is not to be taken lightly but of course, is hovered by all the Kim Kardashian divorce coverage and the embarrassing Viking losses. However, the Baptist Press does precisely what their title says, gives information and “news with a Christian perspective.”

The article that I analyzed first discusses the inequalities that people all over the world are debating over, while the majority of the “7 Billion” are just trying to find a way to survive. First, the article includes descriptions of tragic situations that occurred and will occur in the fastest growing populations, India, China, Africa and more. It then proceeds to discuss how these issues and situations are too much to be handled and pretty much exclaims how can there be a God in everyone, everywhere if there’s this many people on the world and Christianity hasn’t met those places and hasn’t been available to them yet, “Such is the current reality of global ‘resource inequality.’ Governments, development agencies, economists and business leaders argue about how to right the balance. But what about “spiritual inequality" -- that is, the free access to the Gospel of Christ that most people in the West enjoy, but billions in other places do not?”

This Baptist Press does more than constructs the views of its readers about the world population exceeding seven billion people and the world’s outcome in the next 10-20 years, it does its best to internally, indirectly market the idea of Christianity to its audience, which I’m sure are people who are affiliated or are familiar to Christian practices and religion, and also gives the idea of Christianity as the answer to all these unfortunate events occurring around the world to “end indifference.”

Even the two pictures that are attached to the article make this obvious claim. Under the first photo of a very crowded train in Bangladesh, the captions state, “Much of the growth continues to occur in already-crowded nations such as Bangladesh (seen in photo), while Europe and other developed areas experience slower growth or even declines. Many of the most Gospel-starved people groups on the planet live in countries with rapid population growth.” While in the other photo, a little boy from China sitting on a cart surrounded by two women has the caption as, “This little boy lives in China, still the most populous nation on earth with 1.34 billion people, although India likely will surpass it within 20 years. The world's 7 billionth person was born in October, according to U.N. estimates. Statistically, the "most typical person" in that throng is a 28-year-old Han Chinese man, reports National Geographic. More than 9 million people fit that profile. Will every child, every person, every people group have the opportunity to hear and respond to the Good News of Christ?”

With the fast growing populations and these populations growing in countries that are still developing and can or will barely hold all of their people, this Baptist Press makes an effort to emphasize and focus on the absence of Christianity as bring a major factor in helping develop and improve this fast growing world of 7 billion people.

On the website of the article, in the top right of the title of the press, there is an icon that says “We have GOOD NEWS!” with the “good news” in all caps and a little girl in the background photo, holding her hand to her face, in a position of how the hands would be when praying. This photo not only gives off the impression of the site being a non biased approach, but a news site that contains only “good news,” news worth reading and imperative to the audience’s daily lifestyle, but is actually filled with a style of writing that is intended to direct and inform the reader of Christian values and Christian ways. The author of the article is mentioned as “a global correspondent with the International Mission Board.” The article is used as a tool to advocate and uses it as a form of propaganda for Christian values and ways. Not only that, it almost seems as if the article is attempting to defend the work that Christianity has done for the world and that the over populating 7 billion people is making it hard for Christian goers to do their job, ending the article with, “Christianity has become a truly global movement in this generation, but there's much yet to do in a world of 7 billion.” Of course, this isn’t the initial idea we get, but the overall message that they are conveying.

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2011/11/03/billion-reasons-for-hope/z76CeRobnfhAXiNCHVIXtN/story.html

This opinion article from the Boston Globe definitely reads like it was written by a rich white guy who is really optimistic about this 7 billion people thing. The main idea in this piece is that 7 billion people is a good thing because that means more and more people to be smart and solve the world’s problems. He says that no matter how many physical resources we use up, we as a race will just become smarter and smarter. To me this just comes off as putting the blinders on and only seeing the good with none of the bad. When he does talk about the potential problems to the third world he talks about it in a way that sounds very condescending to me. He says “Clearly, the outlook is less rosy in poorer, more isolated countries, where famine, not obesity, endangers life.” Really? Less rosy? To me this just sounds like him belittling the problems of children starving because there isn’t enough food to go around. I would attribute this bias to the fact that the author of this article is a Harvard economist, not an anthropologist or human geographer. In terms of economics, the poor, isolated countries don’t really matter much to the global economy. It also shows the demographic of the readers, and the view point of the writer. It isn’t meant for those in lesser developed countries, who know the pain and strife of the famine they endure, it’s for those who live cushier lives where they don’t have to see the problem.

In terms of formatting, I could tell that this article came from a traditional newspaper. The paragraphs are short, 3 sentences or fewer, and each paragraph basically summarizes one idea. This kind of writing is only meant to put forward ideas, not support them in any substantial way. We just have to take for granted that the author of this article has done his research on the subject and isn’t just making up facts to suit his point. Very few of the statistics that he uses have cited sources so we have to assume that he is just an “expert” and can be trusted. Granted, looking at the author’s Wikipedia page he does seem to be a very highly regarded economics professor at Harvard.

This article is definitely being constructed as an opinion piece. The language used is very declarative. He uses words like “clearly” and “always” to make his opinion seem like fact, but it is still just an opinion. Also, the word “will” is used used frequently for the same reason. Sentences like “Far before we run out of gas, prices will soar, consumption will plummet, and companies will find more energy,” makes him seem very confident that this will happen, but really no one knows for sure.

Compared to the other articles we have read, this one comes across as very optimistic. Where other people are talking about how the rising population is the end of humanity, this author sees it as just a rising amount of humanity.

7 billion people fuel concern over world resources

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/31/MNSM1LOJHB.DTL#ixzz1cyXz0JuC

Source: SFGate, home of the San Francisco Chronicle

Word count: 542

Image count: 25

Journalist: Jon Gambrell, Associated Press

This article, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle from Associated Press on November 1, 2011, highlights the crisis we may face in the future concerning the impact of overpopulation on our world resources. The article, with its non-directional and ambivalent format, shows a negative, confusing, nearly hopeless account of the consequences of a world inhabited by 7 billion people.

Right away the article is skewed: the stated location is Lagos, Nigeria, because the opening anecdote is about the reaction of a 19-year-old Nigerian mother to her newborn. This emphasizes the overpopulation situation in Nigeria and other developing countries, rather than the growth rate of “Western” or developed countries. In truth, though, isn’t population growth pertinent to all parts of the world, not just Nigeria? In no way does the opening of this article address those parts of the world with access to ample resources, or the distribution of resources in general. Rather, it focuses only on countries on which overpopulation would have a devastating impact in terms of resources.

The article goes on in urgent, worried phrases to instill in the readers’ minds that human needs are surpassing their means.

-”But as the world's population surpasses 7 billion, fears were stirred anew about how the planet will cope with the needs of so many humans.”

-”At Lagos Island Maternity Hospital, the strain of caring for a burgeoning population was evident...While Nigeria is oil-rich, it does not produce nearly enough power for its more than 160 million people.”

These statements definitely show that Gambrell in not putting a positive light to the consequences of a growing human population. Even when he mentions U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s notion of a “world of contradictions,” he only addresses famine, fighting, and protests, none of which have a positive connotation. The politics of representation of this article cast the overall actions of the world in a state of crisis and concern.

That’s before breaching the fact that this article has a plethora of references, quotes, and images that ultimately lead the article nowhere. Six different people are mentioned, four of which are quoted. Seven countries. Four organizations or businesses. A gallery of 25 images for this single article. (These images are a situation in itself which I will address in a bit.) All of this is crammed into 524 words, not including the photo captions. About half of these words don’t speak of world resources at all, but simply address the fact that numbers are growing in different countries. The paragraphs are mostly one-liners, and they’re not cohesive. In fact, without a title, this article has no evident main point at all. Is the disorganization of the article somehow an echo of the confusion and hopelessness 7 billion people are facing? Could it be a reflection of the nonpracticality of idealist history, with no foreseeable outcomes because history is not written in stone?

The images certainly lend to this theme of general uncertainty about the future that comes with population increase. Of the 25 images, 14 depicted newborns or babies, in Pakistan, Thailand, India, Brazil, Sudan, Morocco, and Afghanistan. The remaining 11 were urban photos depicting crowds or traffic in New York, Chicago, Egypt, or India. Most of these countries were not mentioned in the written article, which gives the overall article a more global view but also adds to the confusion. The countries were all introduced, but not much more than that, so the reader is left wondering why the country was a topic in the first place. As for the photos of newborns, they give a face to the future’s uncertainty. These are the children that marked the 7 billion, and they are the children who will grow up with an increasing struggle for resources. We have no idea what their lives will be like; all we know is it is coming.

To conclude, Gambrell’s article paints an uncertain and worried picture about our growing concern for world resources with a growing population. It focuses mostly on those countries that will have to deal with the most serious consequences, and the disorganized, non-directional structure of the article itself reflects the fact that we cannot know what the future has in store. The article represents a growing population as a factor to bring the world to great crisis, though the nature of the crisis itself is unknown.

Analysis

The topic of 7 billion people inhabiting Earth is one that has sparked a variety of emotions and reactions from the tiers of society. However, like most trending topics, our growing population is not an image or concept directly encountered by most people; rather, we learn about these stories through the media. How might the partial truths of any particular news source affect how we think of a topic or current event?

Through the various sources we analyzed which spoke about 7 billion people milestone, we found that a central theme was woven through each of the articles: the presence, or lack thereof, of a voice in the articles represented a group and their thoughts. Whether a strong religious view, an opinion piece with certain tones of condescension, or even if seeming to lack a voice at all, it still represents a subset of society which will in turn motivate that subset to action to accommodate the growing needs of a growing population. This plays directly into the politics of representation. The authors of these articles are writing, almost on behalf of those who share his or her particular beliefs. The partial truths in each article appeal to particular groups of people. Some people will see the effects of our growing population more than others.While here in Minnesota we really won’t notice if our population goes up by a fraction of a percent, in rural Africa where there is not enough food to go around the effect will be much more clear. The articles we read all gave different views from different parts of the world on how this topic was affecting them.

The Mark Kenny article in Adelaide now, with its straightforward commentary that addressed a variety of aspects of the 7 billion people topic, acted to be an unbiased platform from which people could further research the issue. Although vague and factual, there were still hints that having a higher population was a negative milestone. However, it was kept hidden well enough by the information that it provided, but some of the rhetoric used slightly unveiled Kenny’s thoughts. Despite this, he is able to widen readership by attempting to eliminate bias. Playing into the fifth filter, a benevolent media, being in a neutral position allows people to read about the issue without concern of the media being misleading or forcing opinions down their throat.

The article in Baptist Press gave a starkly Christian account of the 7 billion people milestone. It leverages its Christian audience and caters to what Christian goers would like to see occur. The article closes with the idea of how Christianity has made great progress and has made great impact on the world but a world of 7 billion people is slowing down that process and Christianity is not apt to covering all depths of the earth of 7 billion people. It almost seems as if these Christian goers are defending its work it has done for the world, hence the picture from China and from Bangladesh, two different places it the world other than America (where this article is written, Virginia), and how Christianity is making its way around the world but 7 billion may be over the top currently and will take some time to reach everyone with the same ideas and concepts that Christians follow and believe in. Bridges’ article took a subtle and innocent approach, but was extremely biased, in that it was presumably using this increase in the world’s population, this number, 7 Billion, as an outlet to market their religious views and practices.

Meanwhile, Glaeser’s article in the Boston Globe provided much more of an optimistic outlook than the other articles. He talks about the effect on the first world and the global economy. He thinks that the growing population could be a good thing because the more humans there are on Earth, the more minds we have to solve our tough problems. He argues that resources are not a problems. Agriculture is getting better all the time and we will find new energy sources. He agrees that poorer countries will have problems, but they can be remedied by connecting those countries to the global economy.

In contrast to Glaeser’s article, Joe Gambrell of Associated Press wrote a bleak and concerned article about the strain 7 billion people will put on the world’s resources. Its highlight on developing countries and their struggles to accommodate a growing population with limited resources cast a light of urgency, while the image gallery full of newborn baby photos gave a face to humankind’s future. His article is quite provocative, overemphasizing the negative aspects of overpopulation as a cry for action and concern. Though ridden with statistics and quotes, the article is opinion-driven, revealing that his account of the 7 billion people issue is most definitely not a holistic truth.

It becomes apparent from examining these four articles that each writer and each audience has a partial view of the 7 billion people issue. None of the articles had the same conclusion, because unlike Hegelian/Rankean history, meaning is not inherent in the world and there is more than one way to think about the issue. When it comes to the future of a 7-billion-people world, there is no way to extract any sort of grand narrative. In fact, with the slant that each of the articles gives in relaying facts, there is more likelihood that certain articles will resound in certain people, motivating them to action. In this way, humankind might just stand a chance against the obstacles that arise from the 7 billion people issue.