HW; Alien Contact

1. The psychologist Norman Johnson wanted to write a report  about reacting to a possible alien life and for this report he interviewed a few US gouvernment members.

It is conspicuous that no one of the three people he is talking with is thinking about a diplomatic solution for this. No one thinks about a possible “friendship” or “cooperation”  with aliens. The Senior Undersecretary of  State guesses that it could be really difficult to take action against the aliens if they could read humans minds. The White House staffer is optimistic that the president would speak to the aliens in a peaceful way and find a solution. The Pentagon liaison who is a Major-General thinks about the weapons of the aliens and how we could work against them. He is convinced that we could vaprize them with nuclear weapons and he is of the opinion that people should know about possible combat-methods to calm them. So they all think very bad about aliens and see them as a danger.

3. a) The media would play a very big role in the event of alien contact because it spreads the news very fast around the whole world and within a few minutes everybody would know about the aliens and that could cause a huge panic. But you could use the media also to calm the people down and tell them what is the best thing to do in such a situation. Aliens are so unbelievable and it would interest many people if they landed  somewhere so it really might be a big event if e.g. the president would talk to them personally and many people would pursue it on TV , radio or internet (or some other media).

b) Such big “media moments” are very important for politicians in democratic countries because it shows the people that they are reacting and that the poeple can trust for exapmle their president. So either they are satisfied and elect this politician again or they are dissatisfied and pick another politician at the next election. It could also come to protests or something like that if the people think that the politicians act wrong. The media moments influence the people.