Had the Vietnam Conflict taken place during a time in which participants could almost immediately upload their own images of the war to a global network of information to be viewed by thousands, public opinion probably would not have needed the more organized news media in order to turn against the war. The streamlined nature of modern information sharing is enough to circumvent the close relationship between the news media and the military that existed during the first part of the war in Iraq. Candid videos depicting the US Armed Forces as a bunch of Duke lacrosse players and the enemy as an unseen collective can turn public support before established news stations begin to question the practices of the military.
Censorship is not a factor (mostly, on Youtube; completely almost everywhere else on the Internet) when uploading videos. Images presented on the Internet can be almost guaranteed to be beyond those which are allowed to be broadcast on television (without some sort of take-your-children-out-of-the-room warning), so they naturally can have a deeper impact on the viewer. While the military can tell the public to ignore these videos, they cannot censor them or stop them from being disemminated (as long as the Net stays Neutral), and any warning that comes from the military about the validity of Youtube videos would likely be transmitted through the mainstream media. If user-created content becomes more credible than the stuff you see on TV, what authority is there to tell you not to take independently obtained information seriously? The military could prohibit soldiers from sending photos and videos over the Internet, but if the aim of all of the suppression is to stop materials that would hurt public support for the war, then their outlawing of independent material hurts them just as much.
Monday, April 28, 2008
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