(1) Hello to everyone. My name is Nastya and I want to show you my presentation which is called “WikiLeaks is good for democracy”.
Before I start talking about this topic, I think we should figure out what WikiLeaks is and what democracy means.
(2) WikiLeaks is an international, non-profit, journalistic organisation which publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources on its web site. (3) The person who you might know is Julian Assange. He is its founder, editor-in-chief, and director.
(4) Democracy means “rule by the people” when we translate this word from its Greek meaning. As a system of governance it is supposed to allow extensive representation and inclusiveness of as many people and views as possible to feed into the functioning of a fair and just society.
(5) Have you ever heard a quote, said by Winston Churchill “Information rules the world”? In order to prove this fact I decided to hold a survey in the internet on the google docs platform. (6) I wanted to know whether people are interested in being informed about things happening in the world or not. If you go down below this link you will see a web page where I ask questions about the news. (7) 60 people from 15-50 years took part in the survey; on this slide you can see how many people of what age answered my questions. (8) All the respondents keep in touch with the latest news about politics, sports, economics, culture and science by using the internet. The answers I have got showed that 50 % of those who I asked take interest in politics and 30% in economics. I payed more attention to these fields because WikiLeaks concentrates on them. (9) Furthermore, 73% of people are convinced that news affects their point of view.
I think these numbers let me say that the topic I chose is unbelievably important.
(10) Since 2006, the document archive website WikiLeaks, used by whistleblowers, has published documents that are unavailable to the general public. This article documents have attracted media coverage.
After publishing secret U.S. diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks has been hit with denial-of-service attacks on its servers by unknown parties.
(11) Outraged politicians are claiming that the release of government information is the criminal equivalent of terrorism and puts innocent people's lives at risk. Their anger at a document dump, no matter how extensive, is more than a little suspect.
Nothing in the world is totally perfect. WikiLeaks is not the exception too.
Nevertheless, it’s time to make a clear statement about the value of the site: (12) WikiLeaks stands to improve our democracy, not weaken it.
Information about government contributes to a healthy democracy. (13) Transparency and accountability are essential elements of good government. A lack of these elements undermines democracy and gives rise to mistrust.
WikiLeaks has beaten back the attacks, despite the best efforts of opponents. Blocking WikiLeaks, even if it were possible, could never be effective. Moreover, it still brings important news and information to the public.
Do you remember that in the beginning I said that democracy is a system which provides as many sources of information as possible?
(14) Information is the lifeblood of democracy. It means that people should have access to a wide variety of information in order to make up mind about politics. (15) It is essential to listen to what politicians say, read different newspapers and search the web for news. (16) Using only one source of media will never give you all the information about the topic. What will really help us to understand what is happening in the world is using all types of social media.
(17) The aim which WikiLeaks’s journalists follow is to let readers know the truth. Another thing is how the person perceives the information. (18) It is up to you whether you will believe the issues they post or not.
We have a freedom to hold the opinions without interference. That is why I can say for sure (19) that WikiLeaks is good for democracy.
