In conclusion, our study reveals that the World Economic Forum has not solved issues such as poverty, global warming, chronic illness, or debt. It has rather shifted the burden for the solution of these problems from governments and business to four, now commonplace types of responsible consumers subjects: the bottom-of-the-pyramid consumer, the green consumer, the health-conscious consumer, and the financially literate consumer. So did media outlets embrace our findings with the same enthusiasm that they had embraced my previous work? They did not. Instead our week was filled with amusing journalist responses from can you spin this to be more positive? to I fear for my job if I bring this topic. Okay, media citations are not a good predictor of scholarship quality. And maybe our findings are not newsworthy. But what about intellectual heavy-weights such as Henry Mintzberg or Susan George whose brilliant Davos-critical pieces have been largely ignored by the media as well? The thing is this. Virtually every major news brand broadcasts live from Davos. And in many cases, these brands are reporting about themselves. Huffington Post (where I will hopefully still blog about marketing and consumption after this essay), for example, covers the forum while Huffington Posts President and Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington holds a discussion about the role of journalism and pop culture in finding solutions to global crises. Is this modern journalism or a problematic blurring of boundaries? Does it open new avenues for problem solving or does it constrain the limits of acceptable speech?
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 23:50:35 +0000