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Another point that Levin was right on is the fact that our representative democracy has still not been replaced by a direct democracy.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!