Social Media Innovation

Posts Tagged ‘Government’

Undercover Danbo spreading his propaganda.

Photo credit: Propaganda by JaredVanderzell

In response to the commentary by Erik Sherman at bNet called So, Why Does the Air Force Want Hundreds of Fake Online Identities on Social Media? and this posted discussion question by Steven L. Johnson, this post will look at the ethics of government use of social media.

When governments become involved with social media and its use to spread propaganda and attempt to influence others, there are two sides of the coin. The one side, it can be looked at as completely unethical and opposite to the purpose of existence for government. This is especially true when the attempts are used against its own populace. Our government is in place to serve its constituents, not to push its propaganda back on to them. However, on the other side of the coin, it can be a valuable asset for espionage/infiltration and monitoring potentially dangerous groups before any type of incident arises. Creating fake online personas is just another tool for them to utilize. The government already spends billions of dollars on physical persons to influence opinion, maybe this way, they can move away from spending so much on the physical people and digital personas to accomplish the same thing at a fraction of the cost.

As with everything, the more you want security, the more you lose your freedom. I leave you with a paraphrase of the words of Benjamin Franklin, those who give up their liberty for more security, deserve neither.