Select and research a current article, which discusses
influences of media on security and public safety environments. This is the article:NATO has embraced the power of
social media. The Alliance engages thousands in discussions on defense and
security and these open, online debates have already borne fruit. Transatlantic
policy is no longer the realm of isolated elite: all citizens now have a chance
to make an impact.
The internet has become the virtual public square of the
21st century. It allows people to pursue a multitude of different activities:
from having a private conversation with friends, to hunting for a new job,
promoting a business or organizing a rally. And social media outlets like
Facebook, Twitter or the video-sharing website YouTube have increasingly
demonstrated that their users can also have an impact in shaping international
policy issues.
Cybercritics would disagree. They say that social media
networks connect people only superficially, providing more of a playground to
expose private hobbyhorses than having an impact on political processes. Others
argue that private companies, governments and elected leaders have generally
little interest to interact with their publics and simply look at their
Facebook page as another useful marketing tool; and third again are those full
of fears that that Facebook & co could significantly limit their control of
strategic messaging.
Let’s look at the facts.
In 2011, two billion people are online, nearly a third of
humanity. The most popular social networking site, Facebook, reports more than
750 million active users. It is the world’s most visited website, accessible in
70 languages and consuming 700 billion minutes per month. The microblogging
platform Twitter comes second in place with 200 million registered users. Those
who wish to watch one of Colonel Gadaffi’s last public outbursts will turn to
the video-sharing platform YouTube and find the 20 most current videos within
seconds.
But social media is not just about numbers. Ever since US
President Barack Obama used Facebook and Twitter in his 2008 election campaign,
social media outlets have demonstrated their mobilizing effect on thousands, if
not millions, of people. This, in turn, has changed the way international news
is made, and governments have been forced to react.
Without the 250,000 tweets coming out of Iran in 2009, for
example, news broadcasters and governments alike would have learned little
about the student protests in the country.
And without
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Russian bloggers and their thousands of followers(according to TND Digital Life
2010, 85% of Russian Internet users visit social networks at least once per
week), President Medvedvev and Prime Minister Putin would perhaps not have
agreed to make time to meet with them and discuss the state of democracy in
Russia. But earlier this year they both did.
The Arab Spring is another compelling case. A protest event
in Cairo which was posted on the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said” had
43,000 registered people on January 28, 2011. Only a little time later and
despite the attempt to block internet access in Egypt, it had 1.5 million
"likes" and helped spark public protests against Mubarak’s regime far
beyond the Egyptian capital.
Throughout the developments in the Arab world earlier this
year, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube played a crucial role in organizing public
demonstrations and keeping the news content fresh. People used their laptops,
blackberries and iphones to inform themselves, connect to like-minded friends,
raise awareness of local and global events, discuss policy issues, organize
public protests in support or against the national governments and wherever
needed, circumvent state censorship. In particular young activists, academics,
NGOs, journalists and policymakers in the broader Middle East have come to take
advantage of the democratizing nature of the internet. The
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50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">Arab Social Media Report
of the Dubai School of Government impressively reveals the growing impact of social
networking on civic mobilization in the Arab world. There is no doubt: in spite
of efforts to ban or interrupt internet traffic in some countries, social
networking is on the rise.
Local Twitter scenes also demonstrate that people are hungry
for open, political discussions about the future of their countries. The list
could easily be extended but already the short version makes clear that
Facebook and Twitter are not used to exchange family photos only.
But there is a second important aspect to this. For
consumers, the internet has made the news into something far more participatory
and diverse. Increasingly citizen journalists are acting as sources for a
growing number of news organizations, either by volunteering information
directly or by posting comments, pictures or videos. News is now generated,
filtered and distributed by non-professionals to a large extent. CNN’s iReport
website is a good example. More than 750,000 people have volunteered as
“iReporters” and submit their reports from practically all over the world.
Al-Jazeera has followed the same pattern. Just one month prior to the Arab
spring, the channel decided to beef up its social media training for the Arab
and English newsroom staff. As part of this strategy Al-Jazeera also hired
trusted reporters with a proven credibility to cover events in Libya, Egypt,
Tunisia, Syria and elsewhere. Another example is the Huffington Post which,
since its creation in 2005, has become one of the most linked-to blog websites,
attracting over 26 million unique users per month. Meanwhile many of the
traditional print and broadcast media have embraced, at least to a certain
extent, blogging as part of their news reporting and commentaries; yet the
downsize to this is that the lines between responsibilities of professional
editors, journalists and bloggers have become blurred.
So where is NATO in all of this? For sure, NATO is
definitely not just a bystander to the global online world. We have watched it
evolve and have come to respect its potential. We are fully committed to
supporting it, and we want to be an active participant in the digital world.
But we are also aware that cyber space carries some risks and challenges and
that social networking must respect democratic ground rules.
In the Alliance’s 28 Member countries, but also in our
partner countries, we want to connect with people who are interested in
discussing security and defense issues. We want to encourage such discussions,
facilitate them where we can, and be a part of them. We want to understand
peoples’ viewpoints about the critical security challenges that we all face.
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, international blogs such as Global Voices,
Huffington Post, and many other sites are excellent digital fora to connect and
engage with people across the globe.
Rasmussen's digital activities are closely aligned to those
of NATO as an organization. The Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels are fed
with press statements, news stories and interesting background videos on the
entire spectrum of NATO’s political and military agenda on a daily basis.
Nowadays nobody can claim that NATO hides behind diplomatic brick walls. What
we are doing, what we are thinking and with whom we are doing business – it is
all out there. Online. Accessible to anyone who has the time and the interest
to follow us.
But we have started to do more. We have invited bloggers to
come to Brussels, and we will continue to do so. We have begun to
systematically place opinion pieces and background stories on international
blogs. All important NATO official meetings and public events are now reported
on social media networks. We continue supporting existing online communities
such as the
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50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">Atlantic Community,
encouraging them to have discussions on NATO’s role in Afghanistan, the current
operation in Libya, relations with Russia or gender issues in military
operations.
We even went as far as inviting the internet community to
discuss our new Strategic Concept online. During the first six months of last
year we hosted online chats with people from across the NATO family to debate
how our future Strategic Concept should be shaped and which burning issues it
should address. NATO’s online discussions about the new Strategic Concept found
a broad echo and demonstrated that transatlantic security issues must not and
should not just be discussed by a the small community of so-called ‘movers and
shakers’ in defense and security.
As I look forward to the next NATO Summit in Chicago in May
next year, I am sure that we will follow the same approach and invite people to
online discussions about what the next Summit should achieve.
But NATO is also in the business of enabling others to join
the conversation in cyber space. For a few years now, we have been running what
we call the ‘Afghanistan Silk Highway’ – a project that provides internet
connectivity to remote universities in Afghanistan. The reason behind it is
pretty simple: we want Afghan students to use the internet. We want to help
them to connect to the rest of the world. Hence NATO provides the technology
and training needed for them to become full digital citizens.
To be frank, not all NATO member countries have come to
realize the potential power of social media. There are still many in the NATO
family who think Facebook and Twitter are alien to international diplomacy and
that the cyber chit-chat does not really add to the quality of the
transatlantic debate. The United States and a few others are positive
exceptions to this. Since last summer US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
continues to promote the policy of ‘digital diplomacy’ and ‘internet freedom’.
According to her chief advisor on communications and innovation, Alec Ross, the
State Department has spent some $28 million to enhance its own digital outreach
and innovation and support internet freedom elsewhere in the world. US
Ambassadors and senior diplomats are now authorized to use Twitter and Facebook
in order to explain and advocate US policies abroad. Altogether the State
Department is host of 288 Facebook pages, 125 YouTube channels and tweets in
nine different languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Chinese and a few more.
US military personnel, including those deployed in operations, have also
received ‘Social Media Guidelines’, allowing them, within certain limits, to
participate in social networks, too. All this makes the US Administration’s
social media efforts very robust.
For sure, the discussion about the advantages and challenges
to social media will continue. For the Alliance, Facebook & co is not a
question of ‘either/or’ but a useful complement to other, more traditonal means
to inform and engage people. To make good use of digital networks, an
organization needs to put adequate staff, financial resources and more
importantly, a well-defined social media strategy in place. We have started to
do all this and we will learn and adapt as we go along, because NATO wants to
be where the citizens are.
Prepare a 500 word
paper in which you assess the significance of mass media and the direct affect
that it has had on changing the security and public safety working
environments.
The paper must address this:
Distinguish between general
public opinion and vocal special interest groups.
Format your paper
consistent with APA guidelines.