I wonder what we could do to make Snowden heard more nowadays. I'm getting the impression that the monumentum since the initial release of the information about the NSA surveillance slowed down, though we not much of the problem was solved yet...
One of his failures is that he didn't understand how things work. He's an idealist and technical person. I was a technical person that dug my head into how things work as well in terms of media and whistleblowing. Thing is, they often don't.
The corporate media in the U.S. that dominates most coverage is about anything that holds audiences' attention to get them to look at ads. That means more noise and theatrics than signal. Their owners even benefit from the power structure in the U.S. that financially and politically favors elites. Their media organizations, if they play ball a bit, even get interviews with elites in government or on boards of those in business. Finally, they maximize attention span and engagement by creating echo-chambers where people see what they want to see with minimal deviation.
Against this backdrop, it's no surprise change will rarely happen. There's a pattern that emerges, though, where events make waves. There's a rise where event spreads to many media outlets. They each modify their presentation to reflect views of their target audience. Occasionally, if it threatens elite status quo, they'll self-suppress it in favor of talking points that please their viewers but are ultimately harmless. Much shouting happens, politicians might introduce bills which might go somewhere (or get neutered), and eventually the wave subsides to let next story and its wave flow in. Interestingly, we often see lots of focus on sensationalist crap nobody can do anything about during key moments like treaty negotiations or bills eliminating citizen's rights that makes people miss those things.
Altogether, Snowden shouldn't have expected any effect in the U.S. in terms of laws or change except a temporary reaction. He and others would've had to have all the talking points mapped out with counterpoints and even alternatives that various parties would compromise on. They'd have to drop it immediately when the wave hits. Otherwise, Americans either wouldn't give a shit or would look at things through the lens their media outlet presented them. That's the majority.
You don't need to make him more heard. He's too weak in this area to be effective anyway. There's groups like EFF and independent bloggers doing a great job writing up the risks, showing alternatives, illustrating ineffectiveness, exposing incompetence, and so on. Just promote them with Snowden's work being cited as reference material and examples where it's most effective. Whatever you do, though, needs to be written with laypeople in mind to bring it to the level they care about.
John Oliver interview shows nicely Snowden's disconnect plus a fictional programs that excellently brings the points home to laypeople. Need more stuff like this.
Not impossible: just hard. They worked over time to consolidate and control as many media outlets as possible. The Internet lets us try to counter that. People would have to package the exposes and alternatives in ways existing outlets would present them plus push them on alt news outlets for various demographics that had established reliability. The altnews outlets are important here as they won't censor stuff affecting elites.
It will take much time and money to build this up. For corporate media, you have to be paying lots of ad revenue or generating plenty ratings/entertainment for them to listen. So, just expensive and hard to change things.
It's pretty accurate. Also, see the John Oliver interview I posted in the comments. It's designed to appeal to less technical people plus get honest reactions out of him. The two interviews together are pretty good.
Calling him a clown is a bit harsh, no? His lack of mass manipulation skills or his inability to beat the propoganda machine is unfortunate, but hardly worthy of such derision.
I am grateful he did what he did and wish he had been more successful, but at least people have some information that they can choose to be willfully ignorant instead of being oblivious.
Just FYI, Vice has worked on advertising campaigns for Philip Morris. They potentially targeted middle and low income countries where youths are more vulnerable to these types of advertising. Since learning about Vice leveraging its youth market knowledge for big tobacco, I've decided to stop clicking to their content and related sites. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/20/walt-disney-vic...
