Big brother is watching you! Or, more likely today, monitoring your twitter feed!
Actually, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but it is true that government, like businesses, have found social media irresistible, not just for the amount of data that is available through it, but for a wide variety of positive uses as well.
Let me count the ways (please note the following is not an exhaustive list):
- Police use social media to catch baddies! And pass on informative messages about traffic delays.
- Public information campaigns about important topics, like flags, are distributed through a wide variety of social mediums as well as traditional ones.
- Election campaigns are conducted as much online these days as on soapboxes, and a recent study found that there is a statistically significant relationship between the size of online social networks of candidates and election voting and election results.
- Information and experience is shared within large government bureaucracies using intranets, or wikis.
- Governments can ask questions of the people and get answers, or allow campaigns to drive change, such as change.org.
Ah but the risks
earfluff 