Sunday, February 6, 2011

YouTube Videos: The power of millions of witnesses

The Web is an ideal propaganda tool in times of crisis, but it's the end of Propaganda: By phone filmed, by popular YouTube videos make us witnesses of some misdeed. Most importantly, they provide one thing: you take the distance from the events. It has always existed, these pictures where you look away dear.

Half-burned children, who fled screaming after the napalm attack from their destroyed villages, and the execution of a Vietcong by the police chief of Saigon by gunshot in the temple, the bodies of several massacres, the suffering of the workers, the Chernobyl seals and more. In the past such images and stories had a fixed time.

They saw and heard it on the news in the evening, in the political magazines of the late program. Who would not, simply looked away. It must recognize we now, we never got the full dose to see only a tiny part: What would we expect either the media-makers (and much has been and is good reason not shown) or the authorities did not see.

The manipulation of the powerful media image began with its invention. But the effort to capture, realities with cameras to try to saw, earlier that just the media to convey the reality most immediately seemed to censor most easily could. This form of reality distortion by only allowed the mapping of certain sections was by no means limited to totalitarian regimes.

There was undisguised - Goebbels' propaganda about the Soviet-up to today's censors, such as China or Iran - in other places, meanwhile, clever, but no less insidious. "Embedment" by journalists, this outrageous euphemism of Americans in the last war in Iraq, marked a new low. We are the camera man would probably be something hardly possible.

The most impressive, bedrückensten, scariest, but also the most hopeful, most iconic images of the past few weeks have not been shot by professional cameramen, but by everyone. Wherever something happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, was recorded by cell phone camera, it quickly makes its way to YouTube, where appropriate keyword searches now open only to the riots in Egypt thousands of videos.

YouTube and Co are now the "weapons of mass dissemination". Among things, the media, without the pressure of YouTube are might not have shown. The close proximity to the subject but to the person concerned has, mobilizing local and abroad in solidarity: It is much harder here to keep a distance from the message.

If it were run over in Cairo police cars in quantity in and people (see video above) alone makes clear, even the context of the film formation: That you'd be able to spectators. It could happen to anyone, innocent, suddenly, potentially lethal. It is inconceivable that the power of such images would be to meet with official statements.

For us, witnesses at such moments it becomes clear who the perpetrators are and who the victims. Now picture that made history: Egypt's "Tiananmen moment" Of course, the dangerous. Also on YouTube are the offers of so-called professional media here regulating counterweight - because yes, there are also videos that are no less propagandistic than many a state power: As is dramatic musical accompaniment, martial messages are common, as are numerous scenes condensates anger awakens violent excesses compacted.

It is absolutely not free from propaganda, to the site. But it is information, testimony and even just propaganda from all sides - and it is up to us, we turn it into an image. This is as before: You just have to look, but it has also become more difficult to look away. That's good, because public attention and outrage is the only weapon that can really end wars and conflicts - and hopefully even prevent.

With each picture, with every eye witness, now legitimized the resistance in Egypt - and discredited the regime.

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