TIME 14:52

Politics

In this modern world politicians are using turning to more and more forms of media in order to spread their words of wisdom. In the United States of America, President Barack Obama has over 41 million followers. Closer to home former Prime Minister and social media fanatic Kevin Rudd has nearly 1.4 million followers is regularly seen taking 'selfies' with the youth of the nation. The main question is, does social media help politicians? Can it influence their popularity and lead to more votes or will it do more damage than good?

According to the Australian, Kevin Rudd has missed the mark. The article dated August 19th 2013, during Rudd's short second stint as Prime Minister, states that proximity is the key to a successful campaign stating that those physically closest to the candidate have the most influence. Some key statistics gathered from virtual focus groups listed social media low on the list of preferred sources for news on Australian politics.

83% Newspapers

81% ABC television

81% ABC radio

49% Commercial television

36% Blogs and non-mainstream media

31% Social media

One could argue that blogs form a part of social media, which would raise the figure above 31%, none the less, social media is not seen as a particularly favourable way to gather information about politics in Australia.

According to Gallup.com the figures do not paint help social media in the United States with the preferred news source being Television with 55% and Internet at only 21%, with only 2% coming from Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

So why do politicians insist on using social media? Thumbprintmarketinggroup.com believes it comes down to four reasons, worldwide reach, saving money, donations and trust.

These are all legitimate reasons and considering the ease and price of using social media, it seems stupid to not make use of what can be used as an essentially free marketing tool that gives wider and faster reach world wide then many other forms of media. Even 2%, for the costs involved, is worth using social media.

For politicians, much like businesses and and anybody else, social media can be a very beneficial and helpful tool, the key is to make sure that it is used correctly in order to have the best outcome. Taking a leap out of Mitt Romney's book and buying followers will no doubt cause more damage than good, and it might be a good idea to keep the number of selfies to a minimum to avoid targeting the wrong demographic for the party's policies.

Wikileaks is a non-for-profit media organisation officially launched in 2007 by Julian Assange. Wikileaks has been subject to much criticism and has caused an ethical debate over the past six years due to the manner in which the information they have released was sourced and if the information should have been released at all.

But what has Wikileaks done and why does everyone have an opinion on it? According to the Global Post a brief history of Wikileaks includes publishing Sarah Palin’s emails after Anonymous had hacked into her account, publishing a video of a helicopter attack that killing civilians and journalists, publishing information supplied by Bradley Manning, publishing 91,000 documents about the United State’s involvement in Afghanistan and publishing war logs; over 400,000 classified documents.

Simply put, given that the information obtained by Wikileaks was all done illegally so this list in itself seems to show that Wikileaks and Julian Assange are bad people. But looking into what the publication of these documents has achieved is where opinion begins to divide. Opinio Juris lists why the benefits out weight the dangers.

Firstly the bad: Diplomacy- the effects on diplomatic relationships due to the fact that government documents have been released in the past. Safety: the first batch of Wikileaks documents published failed to remove the names of informants. Transparency: there is a view that ordinary American’s know more than they need to know about the day to day goings on about the US government and military.

Now the Good: We have learned a lot about what has gone on in the war in the Middle East, the death of over 109,000 people including over 66,000 civilians by Iraqi and coalition forces. Security has been increased in many governments throughout the world to prevent hacking and future publication of documents.

So what do you think?

Is WikiLeaks evil or good?

For me, as a former military man myself I understand the power and necessity of ‘Need-to-Know’ information and only informing military members and the civilian population of information that is relevant and necessary. There are many things that I was involved in that I only needed to know the bare bones of the task. However in terms of safety and security, governments being hacked into is a danger that should have never been made possible and the fact that security has been enhanced is beneficial for everybody.

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