Why Information Can Make For Grumpy Countries

Day 971, 12:43 • Published in USA USA • by Gaius Julius

Jon Stewart is all like "Yo broskis chill out, grab a natty ice and listen up"

Before I begin, this article is not directed at anyone or any country. I actually have had segments of it written since the Kyushu battle last year.

Recently I have been thinking about how information is disseminated in eRepublik. In many ways information secrecy is similar to real life. Few people ever know the full story. I think Waffles once described it perfectly saying "10-15 guys decide everything in PEACE/Phoenix for almost 2 years now." The case is of course the same or similar with EDEN. Think about it, only a few people know every detail about a plan. A great example are the swaps towards the end of WW III that turned initiative around on Russia. At the time 7-8 people (basically the Presidents involved and Shoot) knew what the plan was or who thought up what. This lack of information in the populace continues out of sheer necessity. The fact is that generally only the people involved in a discussion or planning session know the full story. Since the beginning of eRepublik the general population (even Congress and some mid level leaders) have survived on the partial stories told to them.

However, what I have realized is that the important thing is not who has that information or access, but how they disseminate it. This is where eRepublik differs greatly from the real world. In real life most citizens have news stations or services as their major sources for information. You get your information on your nations economy, government and society by reading the newspaper, looking at online news sites or watching TV. In real life rarely does the President or leaders of your country write an article or making a daily statement about what happened in that day. Sure the government holds press conferences, the President/Prime Minister makes a speech but these are often on rare occasions. If I want to find out about the state of Chinese-US relations I generally go to Nytimes.com or the economist before I email Obama.


Would be kinda cool if Obama wrote us an article every day.

In eRepublik we absolutely depend on our top leaders to directly communicate with us what is going on. If something happens we expect there to be an article explaining it right away. If you have a question about something, you can get a response from your President within a few hours of sending a pm.The President, besides being the commander and chief is also the informer in chief. Likewise the top citizens and the Presidents subordinates are also tasked with informing you, the average citizen. Who is going to doubt something if the President, MoFA and MoD all confirm it?
Of course now we have to think about how this role as chief informer creates a paradox of information in eRepublik.
Suppose you are the President of X country. Over the past 2 months your country has engaged in a number of military campaigns. While you are not solely responsible for this war you know that your popularity and term in office will depend on success or defeat. Now lets say that you lose an important battle. You know that the loss could be attributed to a lack of taking the time to strategize, and that you may have signed off on a faulty plan. Now in general the public does not know that you rushed a plan or made a poor choice. They do not know the details that occurred prior to this, so they do not have the proper information to criticize you, however they do expect you to discuss the defeat. So you now have an interesting choice; you can own up to your mistakes and face the punishment, or you can scapegoat your way out of it. The choice is obvious for that President or official, they want to keep their job and they want people to think they are doing well. So what happens, you redirect the blame, you point fingers at another ally or maybe even someone else in your government. This happens dozens of times in eRepublik, I have seen my friends and enemies do it and hell I have even done it myself.


Kind of like a lot of people when faced with cooperating with others.

In eRepublik people are so wrapped up in rampant nationalism that often its easy to redirect the blame, because people have trouble looking beyond the first or primary information they get. How many of you can say that you read spend a good portion of time on other countries forums? How many of you take the time to read your allies top five news feeds? Most eRep citizens accept that the story their leaders tell them is the whole truth. If a leader paints an allies attack as a greedy attempt at exploiting fighting elsewhere then this opinion will generally stick. The problem is that these stories governments and leaders paint are rarely full truths. One mans greedy attack is another mans attack to redirect enemies damage to a more important region.
Now don't get me wrong, Presidents or leaders do not always lie about the cause of a loss (or a victory). However, a partial truth or partial lie repeated over and over again builds a picture and a mentality that is hard to break. Often we as nations have a selective memory that loves to pick out the bad things and more recent memories. In choosing how we reflect on war efforts, diplomatic relations and planning it is always easy to accept others faults rather than our own. Often criticizing an ally is easier than accepting that they don't have the 5k active citizens, nor are they the same nation which topped the damage charts in defensive battles. In my time in eRepublik I have learned that most people if not all have trouble admitting that the problem may be themselves, and that often everyone suffers for it.

[img]http://s3.images.com/huge.15.75747.JPG[/img]
Something everyone is good at doing, but few are good at taking.

The important thing that we all have to remember is that while blaming someone as the sole cause for a problem or pointing fingers is easy. It is not always the best solution. Sometimes the best solution is sitting down and fixing things as a group. This is how EDEN eventually turned around WW III after all. We took a discombobulated assortment of allies who we're not coordinating and not fighting to their best abilities and helped each country fix what we perceived to be problems, thus making our whole alliance stronger for it.

p.s. Read this great article by my Spanish Brother Durruti. I think it dispels a lot of the myths about the "Superduperultrawearesocoolalliance "

-Gaius Julius