It might be only a small front in the overall battle for ideas but North Korea has now turned to social media to further its cause.  It is not clear who exactly is responsible for the recent YouTube videos and Twitter Tweets promoting their cause, but it seems likely to be somebody in the government. We have so little information available about this country that the appearance in social media is quite interesting. The content though doesn’t really rise above a bit of unsophisticated name calling aimed at the US and South Korea.

The series of video clips available on YouTube are posted by an entity known as ‘Uriminzok’; apparently this means ‘our nation’. They show scenes of a country that seems stuck in a previous era before the cold war. If these were put out by the North Korean tourist board then they would certainly want to rethink their campaign. Some of the other videos are meant to be a bit satirical and aim to mock the US and South Korean leaders – they are pretty lame attempts.

It seems that the North Koreans want to tell their side of the story, and this has to be good. Maybe they have been given the short end of the stick, and maybe we are not getting a clear view of the country. From the videos that have been provided so far though, there seems to be little that is going to change people’s mind. Hopefully this attempt at engagement with the rest of the world will be a two-sided affair. That way the North Koreans and their government can get to hear about what the rest of the world thinks about them. One of the great things about the internet is that it can be used to allow people to escape whatever bubble they have been trapped inside.

It is true that one hosts a website in order to profit from it in whatever capacity. As such, it comes a shocking blow to know that as of 2008, officials in Thailand have blocked viewership to over 2300 websites to locals.  The major reason cited for such mass blockage is security and defamation of the government.

This becomes important keeping in mind that the political scenario in Thailand is not too stable and anything that’s cited against the king isn’t taken too well. Sites banned also include pornographic sites. The strange part of this analysis is the 90% of these sites are hosted overseas which means that international website owners stand to suffer. What may be viewed as acceptable and informational content elsewhere in the word is a taboo in Thailand?

Banned sites include those containing cartoons, articles, blogs and even YouTube videos. Thailand isn’t the first country to be practicing such large scale banning and this is popularly carried out in China too. In fact China tops the list in terms of stringency but news of banned sites elsewhere will influence website owners to review their content so as to not face the ire of threatened governments across the globe.