4: Consider the effects so far, and possible effects in the future, on media institutions involved in your case study.

Last year we saw the broadcast of the first ever live prime ministerial debates in high definition on ITV, BBC and Sky; a few years before this we saw the election of the first ever black president and how he used twitter, Facebook and a number of different social network sites(including his own) to obtain votes. A few years ago the government launched the 'Your Freedom' website which enabled workers in the public sector the chance to air their thoughts online. And this year the census 2011 embraced the media and new media in promoting itself, with a number of promotional billboards, a twitter page, youtube page, flickr page and their very own website allowing the censorship form to be filled in on line. Also a promotion music video was filmed and released online by underground artist ghetts. This all leads to the embracing of new media by the governments in the western world and essential the integration of new media into politics. However in a lot of countries dictators are still in power and control what media is allowed to be represented to the people of their countries. An example of this would be North Korea where the government has full control of what is allowed to be consumed within the country. Also Egypt recently block the use of Facebook and twitter in fear of a Tunisia style revolution. I think that in both cases, embracing or banning of new media, the politicians have released that if they can control what is represent of them, whether through user generated content or control of the media, they can stay elected in power. A clear example of this would be the prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi who has a monopoly on the television broadcast in Italy and has managed to stay prime minister through a number of legal problems and controversies.