Direct Democracy and the Online Community

Hello.  Today I’m going back to one of my first posts and exploring how the Internet opens up opportunities to seek out like-minded people when arguing politics and the effects of that.  But this time, I’m also going to find out its effects on our democracy and our social systems.

The author says that the cause of not wanting to get involved in politics (or anything else, really) is that people are afraid of being alienated or viewed as separate from everyone else.  The main reasons behind this early conclusion are: “1. Society uses threats of isolation towards deviant individuals.  2. Individuals experience fear of isolation at all times.  3. From fear of isolation individuals try to estimate the general opinion at all times.”  And finally, the fourth point reflects the content of lots of political arguments: “4. The result of the estimate influences their behavior for all the publicity/public sphere and specifically through showing or hiding of opinions, for instance, by speaking or keeping silent.”  People may be afraid to display their political opinions because while they may be fine participating in a controversy of opinions, they will probably not be so eager to create controversy among their personal friends.

It would seem that the Internet is a perfect way to get around these blocks.  The anonymity that a few people use as an excuse to insult each other’s views can, with a little encouragement, work with the majority of the people to make a community full of so many different viewpoints that they can’t be sorted into few enough groups to create huge schisms.  Even if people end up seeking and associating with people of their same opinions, they can at least encounter and listen to others with different views.

But we’ve seen how arguments in news comment threads go.  Even if the participants seem eager enough to share their own opinions, we can still see them fight losing battles when they’re too stubborn to give up their own viewpoint and they can see that the other person is right (it doesn’t happen that often, but still).  According to the article, the reason that people cling to their opinions even when they want to change them is that they’re afraid of being rejected by their communities because they showed an opinion different than the majority.  Although most of the time people are unidentifiable on the Net and can only be clumped into vague categories, these people classify themselves and mentally put themselves into groups, and they fear being isolated from those who share their opinions, even if they’ve never met or talked to them before.  Obviously, old habits from the ‘real world’ die hard in the ‘net world’. 

The concept of ‘direct democracy’, where everyone contributes equally to the exchange of ideas, probably won’t be made reality simply because of human nature.  It’s in our nature to want to satisfy people and gain approval, at least to some degree.  Maybe political apathy isn’t caused by not caring at all about politics, but not caring about it enough to alienate people.  Perhaps the unwillingness to challenge group norms is just a result of wanting to belong and to keep friends.  Even so, there seems to be hope for making Internet communities at least a little more open to viewpoints that aren’t completely one way or the other.  With this diverse Internet that’s growing all the time, there’s still a potential for breathing new life into the idea of the direct democracy.

Thank you for reading.

Referenced Article:  Tamara Witschge, “Online Deliberation: Possibilities of the Internet for Deliberative Democracy.”  U-topic.nl, October 2002.  http://u-topic.nl/05links/02_Witschge_Online.pdf

Past and Present Censorship

An update on PIPA and SOPA, from last time:  The Stop Online Piracy Act is now unlikely to be passed by the House of Representatives due to the bad name it’s gotten from all the protests, but the PROTECT Intellectual Property Act in the Senate is still going strong, because it’s been around for much longer and has many more backers in the media and corporations.  Also, these backers are now telling the Senate that PIPA is a jobs bill, so they’ll be more likely to pass it.  More than thirty Senators are now supporting the bill, because they see others such as Hollywood, the Chamber of Commerce, and various drug companies are supporting it as well.

There’s a giant call-in day on Tuesday, where you can call your Senator and ask them to oppose the bill, and over 10,000 people have signed up already, but the goal is to completely flood the calling lines, which will take about 50,000 calls.  We know way more than 10,000 people use sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like – if ever there was a time to not be apathetic about what happens on the Net, here it is! 

Sign up on the site here:  http://americancensorship.org/  You can also add your name to a list for Senator Wyden to read during his filibuster against the act, if it comes down to a vote:  http://stopcensorship.org/

Suitably enough, all the main search results for ‘internet censorship’ are results for SOPA and PIPA, all posted within the last few days.  Since there’s been such a huge and well-deserved uproar over these two acts, I thought I’d take a look at some unsuccessful attempts to censor the Internet in the past. 

The Deleting Online Predators Act (2006), which would have made an impact mainly in schools, public libraries, and some businesses, would have made it mandatory for these places to block access to social networking sites. The bill was overruled because of the wide variety of sites that use commenting systems, user profiles, and forums, including Amazon, Yahoo, and others.  The definition of ‘chat room’ in the bill was ‘any service which enables communication among users’ – a definition much too broad, that would allow hardly any sites.  Additionally, the results from this would be the blocking of many websites that are harmless and educational, being essential to research projects and the like.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, introduced in 2010, would have given the President the power to shut down the USA’s Internet completely in the event of a cyberattack on telecommunications or the economy.  It was criticized heavily and was not even close to becoming a law.

The last one, which is a bit similar to SOPA and PIPA, is the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act of 2010, which could give the US Attorney General the power to bring action against infringing domain names, namely suspending their operation or locking them altogether.  The difference between this act and the upcoming ones is that COICA was made to block sites whose only purpose was to offer pirated or copyrighted material, or to have a domain name that implied that they were the original company.  (Now, since this act wasn’t passed, and it was less invasive that PIPA, then why has PIPA made it so far to date?)

I hope that this information was relevant to the current issues with these censorship acts.  As always, thank you for reading. 

Referenced article:  Wikipedia, “Internet Censorship in the United States”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States

PIPA and SOPA

Hello.  Today I’m going to be taking a bit of a different track; rather than talking about how the Internet has affected politics, I’m going to talk about how a new bill could affect the Internet.  ‘New’ is kind of an inaccurate description, though; this bill has been around since May and it’s only recently come to the attention of a lot of people – now that it’s in the final stages of review.  The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (Protect IP Act, or PIPA) and its counterpart the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will, under the guise of doing what their names describe, censor the Internet, mess with its inner workings and make it less secure, and most of all suffocate our free speech and our own intellectual property.

Basically, this bill would allow big media companies to make the government censor the Internet and remove everything that infringes their copyrights.  Not only does this include movie clips and song videos, but it also includes every video that has someone covering a well-known song or having the music play in the background as they make a webcam video, every song lyric posted to a lyric database, potentially the Internet Movie Database and other sites like it, and others.  Except that not only parts of an infringing website would be censored – if a site does not remove the content within a short time, the entire site will be blocked or taken down altogether.  In addition, users that upload copyrighted content of any kind will be subject to up to five years in jail. 

Websites that would have to censor user content and search results (or risk takedown) include YouTube, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, 4chan, Etsy, Vimeo, Flickr, Photobucket, BoingBoing, RapidShare, various blogs, and way too many more to list.  (As a side note, most of these are coming out strong against these acts.)  It doesn’t even matter if a site is not for profit, or even if it only links to things that could be ‘infringing’, or more frighteningly, ‘threatening companies’ intellectual property’.  (This would allow big companies to stop smaller competitors by claiming infringement – resulting in their complete control of that particular industry.) 

A prime example of this is music.  As I write this, I’m using YouTube to listen to I Dreamed a Dream, Love like Woe, And No Matches, and lots of other songs that I want to hear only on a whim.  Do I have the resources to buy every song I ever want to listen to, at any time?  Clearly not.  Is every song that I ever want to hear even available for purchase, such as remixes and fan covers?  No!  Do I enjoy the opportunity to leave a quick comment on my thoughts about what I hear?  Of course.  Have I been introduced to songs I never would have listened to, or rediscovered old favorites, through the ‘Related Videos’ suggestions?  Yes!

Lots of sites are protesting this bill, including AmericanCensorship.org, dontcensorthenet.com, fightforthefuture.org, and all kinds of blogs, Tumblr homepages, Twitter accounts, and others that have voluntarily put censorship bars over their titles as a part of the growing movement.  Thankfully, even some in the government are protesting it.  Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has put up a censorship bar on her own website and Nancy Pelosi (D) and Darrell Issa (R) have even stated on their Twitter accounts that they finally agree on something – that a better solution to piracy needs to be found rather than these two acts.  (Some people are even joking that the entire bill was a ploy to get our political parties to unite.)  While it’s a nice sentiment, the fact remains that this act is very real, very scary, and very much still alive.  As always, I thank you for reading, and this time I ask you to take a minute and sign one or more of the petitions below, which also have helpful information:

http://americancensorship.org/
http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/
http://www.dontcensorthenet.com/

Some interesting stats, plus thoughts

Hello!  So this time, I thought I might take a look at what actually is happening in terms of the voting public that is concentrated on the Internet. 

I’ve found something that might look hopeful for that growing cloud of apathy in our politics – out of all voting-age Internet users in this past year, 73 percent of them used the Internet to access information about the upcoming elections or to participate in political activism.  Interestingly, that 73 percent is 54 percent of all voters.  At first, this seems like a great thing for increasing our voter participation – the Internet has been readily available for nearly all Americans and it’s becoming a greater force in our lives every day.  But what are the possible repercussions of this? 

For a study that took place from 2002 through 2010, the Internet is the only form of media (also included in the study were television, newspapers, radio, and magazines) that had any significant rise in viewers over those past eight years, increasing from 7 to 24 percent who made it their primary source of political information.  By comparison, television, radio, and magazines only had an increase of one percent (66 to 67, 13 to 14, and 1 to 2, respectively), and newspapers had a significant decrease, from 33 to 27 percent.  It looks like the Internet is indeed our primary source of information, whether it be political or not. 

However, on the negative side, we’ve seen dangerously extremist movements showing up all over.  Internet users seem to be split on what the effect of this is – about half say that the Internet gives these movements more of a chance to be heard and supported, while a third say that it decreases their power because everyone else has a chance to be heard.  Also, while a majority of users say that they are exposed to political views online they never would have considered otherwise, an almost-as-great percentage say that it is difficult to tell fact from fiction when they are being persuaded to support specific causes and certain viewpoints. 

Perhaps this is a good thing for the human side, though – if people are cautious about being drawn into extremist movements and actively look for alternative ways to express their views without attempting to blatantly demolish the opposing side, it might help fix this deepening divide that we currently have between our political parties.  Since they say they also worry about the accuracy of the debates, this points more to the hope that our voters will look more to themselves to seek out information and actively decide what’s in their best interests.

What I hope is that people will follow this lead and realize that not being apathetic when it comes to politics doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has to have a diehard, inflexible opinion when it comes to polarizing issues.  Instead, I believe that checking out the facts, strategizing, and compromising should be the way to go.

As always, thank you for reading!

Referenced article: Mike Sachoff, “Internet Playing Bigger Role in American Politics.”  WebProNews, March 17, 2011.  http://www.webpronews.com/internet-playing-bigger-role-in-american-politics-2011-03

Social Activism on the Internet

Hello again.  This time, I’ll be looking at how far the Internet has come from its origins to its new face, and more specifically the groups that are now online for globalization and Internet politics and how, in general, they use what’s available now.  

Mainly, I’m focusing on activist groups in other countries, and their goals of a more open and tolerant government system.  What’s interesting about these groups is how they’ve evolved over the past years – their governments obviously had an infinitely tighter hold on them when instant communication and social networking weren’t even conceived yet and the only communication was face-to-face (risky, because who knows if anyone is on your side?).  But when things like the Internet rolled around, there was next to no risk of anyone finding out your identity as you planned your revolts and gathered your information from thousands of points across the nation. 

As the article I’ve found says, “These multiple networks of connected citizens and activists transform the ‘dumb mobs’ of totalitarian states into ‘smart mobs’ of socially active personages linked by notebook computers, PDA devices, Internet cell phones, pagers and global positioning systems (GPS).”  Indeed, all these and more now connect not only citizens wanting a government that better serves their needs, but also groups and organizations that would benefit from a better system, including women’s rights groups, labor unions, LGBTQ activists, and more. 

On the other hand, terrorist organizations and hate groups can use the Internet for exactly these functions.  Nobody is as bold as when they are anonymous, and this is a bad sign for the victims of those that use the Internet to work up the courage to commit atrocities in real life. 

In addition, we also have the hacking groups that, while having intentions for a better and freer Internet and computer systems not monopolized by corporations, cause more problems than they solve.  In fact, their method of getting their message across almost seems that it will ensure that a considerable fraction of readers will deliberately ignore it as “just a hack, nothing to be paid attention to.”  Yet sometimes, the hacking is helpful and gets the message across to the population of the Internet – the public is informed about what can be done in the realms of monitoring online done by the government and the risks of online communication.  The article claims that this has led to a wider dislike and opposition of Internet policing, showing that the hackers really do know what they’re doing, in terms of social activism at least.

A last quote that I thought was relevant and interesting was “…it has continued to evoke the potential for a participatory democracy that can be actualized when publics reclaim and reconstruct technology, information and the spaces in which they work.”  We still hope for a direct democracy, and it seems like we’re still not getting anywhere, but this shows us that there is still potential out there if we’re willing to work for it.

As always, thank you for reading.

Referenced article:  Richard Kahn and Douglas Kellner, “Oppositional Politics and the Internet: A Critical/Reconstructive Approach.”  Academia.edu, 2005.  http://antiochla.academia.edu/RichardKahn/Papers/76699/Oppositional_Politics_and_the_Internet_A_Critical_Reconstructive_Approach