Recent news discussed that prime ministers want to ban the use of twitter to prevent acts such as the most recent riots. They believe that twitter is a tool solely used for bad.
However is it twitters fault that these messages got posted? Does twitter have
control over what content is posted? Twitter is just a place for people to post
status updates, if twitter can’t be used for people to express themselves and gets shut down people will just move to the next popular medium to do this.
I think that the calling for twitter to be shutdown is a bit extreme and maybe they should consider the other uses it has provided as opposed to making rash decisions thinking that everything will be okay once twitter is removed.
If this is the case other forms of communication should also be shut down, during the riots blackberry messenger and facebook played the same role twitter did. Shutting down forms of social messaging will not put a stop to people finding a way of sharing what they are doing or how they feel.
Sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=124797&page=1
http://www.rense.com/general40/deteen.htm
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16089985
However is it twitters fault that these messages got posted? Does twitter have
control over what content is posted? Twitter is just a place for people to post
status updates, if twitter can’t be used for people to express themselves and gets shut down people will just move to the next popular medium to do this.
I think that the calling for twitter to be shutdown is a bit extreme and maybe they should consider the other uses it has provided as opposed to making rash decisions thinking that everything will be okay once twitter is removed.
If this is the case other forms of communication should also be shut down, during the riots blackberry messenger and facebook played the same role twitter did. Shutting down forms of social messaging will not put a stop to people finding a way of sharing what they are doing or how they feel.
Sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=124797&page=1
http://www.rense.com/general40/deteen.htm
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16089985
It would be stupid to shut down twitter. Twitter is a tool, its not twitter that influences people on what messages they pass along. In that sense they should also ban us from using our mouths, and stop everyone from communicating ,its up to us what comes out of it. The thing is the same thing that can be used for something bad such as the riots can be used for something good, like the people that gathered together to clean up after the riots.
ReplyDeleteTwitter is a tool your correct but the issue is how people use it. Just because a certain group of individuals abuse it doesnt mean that everyone does. Like in life you have good and bad people. But lets not forget that Twitter is used for people to share their feelings etc and if a ban was placed users will find another method to do this or creation of a new tools and a government cycle of banning sites.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think this would be a bad move in the long-term. Twitter and other social networking sites helped organise the clean-up after the riots. Using the social networking sites for communicating is now the norm. However, I still believe that all social networks should be suspended during times of civil unrest. So instead of banning twitter totally, just suspend the service when there is civil unrest. However, this is certainly up for debate, and everyone has different viewpoints. This link describes how we feel about social networks and how they should be managed during civil unrest: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/11/09/70-brits-agree-social-media-crackdown-during-social-unrest/
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Isaac, in that Twitter is simply a tool and has no control over what people decides write or not write. Shutting down Twitter would be pointless, unless the government decides to shut down every other social media site also. Twitter is simply a platform that has been presented for people to express their thoughts, and has nothing to do with a person deliberately deciding to do something that is considered bad
ReplyDelete