[66's]同题 Issue60

zoeyczUID: 2621425

TOPIC: ISSUE60 - "The media-and society in general-mistakenly expect an individual to speak for a particular group, whether or not that individual truly represents the views of the entire group."
WORDS: 554
TIME: 01:06:43
DATE: 2010-3-21 21:51:44

Nowadays, new groups with novel ideas mushroom with every passing second. With this burst of information, it becomes more and more difficult for people to get a whole and clear picture of what others stand for. To demystify and thus eliminate the unnecessary misunderstanding, it is media's mission to introduce and publicize these different ideas, purposes and meanings to the public. The most straight and forward way to disclose the truth is to let someone inside to speak in name of the entire group. Sometimes the whole group does have such kind of representative person who are dedicated to illustrate the spirit of the entire group, though they are not necessarily what they claim themselves to be. However, more often than not, such delegate just doesn't exit in a group, thus comes the problem of partiality.

For some mature groups, they do take into account the public image, therefore have a dedicated department to maintain the relationship with the media and society, often known as public relationship. Taken NGO as an example, usually they will hold a media conference to pass their idea and related information on to the public before they have some new projects to carry out. Through such communication with the media, they make the upcoming project more familiar to the society and thus win more support from the public, which may enlarge the influence and therefore bring about more potential opponents. In such case, the individual that carries out this conference is actually speak in name of the entire group, and interpret its idea as how it initiates.

However, for some groups with delegate, what they act is quite another thing as what they allege. Nixon used to be the delegate that speaks for his whole team that run the white house. Though he claimed to be upright and honest, the later Water Gate Event disclosed the truth to be just the opposite way. The individual do represent the views of the entire group, but the entire group is just not necessarily what they claim to be.

On the other hand, there also exist some groups which are not so considerable or big enough to have such a specialized team. Most nascent groups do not have the time or energy to organize such a dedicated group, then here comes the problem of partiality. Taken e-commerce company as an instance; if you ask an IT guy, he may probably tell you that the IT department is the most important team because they are responsible for how user experience be when they come to the company website; yet, if you go to a marketing guy, the answer may be quite different that the marketing are the most important team because they are in charge of attract customers to the website. In such situation, it is quite pointless to understand the true views of the entire group, thus any individual may be partial in one way or another.

To sum up, that an individual represents the views of the entire group does exist under the condition that the individual is carefully selected and dedicated to handle the relationship with the media and society. Yet, even what this dedicated individual claims may not truly accord to what they do. Moreover, partiality is common flaw that may be found with groups without such dedicated delegate.

soilinkinUID: 2163892

感觉第四段的讨论和前面有点脱节，这些groups既没有代表也没有views of the group，例子里所提到的人也既不是代表也和集体观点无关，似乎和前面的两段所讨论的没有可比性。和前两段不同，这些人都没有被赋予speak for the entire group的权利，所以个人认为他们的opinion如何与集体观点无关，与本题要讨论的没有太多的关系。
其他的地方...行文功底还是可见一斑的...值得好好学习...
个人意见…欢迎讨论…

zoeyczUID: 2621425

2# soilinkin
这一段我想说的是一个组织里有不同的观点，问不同的人有不同的结果。
根据你的说法感觉是好像举了两个组，怎么说能把这个感觉扭转过来呢？

soilinkinUID: 2163892

就是说前两个例子中，媒体会和NIXON都是已经作为group的代表出现了...第三个例子里的IT guy也好marketing guy也好都只是作为一个individual存在...所以他们的观点只能代表自己的观点而不是group的观点...也就是说问IT guy或者问marketing guy都只是在询问个人观点而不是在让他们speak for the group...既然都没有代表group这样也就不存在partiality的问题了...
个人觉得可以把例子改下...如果是需要某人来做决策或者外交...那么IT guy和marketing guy的观点不同就会导致partiality...或者用球赛采访的例子...说仅仅听取个别球员的观点容易导致partiality...前提就是例子的主题必须是在speak for the group...