ContentEditor’s Greeting.........................................................................................................................1

„NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST” – What does it mean to be cosmopolitan in the new age?by Zsófia Farkas.................................................................................................2

THE ART OF SEDUCTION - The soft, the hard & the smart power by Zsófia Kelemen.........4

FOLK FESTIVAL FEARS AND OTHER AFFAIRS - an Insight into The Irish Quarter Days by Barbara Koskó.......................................................................................................................6

THE HIDDEN STATES - The Norwegian identity and the concept of peaceby Zita Pap........8

NEW AGE RELATIONSHIPS - Is it still a man’s World? by Csilla Diána Kocsis...............10

A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD HUNGARIAN IN THE MASS OF MEDIA MESSAGES - Toward ’cultural indicators' by Ágnes Schwedics.....................................................................12

A BOY OR A GIRL? - Royal Baby Speculation as a Hobby by Anita Simon.........................14

DearReader,I would like to welcome you to Part 1 of the Intercultural Mindtrips created by the Intercultural Workshop. This student organization is based on a group of young people studying at Corvinus University of Budapest. Our goal is to bring the idea of „being intercultural” closer to people.

You may think, what does it mean to be intercultural?

My answer is to be open-minded, patient, and have a positive attitude towards humans coming from a different place. Being intercultural can be a lot more than that, various concepts exist with the aim of trying to explain the essence of it. Join us on our MindTrip to find out, how we interpret and perceive interculturalism!

Here, we created a few articles showing our individual concepts in of all these values representing different kind of approaches. The keyword of Part 1 is diversity, so we provide you multiple topics to read about and meet the concept of diversity. Just to give you an idea, what you shall expect from this Part 1, here is a short list with some of the themes appearing later on: being a cosmopolitan in the new age, Irish folklore or the life of George Gerbner. I hope these examples already sound tempting and there’s even more waiting for you, dear Reader.

Follow me with this ISSUU as the first part of the journey, and I wish you all happy and peaceful holidays.

Be merry,

Zsófia FarkasLeader of theIntercultural Workshop

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„NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST”What does it mean to be cosmopolitan in the new age?

Spanning borderlines has never been so easy. Take your passport, your visa, your

luggage and you can be anywhere in the world in almost a day. The ways of how we

manage our personal and professional lives changed a lot and technology has the leading

role. We travel different distances both physically and mentally still we have one place

to call home. What is it?

Where do you come from? Hearing this question can make us having doubts if we have the

correct answer for this question. Maybe it is where we were born? Many people consider

home the place where they were born. But what if we spent so little time at this place that we

can barely remember anything from here. Or is the answer the country in which we lived the

most? Nation state categories can be really tricky nowadays when national citizenship can be

different from the place you currently live.

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Is this home? Where you live right now or the one you stayed the most? Global citizenship is

not a new phenomenon but gives many challenges to the members of the modern societies.

Let’s go further.

Once someone has started traveling, begins to raise the question: What if I was born here? My

life would be so different. Would I like it? There is a certain place in our soul, which appeals

us the most. A place we feel much more connected than anywhere else.

Since wanderlust became a trend we travel as much as we can. Visiting places has some kind

of secret energy what fulfills us as we return ’home’ or our bed where we fall asleep

dreaming of amazing places. Why is travelling so very tempting?

We fall in love with countries, with cities, with places and with people.

One of the best thing about being a tourist, a traveller or a visitor is to meet wonderful

humans. After seeing how rapidly the platforms of social media are rising reaching millions of

users communicating with each other though chat programs. Let’s take a look back, when

people could only communicate in person. If they lived far away they had to travel to see each

other, now we have skype. We did not write emails but real paper based letters using a pen.

Where do you dream to be?

I am pretty sure we all have many places on our bucket list to visit or to go back. These

desires are to discover new locations and meet strangers (maybe friends to be) who can

inspire us to become someone more.

However, we should never forget our roots, the place we were born, the country we or our

parents are coming from, but eventually in the 21st century it is not the question, where we

are coming from but the place where we are heading to. The person we want to be. Sometimes

we can feel like there are so many places where we feel home, but if we ask ourselves where

do we belong, we are home where our heart is.

Zsófia Farkas

quote by J. R. R.Tolkien,photo from sundaytheory.com

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THE ART OF SEDUCTION

The soft, the hard &t he smart power

Public diplomacy is a rather new discipline – especially in Hungary. However, it was

born in the United States in the middle of the 19 thcentury. But for todayit has become an

emerging mean of international relations in many other states as well. It’s like a love

drink of culture, communication and international studies. Basically, it makes a country

attractive to the others’ public. Maybe this is the reason why it is becoming a „hype” in

international politics nowdays. It uses attraction instead of coercion. In the next lines I

wil explain you how it works exactly.

The basic idea of this practise is of President Franklin Pierce who intended toattractthe

English publics. The first time when this term was used was in connection with his politics in

a London-Times article. Moreover, after that another American politician, Elihu Root wrote

about the desire of publics to know about diplomacy, to be a part of it. He called it popular

diplomacy in an article of Foreign Affairs. Though all this listed moments,

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themainstreampublicdiplomacywasdevelopedby Edward Murrowduring and afterthe World

War II.

Edward Murrow was originally a journalist with a lots of experience and was named the

fisrtdirector of the United States Information Agency (USIA). The main goal of USIA was to

demoralize and weaken the enemy, so the Soviet Union. According to many the exellence of

this organisation was a reason of the fall of the Soviet Union. At the same time when the

Soviet Union fell, the glorious years of U.S. public diplomacy was gone as well till the events

of 9/11. In other states it was not so. In these years mainly some European ones started to

work on the attractive interpretation of their countries. Nowdays, besides the new public

diplomacy of the U.S. India and Denmark have an active and significant activity in this

discipline.

The secret of theirsuccess is hidinginrealizingtheneed of others’ public. The firststep is to

make a good public diplomacy strategy is to target your audience, ask and listen to their

opinion. You can doit by making surveys and following the media. However, so me like

Szörényi András mention intelligence services as a tool of collecting opinions as well. The

next step is cultural diplomacy and its sub-diplomacies like gastro- and sports diplomacy. A

good public diplomacy strategy also use seducation via scholarships and language. Besides

these business-touched segemnts like tourism and media replaying an essential role in making

your country attractive. For example Denmark has an app mainly for journalists to have the

most important Danish news in time. Or I could also mention the televison spots on CNN

International about Quatar and Kuwait.

In brief the secret is to target well and find the proper ingredients to your love drink. You

ought tohave a proper message and your startegy must be harmonize dinall aspects and by all

means. If you have done all these you can wrap your state’s economic and military intentions

n a nicelydecorated box. And we all like to get a nice present, don’t we?!

Zsófia Kelemen

photofrom clipartbest.com

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FOLK FESTIVAL FEARS AND OTHER AFFAIRS-– an Insight into The Irish Quarter Days

However interesting and diversified the Irish culture is, stereotypes reached it a long time ago. The basic associations tied to the Emerald Island are either connected to the pub culture with Guinness and Irish music, or to the childish belief in leprechauns and fairies with all of their “pots of gold at the end of the rainbow” type of connotations. That is the surface; the attractive, beer-flavoured and noisy or foolishly magical, but not quite realistic surface. That is the clichéd Ireland.

Digging a bit deeper reveals a more unique world: the details of this rich, immense and old culture, details of the disappearing Irish folklore. It is definitely something worth remembering and exploring for everyone who is interested in the times when people linked their lives to the unknown and when superstitions had control over their existences.Almost two years ago, I was lucky enough to sit The Irish Folklore course at the University of Limerick, during which I glimpsed into a whole new Ireland. Among other things, I learnt about the Irish folk festivals, the four Quarter Days. They revealed special details about the customs and superstitions of people who lived and died centuries ago believing in completely different things than we do.The four great festivals of the Celtic year were more than holidays; they counted as periods of transition. They meant changes in life and nature, the coming of the next quarter of the year and marked the beginning of a new season, but most importantly an impressive amount of beliefs, customs, rituals and lores were connected to these special days. All of them were seen as thresholds, boundaries and in-between periods, so they were encompassed by certain fears, nervousness and suspicions. They were just the opposite of the carefree and careless festivals of today.

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Imbolc– Festival of St. Brigid (1February): The first festival represented the coming of spring, the renewal, the rebirth and fertility. It was named after St. Brigid, who was (and still is), after St. Patrick, the second most important patron saint in Ireland. Brigid was quite a complex figure in the Irish folklore; she had triplicate aspects according to pagan, Christian and historical sources, but she was the most associated with healing, protection and success. Thanks to her, not only got wounds healed and ill-fortune spirited away, but agricultural prosperity came, too. Imbolc was the most joyful of the four festivals, associated with no strong magic and fear, and its customs were mostly practiced by women and children. By now, it has died out.Bealtaine– May Day (1 May): Although the second festival of the Celtic year marked the beginning of summer and brought the brighter half of the year, it was no time for happiness and fearlessness. Jealousy, fear, anxiety and paranoia encircled the day with the motto: “no spending, no mending, no borrowing”. Neighbours got hostile towards each other in the fear that their luck would be stolen, just as every step and deed was monitored. Practically anything could take away luck, so no crossing of boundaries was allowed. From today’s perspective, the extremeness of these superstitions seems ridiculous, but for people at that time it was life. As they could not better explain the unknown than by blaming mysterious charm-setters, that was how they lived then.Lughnasa (the closest Sunday to 1 August):After the dangerous summer festival came another happier one, which was the pair of Imbolc . Always held on a Sunday, it was the only folk festival which reminded the most of today’s festivals. Excursions, picnicking, drinking, eating, dancing, singing and games took place on that day without the fear of fairy assaults. Marking the autumn and the harvest period, its slogan was “the harvest’s in, the hunger’s over”. The festivals now held in Ireland between 25 July and 12 August are the survivals of the old Lughnasa celebrations.Samhain – Halloween (1 November):Towards the end of the year came the one that made the biggest alternation over the centuries, and from a Celtic tradition became a successful custom in today’s modern, globalised world. It represented the beginning of the winter and the coming of the new year. Being the pair of Bealtaine, it was also filled with supernatural associations. As opposed to it, on the other hand, this day meant the disappearance of the normal barriers, visible and invisible, and the breaking down of the separation of this world and the one behind it, which were believed to be strongly connected. People either protected themselves from the unearthly powers with fire, ash or water circles, or gave special offerings (food, drink, tobacco) to the eerie visitors.There is an old Irish proverb saying that when electric light came in, the fairies went away. It can easily be the case that electricity can also be blamed for the disappearance of these folk festivals. People got enlightened in every sense of the word and left most of their superstitions behind in the shadows while they moved towards the light.

Barbara Koskóphoto by Barbara Koskó

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THE HIDDEN STATESThe Norwegian identity and the concept of peace

Norway – a country in the North, well-known for its astonishing nature with fjords and

mountains (and of course cold weather), welfare, oil and last but not least: peacefulness.

Norwegians share the belief that achieving a better and more livable world is possible,

and that Norway shall actively contribute to the realization of this belief. But what can

they do for a better world? How can peace brought to the world?

As a small country, Norway is cut out for successful peace building, since the foreign

perception of the state is less biased, as it would be for a bigger one. However, being a small

country means limited manpower and many don’t believe that such a rich and peaceful nation

can be a big help. Let’s put aside politics for a moment and concentrate only on Norway, as

the country wouldn’t be able to facilitate peace in the world without its citizens. It is crucial

that Norwegians stand up for this concept and support their government in its actions.

Many say that Norwegians are shy and introverted, there’s even a joke about this national

characteristic:

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‘How do you know that a Norwegian is extroverted?’

‘Well, that’s easy! While having a conversation, an introverted Norwegian looks at his own

shoes… and an extroverted one looks at your shoes!’

But this shyness doesn’t mean that Norwegians don’t feel empathy for those in need all

around the world. So to say, the Norwegian peace policy is encoded into the Norwegian

identity, but being an active society in promoting peace generates the Norwegian identity as

well.

Oslo has many great places to visit, one of them is the Holmenkollen ski jump, from which

the whole Oslo fjord comes into sight. But that’s not the only reason why the ski jump is

worth visiting. A reminder to the commitment of peace is installed there: the Eternal Peace

Flame. Eternal flames are established to serve as a memento for a person or an event, the

Norwegian eternal flame stands as a symbol for peace as its name suggests as well. The flame

never wavers, not even the coldest weather has an effect on the small light inside the flower.

And that’s also true for the Norwegians, they will always strive for peace even if it seems

impossible to achieve or despite the fact that the rest of world has no faith in it.

Living in Norway for many months gave my faith back. I believe that peace can be promoted

and I hope I can pass on this message to others, especially when I leave Norway and move

back home. Norway and Norwegians taught me that it doesn’t matter how small and

insignificant a nation is perceived in the world. What is more important, is the commitment,

the empathy towards others and the maintenance of a better and closer connection not just to

our own society but to everyone else.

Zita Pap

photo by Zita Pap

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NEW AGE RELATIONSHIPS

Is it still a man’s World?

I’m pretty sure lots of readers know the song of James Brown - Man’s world. Let me

quote the refrain of the song, if somebody doesn’t know it: “This is a man's world. But it

wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.” However I also could mention

another very famous sentence: “Behind every successful man there is a woman.”

Do women have to be behind a man? I know this question sounds like an old story but it still exists.

Lots of girls and women have to think about what they do, how they behave because they have to be

careful about what the world will think about them, because they are women. Or they can choose to

stay “behind the scenes” and play a good wife, mother and lover at the same time.

However the world is changing so today the situation is better than 20 years ago, but it still starts in

kindergarten. A little girl cannot behave like a boy; they cannot hit somebody or fight with a fellow

kindergartener because this is not how a little lady behaves. I know there are also stereotypes for boys,

like a boy doesn’t cry. Maybe this will never change. But I have never understood why a girl has to be

sensitive and a boy has to be strong enough to not show feeling.

Let me give an example from the very famously feminist series called Sex and the City. One of the

characters didn’t get a job because she is a woman, and it is too difficult to work with a lady because

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they are too sensitive. In the episodes, she felt like crying right then and there but she didn’t

want to show it, so she escaped to the elevator, and started to cry alone. I know this is just an

American television series but I can imagine this scene in real life and not just in America.

This is just one of the million dilemmas what the women have to count on when they would

like to start work. For example if a woman gives birth to a baby, she will stay at home with

the baby because this is the norm in Hungary. Let me compare to America where the women

do not get maternity benefit. So they can choose to go back work right after or hopefully they

have a husband who gets enough money to keep their wife at home.

In our neighbouring country, the Austrian government gives 9 months of paid maternity leave

to mothers in comparison to, for example, Norwegian moms who can stay at home for a

whole year with the baby and get full salary.

Nowadays the trend is changing in Hungary so more and more men stay at home as opposed

to a couple of years ago but the tendency balances really slowly. Maybe because of the fact

that usually the men bring more money home than women. Another interesting question is

how that is possible? Why is there still a difference the women and men’s salary?

I could continue this big “story” for pages. The worst thing which makes me sad is that we

don’t have to go the Arabian countries to talk about why women have to wear chador or why

they have to cover themselves because we still have problems in women and men’s judgments

in Europe.

Csilla Diána Kocsis

photofrom makers.com

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WORLD-WIDE-WORDS

GEORGE GERBNER

A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD HUNGARIAN IN THE MASS OF MEDIA MESSAGES

Toward ’cultural indicators'

Source: Annenberg School of Communication, George Gerbner Archive

1. Win a first prize in Hungarian poetry at the age of 18, 2. be an „enemy alien” in the USA, and 3. date a famous actress – that is the receipt to become a world-renowned communications and media researcher.

Is studying media and communications a realistic lifelong perspective? Participating in a BA/MA programme, or earning a PhD in a quite elusive field…Where do these matter? In our world-wide-words series we are now introducing a man who did exactly these, in an era in which the field of communications hardly existed…

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George Gerbner, probably the most well-known media researcher born in Hungary started his career with writing poems in high school, and then he went on to journalism. After that he became a scientist and author of several books, inter alia one of the most noted mass media effect models, the cultivation theory. Besides he created the first world encyclopaedia of communication. Although his cultivation theory became the subject of numerous criticisms, Gerbner is one of the first media researchers who argues for long-term effects of television, instead of short and one-off impacts.

Born in Budapest, he was only twenty when the WWII began. Recognizing the increasing conflicts, first he fled to Paris then to Mexico and Cuba, finally to the United States, where he was marked as „enemy alien” up to 1942, when he could join the US Army, and was able to return to Europe for a short time. There he met and married his wife, the actress IlonaKutas. Shortly after that he moved back to Los Angeles and later on to Pennsylvania where he started his several-decade research in the field of media, first as an MA-graduate and PhD student, then as a professor. He studied at four grand universities (Budapest, UCLA, USC, and Berkeley), and lectured at four different institutions.

He started working as a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle and just a few decades later he became the executive editor of the Journal of Communication, one of the most renowned academic journals… He joined Upenn, and after five years of its foundation, he had been appointed as the dean of Annenberg School of Communication where he had built up world-class teaching and research faculties and projects. Among Annenberg’s main programmes, Gerbnerfounded the Cultural Indicators Project, a research project on trends in television content and viewer conceptions of social reality, and he also initiated another remarkable one, The Washington Program that brings communications researchers and practitioners together.

Numerous honours, nationwide reputation and word-wide fame: brave but not unachievable goals in a twenty-year-old media and communications student’s mind… While seeking your own ways, don't stop, do carry on reading, for instance Gerbner. Let’s take a look at what we have from him in-house. At the Corvinus’ Central Library (Building C, 1st floor), two publications are available from George Gerbner: one in Hungarian (the translation of his book The hidden message of media) and another one in English in the volume The democratization of communication. I also recommend another evergreen: Communication Review from the summer of ’69, like in the popular song (Vol.2, No.2), that includes Gerbner’s content analysis of mass mediated public message systems. This study covers the baselines of his cultivation theory, and is also available online.

Ágnes SchwedicsComing up next: János S.Petőfi

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A BOY OR A GIRL? Royal Baby Speculation as a Hobby

Royal watchers had always been excited whenever any news concerning the Royal Family appeared, but ever since the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton was announced, baby speculation news has constantly been on the table.

After their wedding in 2011, Parliament passed the Succession to the Crown Act, which states that royal baby boys will no longer precede their elder sisters in the line of succession. One would assume that since the couple’s firstborn child would be the next in line to the throne anyway, the arrival of a new prince or princess would not stir such excitement, right? The answer is a definite no.

When Clarence House announced that Kate was indeed pregnant with their first child, the Internet exploded and speculation about the baby’s gender was unstoppable, up until the point Prince George was born. On 8 September, it was officially announced that the Duchess is expecting again, and the reaction to the news was similar to what happened the first time around.

It’s A Boy!

In the past three months we have been told for certain, that the next Royal Baby would be a boy. The different “sources” always knew that Prince George was going to get a baby brother. We could visualise how they would be as naughty as Prince William and Prince Harry were all those years ago. And if we were not convinced by then, the ultimate reason to predict another little prince was Kate appearing in light blue on numerous occasions: it must a mother’s instinct, right?

It’s A Girl!

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The Royal Family feuding over baby girl names is something that anyone can imagine going on at Buckingham Palace. The Queen, as the bossy grandmother, wants to name the baby Margaret, after her late sister or at least Elisabeth, because that is the obvious thing to do. The evil step-mum, Camilla, wants Kate and Will to name their child after her, pressuring Prince Charles to side with her. Prince William, of course, wants to name her after his mother, the late Princess Diana. That is, if the sources are right and the baby is a girl.

It’s Twins!

The magic of baby speculation is that when one thinks that there cannot be any more absurd theories out there, one just appears and the different media outlets spread it around as a fact. At the beginning of October, two of the UK’s biggest betting companies suspended the option to take bets on the possibility of royal twins. The reason for this was that within one day, a surge of two hundred people put their bets on Kate giving birth to two babies next April, which, as a spokesperson for the companies explained, is the sign of information leaking and people knowing something.

We just have to wait and see

After the mysteriousness that has always surrounded the Royal Family, it does not come as a surprise that people are interested in their lives. As the centuries passed, members of the Royal Family became modern day celebrities and the story of the ordinary girl becoming a princess just added excitement to the buzz.

These theories concerning the baby’s gender are just a few from the many going around the Internet and I am sure, that many will follow until the day we finally get to meet the new addition to the Royal Family. Before we believe everything we read, we need to apply a big dose of media consciousness to our daily Internet browsing routines and handle the crazy theories the way they should be handled.

After all, if you really come to think about it: it is fun to guess and speculate, isn’t it?

Anita Simon

photo from Macca/Fyles, PacificCoastNews.co

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