Response Week 10

In relation to SNS, people created different online personas for themselves depending on the people who will be viewing their profile.  Will this “online alteration” spread to the government and it’s idea of transparency?  If so, will the transparency of the government be truly transparent or just well created manipulations of the truth?

After discussing Wikileaks, citizen journalism and SNS I have reached the conclusion that very few things on the Internet are 100% true.  Even fewer of these things are true in relation to the government.  I think the “online alteration” has already spread to the government.  This transformation has increased governmental transparency, however, transparency does not always equal truth.

The digital age has made it easy for the government to get messages out to the masses.  Remember FDR’s fireside chats?  Presidents have taken advantage of technology to feed information to people, and the Internet has made this even easier.  There is one main sticking point-just because there is an abundance of information coming from the government doesn’t mean the information is meaningful or true.  Now everyone can know what President Obama ate for lunch, what the First Lady wore and what the First Kids are up to.  That’s great, but it doesn’t tell us what’s going on politically.

This is where Wikileaks seems to come in.  Because the government doesn’t always tell the masses what is really going on, people “leak” the information and it has to be posted behind the government’s back.  Really, what does that say about us as a society?  Then this whole issue of trust arises once again.  Can we trust Wikileaks?  Is all that information sensationalized or is it true?

That’s the thing about our society today, there is a ton of information available, especially in relation to the government, but truth, that’s really an unknown.  The digital and interactive age are great, but has it become a great distraction from what is really important?  Never before have we questioned truth quite so much.  Perhaps all this new technology is the perfect canvas for scandal, conspiracy and lies.  Very few people would ever notice if it’s covered up with pretty websites, videos, slideshows, animations and interactivity.