The smallest brain in the world

We think nowadays that using the internet, searching and connecting with people via the web is cost free. The BBC documentary ‘The Virtual Revolution’ shows that sharing private information online is very valuable. The programme demonstrates that by using even basic search engines like Google, we create a huge database about ourselves every day. The web stores an enormous amount of information about our private lives such as where we live, what we like, where we go to school and do our shopping. We give out this kind of information routinely, every single day for free and it is happening on a enormous scale across the world. As a result we are changing into an online product that is traced and targeted by the advertisement, which is created and tailored to fit our preferences. We are judged and scanned while surfing on the internet. ‘Cookies’ are now a reflection of who we are and what we are portraying about ourselves via our facebook profiles.

The truth is that we are using the web for free, but the information about us is highly priced. We are exchanging our life for the convenience of using web. We exist on the web as a number that can be matched to our computer. We can be traced and indentified by this number using the information that we place online.

 

This great documentary programme did not stop me for using internet, but it will make me think twice before I put any private information into the Google search box.               

‘The Virtual Revolution’ BBC, Episode 3 Part 1 (see more on YouTube).

Embedding as a powerful PR war tactic



Reporter Mervyn Jess at the media

operations centre in Camp Bastion.

Source: BBC News Website

During the movie ‘War Spin’ described in the previous post, one of the PR tactics used by the military in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was to embed the journalists in with the Coalition forces. The aim was to provide the media with a detailed and interesting view of the war for their audience. 

It was also the easiest way for military to control the information and show the public what they would like them to see. By putting them with coalition forces the media were under their control. Independent journalists tended to be more suspicious, attempting to find information the army did not want publicised and embedding them proved to be a useful technique. In the movie, BBC journalists who were travelling with the coalition forces through the Iraq war zone said that it was very hard to stay objective about the military action while you being protected and feed by the soldiers. Essentially the journalists lives depended on the soldiers. As a result, getting the journalists closer to the military work and allowing them to join the forces helped to control the messages spread by the media.


At the end of the documentary there is a very importance sentence that embedding the journalists allowed the military to maximize imagery, whilst providing minimal insight. The images from the field are powerful and very desirable by viewers but show a very subjective point of view. They do not have any great factual value and would be better compared to a Hollywood production, then the work of a journalist. The images from war aim to shock, provoke emotions and mainly take the audience’s attention from the negative side of war.