Gifford, Claude W. (author / Director, Office of Communication, U.S. Department of Agriculture)
Format:
Speech
Publication Date:
1973-06-25
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 49 Document Number: D10722
Notes:
Claude W. Gifford Collection. Beyond his materials in the ACDC collection, the Claude W. Gifford Papers, 1919-2004, are deposited in the University of Illinois Archives. Serial Number 8/3/81. Locate finding aid at https://archives.library.illinois.edu/archon/, Speech presented at the 1973 American Farm Bureau Federation Information Conference, Rochester, New York. 17 pages., Author describes six concerns about where farmers are going to get their information during the years ahead. Also, he notes that he "can't imagine anything, including religion and politics, that is so fraught with misunderstanding, danger and distrust as farmers' public relations." Suggests two points that might gain general acceptance: (1) farm organizations aren't going to get together in the name of public relations or anything else and (2) public relations is extremely hard, difficult work. Offers suggestions.
25 pages., via online journal, Rural internet use, although still limited, is growing, raising the question of how rural people are using social media politically. As a vehicle of communication that permits the rapid transmission of information, images and text across space and connections between dispersed networks of individuals, does technological advance in rural areas presage significant political transformations? This article investigates this question in the light of a poor result for the Cambodian People’s Party in the 2013 elections, and the subsequent banning of the main opposition party, before the 2018 elections. Expanding internet use in rural areas has linked relatively quiescent rural Cambodians for the first time to networks of information about militant urban movements of the poor. Rural Cambodians are responding to this opportunity through strategies of quiet encroachment in cyberspace. This has had real effects on the nature of the relationship between the dominant party and the rural population and suggests the declining utility of the election-winning strategy used by the party since 1993. However, the extent of this virtual information revolution is limited, since neither the urban nor rural poor are mapping out new online political strategies, agendas or identities that can push Cambodia’s sclerotic politics in new directions.
