Twitter vs. Terror

Senator Richard Lugar, writing in Foreign Policy, suggests that the State Department use social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook in a global fight for freedom. He sees these sites as being “an important leap forward from traditional U.S. outreach efforts, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.”

Lugar gave examples of their use in Iran, the Congo, and Pakistan and wrote:

The adroit use of social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, and others, coupled with text messages and increasingly widespread mobile-phone technology, can help lend support to existing grassroots movements for freedom and civil rights, connect people to information, and help those in closed societies communicate with the outside world. It also promises to give a strong economic boost to small entrepreneurs and the rural poor. The World Bank estimates that for every 10 percent increase in the number of mobile-phone users in a developing country, there is nearly a 1 percent increase in its economic output…

…social networking technologies are more often used to enable individuals across a country, or across the globe, to interact, engage, and become empowered. Although this means that our government will not be able to control the message as well as it might with conventional public diplomacy tools, I believe it is a risk worth taking. Terrorists and other anti-American propagandists have for some time been using the Internet and other techniques to communicate and recruit. America needs to beat them at their own game, especially since we invented most of the technology.

14 Comments

  1. 1
    Jason Braud says:

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  2. 2
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  3. 3
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  4. 4
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  5. 5
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  6. 6
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  7. 7
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  8. 8
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  9. 9
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  10. 10
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  11. 11
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  12. 12
    NatetheGrate says:

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  13. 13
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  14. 14
    Cristian says:

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