How does government affect social media use and how does social media affect governments?

How does government affect social media use and how does social media affect governments?

“Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O'Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O'Brien: You do not exist.”

This question raises the issue of who benefits the most from the use of social media and shows how the government is affected in both positive and negative ways. On a positive side for the government they are able to find out more about their people, to help effect change in how they run their administration and target specific groups to get real time information.

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

― United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 The way social media is used politically to impact on governments depends on how the government is run. In a democratic society people have a chance to voice their opinions and be heard. Their voice through social media can have great impact on the decisions made by their government. Petitions are regularly posted on FaceBook to change policy around issues of concern. An example of this recently in NZ (Canterbury) there has been concern around the issue of allowing bore water to be taken by foreign companies for bottling and exporting overseas. Thousands of people all around NZ have signed petitions posted on FaceBook in an attempt to persuade the government to implement policy to stop this happening. Social media provides this platform for citizens to raise their concerns and make the government aware in the expectation they will take notice and make changes. This is people power afforded by social media. Special interest groups such as GreenPeace use social media platforms to their advantage to influence governments to make changes. Greenpeace uses social media to alert the public about government actions that affect the public. (as shown in the image below -taken from a Facebook post. 


There are many instances where the population has been alerted to protests and current events concerning them through the medium of Twitter. The concise nature and immediacy of Twitter is perfect to impart messages to galvanize the public to meet and take action around political issues. 

 Conversely within a dictatorship or communist state social media is severely restricted and citizens can face dire consequences for posting any issues or even for using social media at all. In North Korea citizens are forbidden even to use the Internet. 
Governments can also use the power of social media to influence the population. An example of this is the way the elections unfolded recently in the United States. Social media was a huge part of the run up to the elections as each party sought positive exposure for themselves and negative exposure for the other parties. 
Governments routinely gather data about their citizens through social media and use this data in a variety of ways unknown to person involved. The term 'big brother is watching you' comes to mind!
The collection of big data - government departments were encouraged by the Obama administration to harness the world wide web in a more entrepreneurial way, like Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook. This is to enable the process of collecting more information about not just the American people but also anyone who is using the web, with the view of collecting Big data, to enable ’Big brother’ to be more effective in monitoring and controlling the population as a whole.

 How does this effect the way you use social media tools such as Facebook? Are you selective about your posts or do you target the government and protest about certain situations that push your buttons? Do social media platforms influence you about which government party you might vote for?
 
Watch this video to find out more!
What have you found interesting in this video? What are your thoughts about social media and influences on or from governments?
I will be interested to hear from you so please leave a comment

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