Places and forms of power

Places and forms of power

            I would like to talk about places and forms of power. First of all, « Places » could be  important institutions that represent a certain form of power, but even so a country or a state. Power is the ability to influence people's behaviour; it can be related to law, money, media or men and their opinions. However some forms of power are criticized and rejected by some people. They be dangerous as we are able to observe it in history and also today. Thus, we can  answer the question: “In what can the power be destructive?” To answer this question, I choose to speak about two types of power: first political power and secondly power of the media, more precisely, of the social networks.

Political power can be destructive as we saw it in the past. To illustrate it, I would like to take the example of the Nazi totalitarian dictatorship. When Adolf Hitler be chancellor of Germany in 1934, he ran the whole country with an iron hand and decided to impose his disastrous ideas. So, he started the Second World War which made approximately 50 million deaths. Among the deaths of this war, there are not only soldiers but also civilians and minorities, that were exterminated by the Nazi regime between 1939 and 1945 and in particular, the Jews as part of the application of what was called “the finally solution”. Through this example, we can see that political power and the political ideas can be destructive. However, this type of power is not the only, which can have bad repercussion on life

Indeed media power can also be sometimes destructive. The power that social networks detain is too often minimalized. Published photos or articles can have destructive repercussions on some individuals. In 2012, nude pictures published on social networks provoked the suicide of a young Canadian. The story of this girl profoundly shocked the country. Rehtaeh Parsons was in 2011 a victim of a collective rape. One of the four boys who participated in it took a photo, which began to circulate among the pupils at school a few days later. Cyber-intimidation followed, whereas at school some young people treated her of "whore”. The 15 years old girl finally committed suicide, because she did not support any more the humiliation. Public opinion, police and justice in Canada and all over the world become more and more conscious of the power that social media offer to every person who wants to broadcast a message, even without measuring the impact. Social networks can also be very destructive.

To conclude, we can, tanks to these two different examples see that power can have fatal impacts on our (society). However, power can also be beneficial.

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