You will need to supplement and update the notes that follow.
1) China's digital
challenge to the US, the EU and NATO as regards the next generation of ITCs. https://timruhlig.eu/ctf/assets/x93kiko5rt7l/4uiZoNQtRkni5KfuNDrBbx/fd52e3320cfe21e6b304ad31d81279d8/DPC-full_report-FINAL.pdf
https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/nato-and-cyberspace-challenge-20383
https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2022/03/Horizon_Scanning_vol2_15032022.pdf
https://www.ncafp.org/2016/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/US_China-Tech.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNYH94orAwc https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2019/01/china-digital-silk-road https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/04/03/468136/limit-leverage-compete-new-strategy-china/
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-us-condemnation-china-state-sponsored-cyberattacks/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_China
2) Current and
potential ITC threats and attacks from China and Russia on sensitive Western
targets. e.g. security, government administration
and business.
https://ecfr.eu/article/why-europes-energy-industry-is-vulnerable-to-cyber-attacks/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/30/russia-cyber-attacks-us-ukraine-biden/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/us-charges-russian-hackers-cyber-attacks
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/21/biden-russia-exploring-cyberattacks-companies-must-be-ready.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60841924
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-sanctions-russian-chinese-hackers-over-alleged-cyberattacks/a-54386841
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/23/experts-china-low-level-cyber-war-severe-threat
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/18/orion-hack-solarwinds-explainer-us-government
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/19/chinese-hackers-eu-communications-network-1040166
https://www.cfr.org/blog/new-cyber-brief-new-old-threat-chinese-industrial-cyber-espionage
3) Fake news
and attempts by dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to interfere in Western
politics and influence public opinion and at the same time to disseminate propaganda
and improve their country's image.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum
https://www.dw.com/en/russian-disinformation-mainly-targets-germany-eu-report/a-56812164
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/russias-disinformation-campaign-against-us
https://formiche.net/2020/05/infodemic-unveiled-russia-china-geopolitical-bet-italy/
https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/european-elections-russia-and-fake-news-under-commission-s-scrutiny http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2018/620230/EPRS_ATA(2018)620230_EN.pdf This may be linked to China's ongoing expansion into ownership of foreign newspapers and 'sponsoring' foreign journalists
https://time.com/5557951/china-interference-global-media/
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/business/dealbook/alibaba-scmp-south-china-morning-post.html
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-buying-positive-news-coverage-11272018114512.html
4) The idea
that today most of the public gets its news from internet and/or very biased
traditional media (a private TV channel) and that the public is politically less
informed and more easily manipulated than in the past. Is this true?
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/it/node/10168
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/21/media-journalism-future-527294
5) The use of
the internet for recruitment and indoctrination not only by Islamist terrorists
but now also by white supremacists intending to carry out terrorist attacks.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-psychologie-sociale-2010-1-page-25.htm
https://www.osce.org/secretariat/107810
6) The question of who should control
the contents of websites, blogs and chats in democratic countries (what kind of
liability there should be and under what legal authority and how this would
work in practice with regard to Google, Facebook, Twitter etc...).
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/25/european-union-big-tech-googld-facebook-meta
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/09/eu-plan-facebook-google-online-copyright-law
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/open-internet
The question
of who should ‘govern’ or run the internet and censor it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_governance#History
https://www.internetgovernance.org/2022/03/08/the-narrative-have-we-reached-splinternet-yet/
Countries
like China no longer allow Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc. to operate. Others limit
access.
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/internet-censorship-map/ excellent
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/09/01/china-great-firewall-generation-405385
Could such censorship expand through apparently neutral international bodies? https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37527719
Why doesn’t Europe have its own search engines and social media like the US, China and Russia rather than only trying to have more control over Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter etc.?
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/could-there-be-european-google.html
https://www.qwant.com/
7) The way the
Italian Foreign Ministry and EU use the Internet and social media to inform the
public and promote their values.
https://www.esteri.it/it/ministero/contatti/
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/it/sheet/144/politica-di-comunicazione
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/contact/index_it.htm
https://www.politicheeuropee.gov.it/it/
https://www.esteri.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Documento-conclusivo-CdR-2021-2.pdf
Background
‘Information and communications technologies’(ITCs) are broad terms which
refer to a wide range of things and
ideas – ICT infrastructure, such as Internet /what is found on it, search
engines like Google, the World Wide
Web (an information space) and websites
of all kinds, the social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, WeChat,
TikTok, the kind of interactive web-sites that use these technologies to generate
and pass on information and comment on a massive scale / cell phones, PCs and
tablets and other devices for connecting to Internet and operating on it / even
satellite TV and traditional media like the press as they go online and become
more interactive (#). The digital media, in turn, make possible the creation of
open web communities within a country and across borders. Many experts argue
that this has led, and will continue to lead, to a greater democratization of
politics, i.e. the general IT
computer-literate public will be able to share and receive information, discuss
and debate issues, exchange and evolve opinions, and plan and coordinate political
action via the Web independently of governments. Thus, political dissidents,
for example, may be able to communicate with each other and with the outside
world. In such a scenario politics and our knowledge of world events will no
longer be exclusively in the hands of a political élite (democratically elected
or not) and a media élite (democratically controlled or not). Cell phones, for instance, usually
make it possible to provide some visual and text material relating to real time
events even when an authoritarian regime attempts to block the information
flows on Internet. This was demonstrated during the anti-government
demonstrations in Iran and Myanmar in 2009.
Only time will tell whether this
vision of the potentially changed nature of politics is real, or potentially
real, or simply wildly over-optimistic wishful-thinking. After all, neither the
government in Iran nor that in Myanmar actually fell at that time, and blocking
Internet or a clamp-down on Internet freedom has not proved impossible, as the
situation in China and Russia has demonstrated. However, a real shift in power away
from the central government may eventually take place, given the role of the social
media in the Arab Spring (not just Internet and social media alone but also in
combination with satellite TV, like Al Jazeera
in Arabic #), starting in Tunisia in December 2010 and spreading across
the Arab world in 2011-13, and helping to bring down the regimes in Tunisia,
Egypt (at least temporarily), and Libya and threatening those in Bahrain and Yemen
and sparking the Syrian civil war. It seems clear that social media can be used
very successfully by broad-based movements calling for political change. One
should bear in mind, however, that without widespread discontent and active
physical commitment to opposition to a regime (a willingness by people to
protest on the streets), it seems unlikely that these technologies in
themselves will lead to real democratic change where an authoritarian regime
holds power, except perhaps in the very long term (as they gradually alter the
political environment and expectations regarded as normal by a particular
generation).
There is, of course, a more pessimistic
scenario, one in which a Big Brother-style regime uses these technologies to
monitor, entrap dissidents and suppress organized opposition, and where
necessary the security forces to break up and repress protest. This seems to already
be happening in China on a truly terrifying scale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/business/chinas-russia-information.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/29/china-new-hong-kong-law-roadmap-repression
https://jewishcurrents.org/russias-anti-war-protesters-are-facing-unprecedented-repression
https://dgap.org/en/research/publications/russias-quest-digital-sovereignty
https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-ukraine-war-russian-public-opinion/31734536.html
In an old interview Bill Gates once
pointed out that we are still in the early stages of the information
revolution, so the future is difficult to predict (the equivalent of being
present at the industrial revolution in 1800 and trying to predict its future
course). What is already clear, however, is that governments, democratic and
non-democratic, are being forced to respond to the challenge of the new media,
whether they see it as a positive factor or a threat to their authority and
independence. Governments, political parties, government offices and public agencies
at all levels, lobby groups, NGOs and individual politicians (as well as
companies and the private sector) have all gone online in order to respond and
interact with ordinary citizens and customers. Meanwhile social-networking
sites provide space for discussion of and response to all the information
provided by these and other sources such as the traditional media (newspapers,
radio stations, TV channels and their related web sites) and blogs.
For diplomats the new media offer rapid access
to events as they unfold and sometimes more accurate and detailed information
about those events than that immediately available from traditional channels
and sources, as well as easy communications within the diplomatic corps and the
diplomatic community. They also offer a platform from which to explain the
country’s foreign policy and a forum in which diplomats can monitor public
reaction to policies proposed or implemented, dialogue with citizens and groups
and respond to criticism or misunderstandings. At the same time the growth of ICTs
and social media often means growing pressure on diplomats to respond in real
time to events as they occur, and diminishing space for secret or quiet
diplomacy (e.g. the release by Al Jazeera
of the Palestine Papers in 2011). It may also mean less secure channels of communication
if whistle-blowers, for whatever reasons, decide to reveal internal
communications. This was always a danger in traditional diplomacy. Compared
with whistle-blowers in the past, the difference today in the Manning and Snowden
cases is the amount and sensitivity of the information that they had access
to, and the ease with which this information can be disclosed and disseminated.
The same was true for the Palestine Papers case.
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward
Manning) was a United
States Army soldier who was
convicted in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage
Act and other offenses, after releasing to
WikiLeaks the largest quantity of classified documents ever leaked
to the public. Much of the material
was published by WikiLeaks or its media partners between April and November
2010. The material included videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike,
and the 2009 Granai
airstrike in Afghanistan, 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables
and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq
War logs and Afghan
War logs. The case of the
Palestine Papers and Al Jazeera, is emblematic of the new difficulties that diplomats
face in this new environment. A Palestinian diplomatic team, in good faith, had
exploratory talks with the Israelis, discussing hypothetically which of their
goals they would be prepared to give up or compromise on in order to obtain a
comprehensive treaty with Israel. Documents relating to these meetings were
leaked from the office of the main PLO negotiator, Sa’eb Ereka, to Al Jazeera
which posted and broadcast them in January 2011, causing enormous embarrassment
to those involved and leading to resignations. Edward Snowden, a former
contractor for the CIA, left the US in May 2013 after leaking to the media
details of extensive Internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence.
The NSA had been secretly collecting US telephone records. Mr Snowden was granted
temporary asylum in Russia but faces espionage charges in the US concerning his
actions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Papers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
Another concern is the overall
security of this interconnected system of communications. For example, could
Internet be taken over or down by a massive cyber-attack or a physical assault
of some kind? This seems unlikely as the web is run by 1086 ‘root name servers’
(July 2020) around the world. One of them in California runs 80 million company
addresses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/who-owns-the-internet-and-who-should-control-it
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/faqs-2014-01-23-it
They are
usually housed in a secure location with various back-up power systems. Should
any of these root servers fail or be taken down there is a back-up network
where systems management information is copied, which would thus be able to
take over in the event of an attack and keep the system going. So, according to
Bill Gates, it is difficult to see how a cyber-attack or even a physical attack
by a terrorist group on the site of a root server could really endanger the system.
Again, however, he stresses that we are in the early days of computer
technology and all predictions are doubtful.
Another worrying factor is the disruption
to electronic systems that could be caused by some kind of atmospheric disaster,
natural or man-made, which disables the global satellite system that relays
much of our communications. Are we becoming too dependent on a fragile system?
For example, rather alarmingly, some experts argue that the system as a whole
may be at risk from extreme solar storms which pose a threat to all forms of
high-technology. They begin with an explosion, a solar flare in the magnetic
canopy of a sunspot. X-rays and extreme UV radiation reach Earth at light
speed, ionizing the upper layers of our atmosphere The side-effects include radio
blackouts and GPS navigation errors. Minutes to hours later, the energy
particles arrive. Moving only slightly slower than light itself,
electrons and protons accelerated by the blast can electrify satellites and damage
their electronics. Then comes the coronal mass ejection, a CME, billion-ton
clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to cross the Sun-Earth
divide. Analysts believe that a direct hit by an extreme CME such as the
one that missed Earth in July 2012 could cause widespread and long-term power
blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket. Electronic communications
systems would be hit, and perhaps nuclear facilities too.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/
Growing concern about privacy issues, disinformation and
false news campaigns for the purposes of political manipulation have raised huge
and complex questions about the governance of the Internet and social media.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2017
In
the context of the terrorist attacks in Europe in recent years in 2016 the Eu
moved to counter the spread of extremism online:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52016DC0379
and
in 2017 began to move on fake news:
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-4481_en.htm
As regards cyber-attacks by states,
individuals or groups on an individual state or particular institutions, one of
the earliest examples occurred in Estonia in 2007 when coordinated
cyber-attacks on web sites belonging to the government, banks and
telecommunications companies were launched, apparently, from within Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051802122.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare
Such an attack can be highly effective and temporarily completely disrupt a
society. It might be an end in itself, or the first step towards a military
attack. Similarly effective are attacks designed to hack into supposedly secure
systems for espionage purposes. In response to claims that there have been
cyber-attacks from China on the US, the US and its NATO allies have become increasingly
aware of the dangers and say they are working to improve defense systems
against such attacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_in_China
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_78170.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_Russia
Governments can also use the web, and not
merely to provide citizens with information, but also for propaganda purposes
in order to control and manipulate public opinion (domestic disinformation, a
criticism often made of China, Russia and Iran). However, the permanent
elimination of sites that a government disapproves of, whether those of
terrorists or dissidents, is much more difficult if the individuals are
prepared to accept the risk of identification. It involves constant vigil and
control, and may at best be only partially effective, since a site which is
blocked can be reactivated with a new address or hidden within a link from another
innocuous site, and firewalls and other barriers to block access to information
can often be skirted (circumvented). On the other hand, China has had considerable
success in blocking foreign servers and web sites. Many experts argue, however,
that the Chinese one-party government is less worried about the influence of
information coming into China from abroad than about dissent and unsupervised
discussion within China between Chinese citizens. A recent report claims that
the government pays around 50,000 people to write and post pro-government
articles on social network sites and to infiltrate, spy on and denounce
dissident groups and individuals. So, it is clear that the security and
anonymity of on-line critics of the Chinese government within China is very
limited.
The US has a sophisticated system (ECHELON) for monitoring a large
proportion of the world's civilian email, telephone, fax and data
traffic, which it has used to combat terrorism, to the annoyance of many civil
rights groups. This works in two ways. First, all the communications of a known
suspect can be closely monitored. This is often very effective. Second, general
communications can be monitored on the basis of the use of key
words or expressions. This is obviously much less effective. It requires
significant man-power and extensive use of translation. As traffic on the
internet expands so will the costs, so that this kind of monitoring will always
involve a large amount of luck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGSYktqmlJY
http://www.globalresearch.ca/echelon-today-the-evolution-of-an-nsa-black-program
The PRISM (electronic surveillance program) is a further development within
this context. Edward Snowden’s revelations about the alleged misuse of such
systems to target ordinary citizens, both foreigners and Americans, at the very
least raise serious concerns about government security agencies and privacy
issues. The American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) argued that the phone surveillance program violates both the US First
Amendment rights of free speech and association, and the Fourth Amendment's protections
against unreasonable searches and seizures. It filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District
Court in New York (June
2013). The US government argued its use of the system is legitimate (the government
has an obligation to ensure the safety of its citizens). In June 2015, Congress
passed a law that ended collection of data in this way, instead allowing the NSA
to search the phone companies’ records only if it gets court approval first. http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-appeals-court-backs-government-in-nsa-phone-surveillance-case-1446128749
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/leslie-harris/1807government-surveillance-viewed-though-global-prism
http://www.munlaws.com/uploads/1/9/7/7/19771651/munlaws_-_hrc_sg_1.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/us/politics/nsa-phone-records.html
While the
Web may sometimes provide a democratic space for communications between
dissidents struggling for greater freedom in some authoritarian states, and a
space for like-minded people in a democratic country to exchange information,
learn and form pressure groups to increase government transparency and accountability,
‘open web communities’ – it also, unfortunately provides a
space for ‘closed web communities’ e.g. terrorists can
recruit and indoctrinate in a space that tends to cut off and isolate the
individual and can become more real than the outside world and the daily life
of the subject. This can lead to a radical psychological reprogramming of the individual.
Criminal organizations can also use the Internet to recruit, monitor and to
threaten people.
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/terrorism/news-and-events/use-of-the-internet.html
Big Brother –
those authoritarian governments which manage to gain near total control of the
digital space available to their citizens can launch long-term indoctrination programs,
of a truly Orwellian kind, aimed at ensuring social conformity and uncritical
support for the national government.
Whistle-blowers
– The Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks case, the Palestine Papers case and the
Edward Snowden case, have illustrated many of the key points relating to the
evolving uses that can made of the new media. Large quantities of confidential
information can, with the help of someone inside an organization with access to
that information, be copied and transferred out of the system and posted for
public consumption very rapidly. It is unclear how we should view such a
phenomenon. Is this a further step towards government accountability,
transparency and real democracy - something which will affect diplomacy and may
have significant consequences (some of them legal) for politicians who lie and
agencies that infringe existing privacy laws? Does this mean there is a need
for new law to cover new types of surveillance? And how should jurisdiction for
acts committed in cyberspace work? Whistleblowers themselves claim they are
driven to an act of conscience by a desire to expose wrong-doing by their own
government and seem ready to accept the risks and legal consequences. Governments
usually argue that such behavior is a danger to the real concerns of national
and international security, and one for which both the supplier and receiver of
such information should be prosecuted. Can we believe Julian Assange when he
claims that WikiLeaks would never post information that might endanger
somebody’s life (that of a soldier at the front, for example)? More important, can
we be sure that other people will act with the same level of responsibility? Is
this becoming a phenomenon that is beyond a government’s ability to control? If
not, what new levels of security and restriction on information need to be
introduced, and would these risk damaging our right to freedom of expression
and a free press (freedom of information)? If so, what are the implications for
government activity in general and diplomatic activity in particular? Will
there remain any space for secret negotiation, quiet diplomacy, where perhaps
this might be necessary or beneficial, or for diplomats to express candid
opinions to other diplomats on what they assume is a secure channel? The
response of WikiLeaks sympathizers to the initial arrest of Assange was to protest
by blocking access to certain banks and credit institutions by bombarding their
web sites with requests for access and this is also significant. Assange was
granted political asylum by Ecuador and then resided at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He later lost this protection and was arrested
and now faces the possibility of extradition to the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59608641
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/24/uk-high-court-grants-assange-right-to-appeal-extradition-ruling
Privacy is thus a growing issue of concern in many countries. Civil rights
groups claim that the largely unmonitored collection, exchange and use of data
on people (whether legally or illegally obtained) by government agencies and
private companies is a clear infringement of privacy rights, e.g. the US Bill
of Rights, Fourth Amendment, see:
https://edps.europa.eu/data-protection/data-protection/reference-library/mobile-devices_en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#Fourth_Amendment
Here is the
EU position:
The News International phone-hacking scandal in
Britain 2011 demonstrated how exposed individuals, both famous ones and
ordinary citizens, are to targeted phone-hacking by unscrupulous journalists
and newspapers. Individuals operating online are similarly exposed to increased
risks of invasions of privacy and government surveillance. The role of the Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
in the UK in 2013 received considerable media attention when the former National
Security Agency contractor Edward
Snowden revealed that the agency was attempting
to collect all online and telephone data in the UK via the Tempora
program. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing disclosures of global surveillance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_privacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_and_network_surveillance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters
Finally,
the investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the US presidential
election of 2016, its apparently unsupervised use of Facebook and Twitter
accounts to launch fake news and conduct a campaign of disinformation and the
Trump campaign's alleged collusion with it, raised widespread concerns about
the security of Western democratic systems in general. Any effective response
will presumably require more oversight of online activities. This may, in turn,
conflict with issues regarding both online privacy and free speech. For civil
rights groups the Internet, once seen as a way for citizens to obtain better
access to information, as a space for greater democracy and freedom of speech
and a way to make the state more accountable, now risks becoming a means to
invade a citizen’s privacy, limit their freedom of speech and manipulate public
opinion. Moreover, for a democratic state, for its political institutions and
for its IT experts, at a practical level these issues raise the question of
just how the supervision required to protect democracy and ensure security can
be achieved technically.
https://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/sisr.nsf/comunicazione/decennale-intelligence/gentiloni.html
http://www.dw.com/en/countering-fake-news-while-safeguarding-free-speech/a-37924278
https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/internet-speech
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170301-lies-propaganda-and-fake-news-a-grand-challenge-of-our-age
Conclusion –
The digital media have significantly changed the space in which political
discussion and action take place. This affects directly security, privacy,
freedom of speech and the way the state (democratic or otherwise) functions.
This is simply a reality and not something that can be undone. For example, diplomats
will have to accept that secret diplomacy and quiet diplomacy, for better or
worse, will now be much more difficult. They need to embrace the positive
features the new environment offers in terms of being better able to
communicate and dialogue with the public, within their own service and with the
government and public in other countries. All this means that international
relations will have to adapt to this new and rapidly evolving reality. At the
same time, since the IT revolution is probably still in its early stages, it is
difficult to predict the course it will take and the effect it will have on
international affairs. It is, after all, an ongoing process.
General Background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks
http://insct.syr.edu/about/news/william-c-banks-on-wikileaks/
http://www.wiu.edu/cbt/eds/TheDigitalDisruption.pdf
http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/FA_Democracy_and_Internet.pdf
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/12/145125429/who-should-control-the-internet-some-say-the-u-n
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130103_internet_governance_outlook_2013/
|
#
Despite the fact that social media played a significant role in sparking the
Arab Spring, it was satellite broadcasting that was able to provide the Arab
masses with minute-by-minute coverage of developments. This medium broadcast
to Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria and followed stories about the
leaders and other officials involved in regime changes. It was satellite
television that gave voice to the opposition. AlJazeera, AlArabiya, the BBC’s
Arabic news channel, AlHurra, and France 24 were the main news networks that
played a significant role in informing the Arab world about Arab Spring events.
The paper cited in the link below not only describes the role these networks
played in covering the Arab Spring, but also analyzes the important role the
networks played in preparing the region for the aftermath by giving a voice
to the voiceless, covering opposition groups, exposing corruption, reporting
demonstrations, and discussing issues of freedom, democracy, and social justice
in the Arab states. |
The debate
over the legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the claims made by the US and
British governments that Iraq had WMDs and the use made of the media in this
context is also very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq#Weapons_of_Mass_Destruction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_%28weapons_expert%29#WMD_dossier
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