Watchdogs

A. A) How have you personally used social media to monitor yourself/others, your own community, your own government, and/or other governments (e.g., Egypt, Iran)?

-I use the social media to monitor a lot of what goes on in my family.  They all live in Canada and it is rare that I ever get to see them or speak to them so having a Facebook is a great way for us to stay in touch and to create a community online as a family.  As far as how much I focus on ideas relating to the global level, I do not use the social media.  If I am to use social media at a global level, I would read little articles here and there that are sent to me, otherwise I do not really engage in this. As sad as this is to say, I am extremely bad at keeping up with anything that is going on in our government, let alone other governments.  But, I do know that I would personally rather use the social media as a way of receiving this type of news.  This is just something that I do not dedicate my time to although it was a new year’s resolution of mine; that did not work.

B.B) What is watchdog behavior and how is it done at the local and global level?

- Watchdog behavior at the local level is much different than watchdog behavior at a global level.  At the local level people see watchdogs as an alarm. People believe that having a dog that can alert the house can be an effective way of staying safe as well.  At this level, the dog does not take on too much responsibility where as at the global level, these watchdogs become more of not just an alarm but rather an effective way for the government to find drugs, find people, etc.  These watchdogs take on a much larger role and become responsible for much more than just alarming a household when there is an intruder.

C) How does social media and other online communication tools facilitate watchdog behavior?      

 -I can honestly say that I have not personally seen anything online in regards to watchdog behavior. In fact, what was just mentioned about watchdogs in class this morning is one of the first times I have ever heard of the topic in a while.  But, I found it interesting that when I went to Google and searched “social media and watchdog behavior” that the first thing that popped up was: Social Media=Society’s Watchdog.  I know that this is going in a completely different direction but the idea behind this was very appealing to me.  We have watchdogs in our houses in order to feel safe.  But, do we really think that the social media is our watchdog?  I do not know how I feel about this yet