Week 5

This week in class we learned how we tend to look at coverage of foreign policy in general and the components we should look at. We need to know if 1. We're looking at it from the outside and 2. How we can plug into it to influence the foreign policy process. We also discussed how we need to be mindful of the fact that no single theory will tell us everything we need to know. Even with the use of multiple theories, it's nealry impossible to have 100% explained. We then learned that perfect information does not exist and correlation does not equal causation. If you are aware of the fact that it's impossible to know everything and if you are able to identify the risks, you're a lot better off then if you were to randomly guess. In this way, we need to understand that these theories won't answer all of our questions, but the do help us to better understand the events. Also, we need to be aware of the role of technology and of the fact that individuals are now getting their news from such a vast array of media that their reaction to what is important is vastly different then ever before. If we plug this fact into the foreign policy process, we get a variety of actors that become very difficult to track.

1. What happens if you assume you have all the information?

2. Was it easier to track actors before the recent advancements in technology and the growth of media sources?

2. It probably was more difficult to track actors before the recent advancements in information and communications technology and the growth of available media sources. Even thought the growth in technology and media outlets has given us more information, the overabundance of info has made credibility decline. Before these occurrences, however, information was disseminated at a much slower rate, so by the time one individual received it, it was already outdated. Even without technological advances and abundant news sources, it was still difficult to track actors.