Before the apparition of the internet, when someone had information about somebody or something, it was not always easy to be heard. Especially when the information referred to people who had political and/or financial influence. I’m not saying liberty of opinion and speech appeared with the internet but the web seems to give it no limit. Stars and politicians have to be way more cautious than they were before. Gutter press already generated scandals but couldn’t reveal everything because of pressures and lack of space in their pages. They couldn’t either know everything because they had few investigators. Today, if anyone sees anything, he can report it on the web. And everyone can see it and talk about it. In a way, this is a good thing because people have to behave and try to look nice and clean.
However, the information we get on the web is way less reliable. On the web, a rumor can spread in an blink of an eye on without having been checked. As internet users we have to be careful with what we read or see.
Moreover, is transparency that good ? I mean, do we have to know everything about everyone ? It’s a tricky path. On the one hand, we deserve to know the man we are giving our vote to, or the people we trust – especially when he is building his campaign on certain values. But on the other hand, that is not really our business ! We are not voting for a good husband and a good father, we are voting for a president, a person who has to have politics experience and who knows the job. Same for a future employee, some pictures of him on Facebook having fun at a party should not be discriminatory. In my opinion, when it come to politics or work, people should not be judged according to their lifestyles but according to their skills.




Politics and companies tend to use this wave of “transparency” as a communication tool.

Using networks like Obama does with Twitter make them look real, nice and trustworthy. But when they tell little details about their lives it does not mean we get to know everything about them EVEN the more personal details. It only means we know what they wanted to show us. Let’s not be fooled by this illusion of proximity.
I use the term “illusion” because even if these personal details are real, it does not mean we get to know the person. Transparency does not mean reality. The image we get of someone on the internet is just a part of what they really are. It’s been created by others, by pieces of information.

To conclude, let’s not forget that the internet is a media, a bias, a filter. Transparency is another recurrent myth of the internet.