New Media – Power to the people or threat to stability?

I believe that the new media is more of a threat to stability than power to the people.

The new media has provided a new platform for terrorist organisations to terrorise the public with their effective usage of the the various means of media sources to intimidate and affect the will of the public. As stated from the article, the terrorists tend to use attacks to create headline-grabbing news and through this method, it impacted the will of the public, hence threatening the stability of society.

Another issue stated in the article is that many media sources around the world do not at all times provide the accurate and exact facts on an event, but rather distort and change the facts. An example is the desecration of a Koran, which could have incited deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While the earlier example showed how terrorists could utilise the global reach and immediacy of the media to intimidate the public and affecting the collective will of free people, the second example showed a direct effect of media on the violence it can cause. Both of these examples have illustrated the danger and the immense threat that the media can have on the stability of our society.


Although the media have caused a threat to the stability of the society we live in, it also brought power to the people.

One such example is blog. With the rapid increase in usage of blogs worldwide, media have brought power to the people. It changed the way people view news stories and also provided a platform for people to discuss and debate about the various events that are boradcasted or published by the media and press respectively. Blogs has also allowed bloggers(people who blog) to reach out to people worldwide and form their own opinions on the various events. Blogs have created such a large impact on the society that now, even the mainstream media has been put in the unusual position of reacting to news that bloggers generate. Not only that, many mainstream news organisations have also launched their own blogs. All these examples showed how blog, as a means of media, has brought power to the people.

However, these blogs could also be a threat to the stability in the society. Several terrorist organisations could set up blogs whenever they want and publish videos showing an impending terrorist attack and this could cause the public to panic. Hence, the new media is more of a threat to stability than being a power to the people.