Welcome to Airline Leaks! The online news portal using the latest in social media sources to disseminate sensitive information about corrupt & abusive airline management.
When Jack Dorsey launched Twitter in 2006, did he envisage that the medium would end up playing a role in the attempted overthrow of the regime in Tehran? Did Mark Zuckerberg foresee Facebook being used by activists to help rally support for regime change across the Middle East when he was busy writing code in his college dorm room? The stunning and exciting role social media is beginning to play in our lives has sparked a fierce debate over the power of social media in international relations. Because the landscape is still so chaotic and uncertain, the debate has really only just begun. Governments overthrown one week and Airline Management exposed the next!
The reality is that social media has become a coordinating tool for nearly all the recent world’s political movements. Most recently, these tools were featured in the overthrown of Tunisia’s long-reining president and subsequent mass protests in neighboring states, including Egypt. Indeed the gap between a 140 character ‘tweet’ and an entrenched dictator falling is enormous in many people’s minds. If this same power is available to be used to expose airlines engaging in price fixing, safety issues or intimidation, then it should be used to its full potential.
Twitter and Facebook are not responsible for the overthrow of Tunisia’s leader. That happened the old fashioned way: through mass protests. Social media are just convenient, immediate, mass communication tools that are free, offer a way around the authorities and help coordinate and plan mass gatherings and protests.
Social media is not only powerful because it can be used as a tool in organizing a protest. It is also powerful because it disrupts old hierarchies and traditional ways of doing things, perhaps another reason why social media is so often dismissed. A big driver of this change has been the rapid spread of mobile phones and the internet and the vast reach they provide.
A good example of this dissolution of old power structures: The world has just witnessed a powerful but essentially leaderless uprising in Egypt. In the initial stages at least, there was no spokesperson for the protesters, no apparent agreed plan beyond the idea to demonstrate and no clearly articulated set of demands.
The airline industry is bound with a code of silence through fear of reprisal. The industry is extremely volatile and even in the good times it can be difficult to land a good job to support a family. Airline employees rarely speak out against their employers in fear that their future job prospects will be sabotaged by senior airline managers, but this same old power structure over the employees will be broken by the work of Airline Leaks and social media.
The full implications of social media’s impact in the international realm are hard to predict because the speed of innovation and development of these new platforms is so fast. It is also difficult to measure its influence with precision or foresee how they will be applied. What seems likely, however, is that we can expect more unexpected consequences from social media and that those who dismiss its power are making a risky gamble.
Airline Leaks uses advanced security techniques to keep the identity of all whistle blowers anonymous. If you have any concerns or need advice please contact us and we can advise you on a variety of different methods to disseminate your material.
