Here at World Politics Review, one of the subjects we find most fascinating is the manner in which information and communications technology is changing international relations and world politics. This op-ed by Moisés Naim in the Los Angeles Times last Thursday got us thinking about how video distributed online is an increasingly important part of the communications strategies of global political actors: governments; NGOs; terrorist groups; and even individuals.
We knew we had read many news articles and opinion pieces in the last several months about this phenomenon, many of which cited specific examples, and we wanted to revisit some of them. As it happens, our Media Roundup archives search, which is available to anyone for free on our Media Roundup page, provides the perfect tool for this kind of quick research. In addition to providing a daily digest of news and commentary from the world’s major English-language media with our Media Roundup, our new archive search turns the Media Roundup into quite a powerful research tool.
Here’s what we found on the subject of information and communications technology with a couple of quick searches of the Media Roundup Archive. (Keep in mind that we began the Media Roundup in July 2006):
Insurgent Group Posts Video of 2 Mutilated U.S. Soldiers, The New York Times, July 11
Terrorists on the Web: Deadly Conversations, International Herald Tribune, July 20
Pentagon Declares War on Internet Combat Videos, The Daily Telegraph, July 27
Terrorists, Be Afraid of WWW, The London Times, Aug. 16
Now on YouTube: Iraq Videos Of U.S. Troops Under Attack, The New York Times, Oct. 6
Online, the Shadow of Auschwitz, International Herald Tribune, Oct. 24
Censorship Fears Rise as Iran Blocks Access to Websites, The Guardian, Dec. 4
YouTube Journalism, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20
Of course, we could have found all this just as quickly if we had an expensive subscription to Lexis-Nexis, or we could have found it eventually by conducting separate searches of all of these different newspaper Web sites. But we can’t help thinking that nowhere on the Web is there a better free tool for researching news and opinion coverage of international affairs. We hope you’ll use it.