First of all, I
would say that Chevron’s case is really known view of today’s world. Especially
for me, writing from Mongolia that said “minegolia” now days, it’s the similar
situation coming up in my environment during last years. I saw similar picture
of great corporations and local citizens technological and cultural contrast,
fight of media scenario. In Mongolia mining gigantic Rio Tinto which exploring
gold and copper, French company Areva group which exploring uranium have been
having long fight with the local citizens because of environment issue. Local citizens
blaming them for destroying nature and due to the mining there is a many
different kind of illnesses developing, they say. So it’s the conflict between
multinational company and local citizens.
Chevron’s advocacy is more credential, but more aggressive
1. Most
multinational corporations have agreement with the government of that certain
company to own together their resources. This brings great opportunity to the
parties both in Ecuador and in Mongolia to make populism and opposition parties
always deliver messages that foreign companies are taking our resources and
they take everything from us by making agreement with the current government.
In this case Chevron is right. The role played by communications professionals for
Chevron, it can be seen unethical that they tried to show that Ecuadorian
government wanted to have more profit from them and they wanted them to seen
guilty for the situation. However it might be able to be true.
2. The common
mistakes of the type of corporations like Chevron are that they think
everything will be fine since they agreed and work with the government. But
this is the disadvantage that they don’t account local citizens right and
interest is protected by other authorities as well. Due to this mistake they
really don’t do good PR for those local citizens in order to make them
understand their work or give them opportunity to participate in there. I think
Chevron also did this mistake while I watching the video they made. They made
advocacy or the video of Gene Randall for the western audiences in order to
bring back their dignity rather try to get understand victims of Ecuadorians.
Gene Randall didn’t give an opportunity to the citizens to involve in this
video or include one representative from the local citizens and he tried to
persuade that before Chevron purchases it the environment was destroyed; so now
they are trying to make it better and they invest for the rehabilitation.
Lastly he used tactic to use experts. Western society is the society where people
believe in experts and they make decisions on experts’ words. So by involving
experts in its video Chevron made its advocacy more credential and scientific
and research based. But in some ways
this type of videos can give the victims very different ideas, which they think
that Chevron used technologies, media and experts in order to protect itself.
So this will make victims to hate Americans.
Other thing is that they used
Mr.Randall, public figure’s face in order to show their perspectives and it was
non-transparent PR method that Chevron tried to hide that they sponsored this
video. This what the big corporations still has been doing now because they
know that third party’s voice can influence better for the public.
Plaintiffs' negative advocacy
1.
First of all palintiffs’ negative advocacy was way to bad than
Chevron’s. It focused on imagination rather than evidence and they used
computer graphics rather than real face-to-face comments. Most importantly
their message was that ecosystem of amazon has polluted and destroyed a lot,
but they didn’t give any proof or evidence that Chevron destroyed. So it’s bad
that they couldn’t show thet Chevron is responsible for that.
2.
This type of fight of local citizens usually hard because of
their ability to fight with the big corporations on legal and communication
skill or power. Therefore it’s common that most times they contacted with the
populist politicians, party or any third individual and that makes result even
worse. In contrast to that it’s good that they showed pictures of local
citizens’ about how women and children suffered and injured and how amazon was
polluted etc., this is the good tactic.
As
a result this two advocacies are seems that race of who is saying what and who
is telling the truth to the public rather than giving any good evidence. I
think this starts from that different cultures couldn’t understand each other
and can’t work together and can assist each other to have the same
participation.
REFERENCE
When Chevron Hires Ex-Reporter to
Investigate Pollution, Chevron Looks Good retried from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/business/media/11cbs.html?_r=0
TELL CHEVRON'S BOARD OF
DIRECTORS TO FIRE CEO JOHN WATSON! retried
from http://truecostofchevron.com/
The true story Chevron’s Ecuador
disaster retried from
Extorting
Big Oil American Thinker. retried
from
Amazon
Crude on 60 Minutes.
an interesting observation. Also, your background photo of you looking at a chessboard: the white doesn't have a king.
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