Government and Politics
New Media, What (If Any) Effect Do Twitter/Blogs Have On Our Political Discourse
by Bryan Boroughs | November 16, 2009
In 2008, nearly 40% of adults in the United States communicated with others about politics using the Internet: 11% posted political content on a blog, 20% shared their political views on twitter, and 33% posted political content on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn (Pew Center, 2008). Has this phenomenon improved informed public discourse? Has it shattered the electorate? The evidence suggests both have happened to some degree.
In his book, Republic.com, Cass Sunstein argued that the Internet threatened the very fabric of our democracy because it could “Balkanize” political discourse. He asserted that citizens would soon be able to filter which news they learned about, so they might only visit websites authored by like-minded people (Sunstein, 2001). In this dreaded scenario, political discourse could devolve into a thousand tiny echo chambers – where people hear only what they want to hear and extremism flourishes.
Of course, other scholars emphasize that the Internet and blogosphere create a virtual forum for discussion, debate, and dissemination of previously unavailable information (Robbin, 2008). Some argue that the Internet improves discourse by allowing citizens to learn about issues beyond those covered in most 30-minute television news broadcasts (Lievrouw, 2001). Indeed, an optimist could imagine the Internet fostering a vaulted national debate, in place of the television-dominated news cycle of the 90s.
So which happened? Neither fully, but a bit of both.
Certainly, some of Sunstein’s predictions have come true. People increasingly look to the Internet for political content. In 2008, 44% of adults in America used the Internet to learn about or discuss politics, while only 18% of adults surveyed claimed to have done so in 2000. Twenty-six percent now say that they get most of their political news online, up from 10% in 2000 (Pew Center, 2008).
However, Sunstein also predicted that people would only seek news from sources that agreed with their personal perspectives. That prediction has only proven partly true. In 2008, 33% of adult online political users reported that they got their news from web sites that shared their point of view. However, 21% said that they mostly visited sites that challenged their point of view (Pew Center, 2008). These numbers certainly contain some bias because they are based on self-reported data. Nonetheless, the data do not seem to show that the American population only reads agreeable news, contrary to Sunstein’s fears.
Furthermore, it seems unlikely that one person’s blog feed would fully define the information that a person sees on a daily basis. Even if we predominately get our news and analysis from a self-filtered web, we will still have family, coworkers, neighbors, and friends who could disagree with us about many issues. And, for all the filtering the blogosphere can provide, it also allows remarkably easy access to the opinions of those with whom we might disagree.
There is also some evidence supporting the idea that the blogosphere has improved informed discussion in the country. A 2004 study by the Institute for Politics Democracy & The Internet examined the relationship between political bloggers, which they called “Online Political Citizens”, and the population at-large. The study showed that people who were active in the blogosphere were disproportionately likely to be influential in their non-Internet communities. In fact, “Online Political Citizens” were 7 times more likely to be “influentials” than the general population. Rather than being isolated from their communities, bloggers were more likely to be leaders of civic organizations, attend public meetings about local affairs, and attend political rallies (IPDI, 2004).
Granted, there are plenty of reasons to think that the blogosphere hasn’t necessarily raised the quality of the national debate. We’ve all seen extremists given a blog-based megaphone; people claimed that Bush planned September 11th, Obama supports infanticide, and the trip to the moon was an elaborate hoax.
So how does it all fit together? Philip Agre, a scholar from UCLA, suggested that we should think of the Internet and blogosphere in the framework of an “amplification model.” He argued that they simply provide numerous new options for institutions and individuals to pursue existing political goals and strategies. These technologies make it inexpensive for anyone to express ideas to a massive audience, coordinate activities across great distances, and respond rapidly to developments in the political sphere (Agre 2002).
In that sense, the Internet and the blogosphere are neither doomsday devices nor silver bullets for political discourse. Instead, they make the political discourse louder, faster, and – yes – more chaotic.
References:
Agre, Philip E. "Real-Time Politics: The Internet and the Political Process." The Information Society 18, no. 5 (2002): 311-331.
Institute for Politics Democracy & The Internet, (IPDI). "Political Influentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign." February 5, 2004.www.ipdi.org/influentials/Report.pdf (accessed November 1, 2009).
Lievrouw, Leah A. "New media and the ‘pluralization of life-worlds’." New Media & Society 3, no. 1 (2001): 7-28.
Pew Center, "November 2008 - Post Election Tracking Survey Topline." December 9, 2008. http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Data%20Sets/2008/November_2008_Post_Election_Topline.zip.zip (accessed November 1, 2009).
Robbin, Alice. "Internet information and communication behavior during a political moment: The Iraq war, March 2003." Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59, no. 14 (2008): 2210-2231.
Sunstein, Cass. Republic.com. Princeton University Press, 2001.
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Email Bryan Boroughs at bnb24@law.georgetown.edu
