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

Predictions in 2002

Today I found a very interesting article titled “Politics after the Internet,” by Yuval Levin.  The article is great by itself, but as it was published back in 2002, I thought it might be thought-provoking to go through it and check out which of his predictions came true or not.

On the very first page, Levin states that for all the bright predictions of commentators, predictions of a more informed public, huge increases in voter participation, and a decrease in the importance of money in elections, they’ve all fallen by the wayside and can’t be picked up again.  At first glance, it seems like he’s totally wrong – we have loads of political information coming directly to us every day, party debates have moved to YouTube so everyone can watch instantly, and more.  However, considering these points further, is he really so off base?  We have more information streaming to us, but do we take it all into account when we make decisions?  And doesn’t every election ad we see on our sidebars still say “Paid for by X”?

Another point that Levin was right on is the fact that our representative democracy has still not been replaced by a direct democracy.  It seems as if the Internet Age would have led to this in any case, but with all the recount demands and risks of hacking, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to be seeing this soon.

The author’s reasoning why the online politics revolution wouldn’t come was spot-on: “Empowered by the Internet and the personal computer, citizens could now know more, participate more, and influence the system more directly and effectively.  They could, but would they want to?”  Even though we now have the potential to shape our government more, the level of apathy and lack of action among us is higher than ever.  For every activist who calls on people for action, there are dozens of people who only have vague opinions and are unwilling to put forth much effort to ensure that they’re represented.

Levin references the difference between what people can do and what they choose to do several times, and the next point he notes is that we can look up exactly what we want on the Internet, but this limits our thoughts to things we actively look for.  This is almost like what I stated in my first post, how we surround ourselves with opinions and people that are like us.

Also, another of his points later in the article is comparable to what I said in my second post about the presidential ‘race’.  Levin states that “politics will be more of the same, but faster” and that our leaders will have to act with greater speed in order to keep up with the demands of the public.  As he says, the system is more responsive, but quality is sacrificed for pace, much like some people demand sleek and streamlined campaigns that they can support without much effort, involvement, or even understanding.

The last section I’d like to call attention to is Levin’s opinion of blogging.  He calls it a mixed blessing, and says it’s only instantaneous reaction.  Yet that’s really what it should be, because blogging represents a person’s true feelings through their reflex to certain issues.  Levin claims it will break down the barriers between professional and unprofessional, official and unofficial.  However, this is what we really need, because the first way to overcome apathy is to have impulsive reactions – refining them into mature arguments and well-thought-out ideas can come later.  Not that a direct bridge between our government and our most vocal politically-oriented citizens would necessarily be a good thing, but getting more citizens involved and willing to debate rationally and make agreements would be a good first step.

Even though the Internet hasn’t caused a huge change in how our country is run, it has changed how people react to it.  In the future, it could lead to good or bad; it all depends on what we do with it.

Thank you for reading; see you next time.

Referenced article:  Yuval Levin, “Politics after the Internet.”  Troy.edu, Fall 2002.  http://spectrum.troy.edu/~shelton/Articles/Levin.pdf

Blog Power and the People

Hello!

Today you get a political-analysis blog about political-analysis blogs.  I’m focusing on the political power that blogs can have, even if deemed ‘unofficial’ by reputable news sources. 

At first thought, the term ‘blog’ calls to mind an unprofessional, meandering stream-of-consciousness upchuck of odds-and-ends arguments that crumble under closer investigation.  And yes, the low difficulty of setting up one’s own blog definitely contributes to that. 

But now, a substantial number of pundits that have a definite bias use blogs as a source of information, or at least take them seriously enough to mention them and thus increase their pageviews, as stated in the article “The Power of Politics and Blogs,” by Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell.  Blogs can have a much wider impact on readers than the large news channels: In the article, one blogger mentioned that a few readers had turned to his blog for their sole source of news, and he urged them to stop, because while he was indeed reporting facts, he was also splicing his own opinions into the story.

Many more news outlets have picked up on this trend, and either hire bloggers or publish their stories in papers.  In addition to using blogs in their everyday information searches, many journalists use blogs as a way to check audience reaction and catch mistakes they may have made.  Some reporters admit to checking a single blog up to six times a day, or even relying on them for breaking news. 

Bloggers do have an advantage over most news outlets:  Immediately after news happens, they can post their reactions, without worrying about being overly specific, or getting every detail absolutely correct for fear of backlash.  Posters can act and react almost before the headlines hit the home page of their usual news channels.  In fact, the authors say that bloggers almost have the ability to predict what’s going to be reported before it’s actually reported.  For example, one agreement among bloggers that a certain story needed a closer look resulted in an actual investigation by news outlets.

As this article was published in 2004, the authors’ prediction that blogging will become “more directly integrated into ‘politics as usual,’ losing some of their flavor of novelty and immediacy in the process” seems to have come true in some ways, but is not accurate in others.  We certainly have had an influx of blogs that garner only a few readers and repeat the same tired arguments, but at the same time we’ve got more rising blogs that inspire people and promote social change.

On a side note, the authors of the article (and many others) believe that the increasing division between the main political parties is largely due to blogs, and the authors’ tendency to include issues that help their opinions and omit points that would work against them.  Going back to my first entry, I keep seeing this theme everywhere.  It’s amazing how so many people have noticed this and yet its effects are worse than ever.  In social change and politics, blogs have surprising power, so I think that if enough people unite and decide what’s in their best interests, we can move the focus of our news to what we need to concentrate on as a nation.

Thank you for reading; see you next time.

Referenced Article:  Drezner & Farrell, “The Power and Politics of Blogs,” Duke.edu, August 2004.  http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/spring05/cps182s/readings/blogpowerpolitics.pdf

Social Networking in our Elections

Hello again!

I hope you enjoyed (somewhat) my first thoughts about how divisive arguing politics on the Internet is, at least in my opinion.  Now it’s time to look at what comes from the other side – who we’re electing, instead of who’s voting.

Today I’m going to focus on the use of social media in political campaigns – namely, President Obama’s 2008 election and the upcoming 2012 one.  There’s no doubt that President Obama’s use of social media definitely contributed to the election results.  In my mind, the part that Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter played was that a connection was established with the generation who has grown up with these sites and other networking tools.  It also served to bring politicians down onto ‘our’ level – we all follow a few Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, or YouTube channels.  In addition, it made a real impression that our future President was modern and willing to move forward with the times.  There’s nothing more important than connecting with the people during an election and bringing a human element into the whole chaos.  Since I’ve been seeing the “Obama in 2012” ads, remembered the previous online campaign, I thought it might make an interesting topic for this post.

To look a little further into this, I found an interesting article on the PBS site, written by Steven Davy, entitled “How Technology Changed American Politics in the Internet Age.”  Anyway, President Obama’s campaign was not the first to use social media, although it did cover more areas of it.  Before his 2008 campaign came Howard Dean’s and Jessie Ventura’s campaigns using the foremost social media of the time.  It seems odd to me that others before 2008 had used networking to gain voters’ trust (maybe because I didn’t follow politics much back then) but looking at it again, I can’t say I’m really surprised that this is not the first of elections to use social media as a platform.

Granted, the use of technology for election information in the past was more limited, using phone banks and teleconferencing instead of the updates and tweets we’re now used to.  While promotional videos were all over the Internet (albeit on their own sites rather than YouTube), I personally think that the first true indicator of what was to come in mobile devices was a Rock the Vote campaign partnership with Motorola that allowed users to receive political and voting information on their cell phones.  Although this article only reads up to the 2010 progression of social media in the political net, I can see we’ll be racing into an age of updates and personal connection to what’s happening in Washington, following the debates on YouTube, and eagerly awaiting the announcement of running partners on Twitter. 

At the end of all this, though, I have to say that the instant nature of all of these media is really making it seem more like a presidential ‘race’.  Instead of getting caught up in the whirlwind of all of these progressions, updates, and catchy slogans, remember that we still need to take time to think about what we stand for personally, and who needs to be in office to get that done. 

Referenced Article: Steven Davy, “How Technology Changed American Politics in the Internet Age,” PBS MediaShift, April 16, 2010.  http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/how-technology-changed-american-politics-in-the-internet-age096.html

Welcome, info, and first thoughts

So, welcome to my blog! Here I'll be discussing what's always creeping into your life, and what affects almost everyone on here: politics! Isn't that fun? You all definitely don't get enough of it on the news, so here I am, giving you some more of it to think about. No, wait! Don't go yet!

I'm not here to take a stance on either side of any topic (although, believe me, I usually do), but to instead explore how exactly the Internet has affected politics in our government. Who here hasn't seen a heated 'argument' (if they can even be called that) on a news-site comment thread, or a sidebar ad to elect someone-or-other to office (or impeach them, as the case may be)...or even an ad to "Test Your IQ against George W. Bush!" Politics on the internet includes everything from petitions to cyber hacking and warfare. But right now, I want to focus on the human aspect of things, because the human side of things is what got me into this topic in the first place. Us, sitting here right now with our laptops and smartphones, browsing here on this blog.

What I feel is that political forums are only widening the gap between partisan parties. Some might say, "Well, of course," but I think this is going beyond the Internet. Whether political figures with strong viewpoints are influencing commenters, or the other way round, we're digging ourselves into a deeper hole than we can get out of. If we lose a debate online, we just go and surround ourselves with people who hold the same beliefs we do, and they can assure us of our moral or intellectual superiority. The obvious problem with this is that our ability to effectively argue is declining. Where we used to actually listen to the viewpoint of the other person when it was their time to speak, we now wait eagerly for them to pause for a moment so we can interject our own viewpoints, while ignoring what the other person just said.

Even more disturbing is how we’ve somehow simultaneously fallen into an era of ambiguity.  On news forums, if someone slips up, we can immediately call out their fallacy and exalt our own viewpoint…and if we slip up, we can immediately backtrack and claim we meant something different.  We are stuck between being so determined to stick to a cause that we can’t see another person’s point of view, or being so malleable that we never specify exactly what it is that we want.

Our politics on a national scale are mirroring this.  Our current presidential candidates are not stating directly and clearly what they intend to do if elected, showing the ‘malleable’ end of the scale.  On the other end of the spectrum, many of our current politicians are so unyielding in their beliefs that it’s become near-impossible to get anything done – which we saw in the looming government shutdown.  Cooperating only when a disaster is coming is no way to run a country – yet neither is refusing to have an opinion. 

This might be a long shot, but I believe that if we put our own opinions in order, with respect for the other side of things (and staying away from any beliefs we don’t believe in, but support anyway because our parties do) we could change the way that politicians work.  They would no longer be trying to appeal to sides that are all for one issue, while assuring the ambiguously-opinioned people that they won’t do anything extreme.  If we are a real democracy, then we should be able to change the way our politicians work, and finally get somewhere in the government without getting hung up on partisan politics.

Thanks for reading – more to follow!