How does Media affects a Global Isssue?

During the last seventeen years, Coltan has been extracted from different regions of the world, but the place that has the worse effects has been the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This country has suffered different internal conflicts, but more often related to the control of lands and minery.

Different etnic groups want to have the control of the products extracted from the lands, and for this, they have to fight against the other groups that are looking for the same power.
The problem is that coltan is not a cheap mineral that can be found everywhere. It has an exponential increase in value, and also in price.
The demand is the main reason that the price increases, but also the difficulty of extracting and obtaining the mineral.





The following table shows the amount of Coltan extracted each year in each of the countries in metric tons.

	metric tons of tantalum mined
	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Australia	165	218	224	170	238	274	276	302	330	350	485	660	940	765	807	854	478	441	557	81
Brazil	90	84	60	50	50	50	55	55	310	165	190	210	200	200	213	216	176	180	180	180
Canada	86	93	48	25	36	33	55	49	57	54	57	77	58	55	57	63	56	45	40	25
D.R. Congo	10	16	8	6	1	1	--	--	NA	NA	130	60	30	15	20	33	14	71	100	87
Africa, excl. DR Congo	45	66	59	59	8	3	3	3	82	76	208	173	242	245	333	214	146	135	313	297
WORLD	396	477	399	310	333	361	389	409	779	645	1070	1180	1470	1280	1430	1380	870	872	1190	670
1990-1993: U.S. Geological Survey, "1994 Minerals Yearbook" (MYB), "COLUMBIUM (NIOBIUM) AND TANTALUM" By Larry D. Cunningham, Table 10; 1994-1997: MYB 1998, Table 10; 1998-2001: MYB 2002, p. 21.13; 2002-2003: MYB 2004, p. 20.13; 2004: MYB 2008, p. 52.12; 2005-2009: MYB 2009, p. 52.13. USGS did not report data for other countries (China, Kazakhstan, Russia, etc.) owing to data uncertainties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan

As we can see in the table, the demand of this mineral increased in a low rate during 1990's, but in 2000, there was a tendency that said that the electronic devices were going to have a great jump in advance, therefore, more coltan was going to be needed. Countries exploited their coltan in a more intense way, increasing the amount of coltan per year at a higher rate.
furthermore, after 2006, the demand of coltan decreased, leading to a decrease in its mining.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global-mined-tantalum-production-1990-2009.png

We have seen the mining of the coltan and the data that shows how real this problem is, but we haven't seen the real impact is has brought to the different comunities, and the impact that media has within this topic.
First of all, "Impact" is not necesarily related to harmful consequences. We can't evade the fact that we all use electronic devices, and that they have done some works easier, especially regarding to comunication.
But, on the other hand, we have the socio-cultural impact, the wars, the millions of deaths. "As every rose, it has it's thorn".