Term 2 Week 4 Task 4:New Media – Power to the people or threat to stability?

The first article shows how changes to communication technology are helping to spread the influence of terrorists, they can now use very little resources to cause widespread damage and generate confusion among people. This is a threat to stability as people now have the freedom to express their ideas to a great audience; such power in the wrong hands can lead to disastrous consequences. An example is the false allegations of the desecration of a Koran, soon after being published in a magazine it was spread through various forms of media all across the internet; this led to deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, the second article shows how blogging has upheld the universal right to freedom of speech; it has even caused problems in countries that traditionally limit its peoples’ right to expression. Even in a country such as china, where the government practices internet censorship, blogging has become very popular. As a result, the Chinese government turns to imprisonment to silence political unrest caused as a result of blogging. This is practiced in many other countries as well; many feel that such imprisonment is unlawfully denying them of their right to freedom of speech. But no matter what method is used, it is impossible to silence the crowd as the crowd is simply to huge. Once the floodgates have been opened it is not easy to close to them, thus it seems the effects of blogging are here to stay, and as such people are finally getting the freedom of speech they are entitled to.

Response - Is the media reliable in conveying the truth?

I personally feel that the media is a very strong tool in spreading information, but when the reliability of the information comes into question, the media prowess seems weakened. The media can sway peoples' judgement and affect their opinion.

Should the media choose to spread non-truths and attempt to hide the truth in order to decieve the general public, then there would be serious consequences. The people may believe what they see and hear, and unknowingly support a stand that neither complies with what the rest of the world believes nor complies with ethics, this could lead to great misunderstandings. For example, Iran recently released footage of captive british soldiers admitting to trespassing on Iranian waters, yet when the soldiers returned home they admitted that they were wooed into saying that as they were promised a flight home. That is just one example of how the phrase "seeing is believing" does not always hold true, and how the media can be used to spread information is not true.

To a certain extent the ruling government has control of the media, thus it would potray the should should it not be detrimental to the government's regime. for example, during election time, you would usually see footage of the current ruling party on the media, but seldom do you see opposition party's rallies getting a big reeltime. Thus we should really question what we see in the media, and think whether it is really what we want to believe.

Shigeru Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto is the founder of modern day video games, he gave a storyline and added reponsiveness to his games, and transformed the genre. he was employed by Nintendo as an artist, in 1980 he was given the task of designing one of Nintendo's first coin-operated arcade games. The resulting title Donkey Kong was a huge success and the game's lead character, Jump Man - now called Mario - has become Nintendo's mascot. Miyamoto quickly became Nintendo's star producer designing many franchises for the company, most of which are still active and very well-regarded.Without Miyamoto's hard work and dedication to his job, the video game industry would not have recovered from the industries' crash in the 1980s. By giving 'life' to the games, both gamers and non-gamers were attracted yet again to the gaming industry.
Miyamoto believed that, "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever", therefore he never released a game that did not meet his own high standards. Thanks to him and his philosophy, the video gaming industry now has a multi-million dollar annual turnover.