My name is Nathan J. Fragala and I recently graduated from an outstanding internationally recognized private college in Burlington, Vermont and I am currently working in retail sales surrounded by incompetent employees and inept managers who barely graduated High School. In college I worked hard to distinguish myself under the assumption that my mind would make me money. But having searched several months for respectable work with little to show for it but a bunch of automated email responses, I now feel as though my efforts would have been better spent learning a trade.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
A Note I Posted on LinkedIn
Good Afternoon,
My name is Nathan J. Fragala and I recently graduated from an outstanding internationally recognized private college in Burlington, Vermont and I am currently working in retail sales surrounded by incompetent employees and inept managers who barely graduated High School. In college I worked hard to distinguish myself under the assumption that my mind would make me money. But having searched several months for respectable work with little to show for it but a bunch of automated email responses, I now feel as though my efforts would have been better spent learning a trade.
The middle management grease which facilitates the effective operation of a functioning domestic economy has all but dried up since 2008 leaving the vastly expanding educated workforce with nothing but entry level jobs left vacant in the wake of a fierce "promote-from-within" corporate belt tightening ethos. Why take a chance on an outsider who is clearly more capable of doing the job when we can promote the dropout who is clearly intent on dying at his desk? While sound in theory, in practice this type of corporate culture is severely affecting America's competitiveness as a global economic leader. It's pining responsibility on hands unfit for the job while those most capable are forced into positions where they can do the least good. The economy goes bad and its the disenfranchised and unwarranted who benefit; not the people who can actually make a difference. Like many others, I'm here bolster my chances of finding gainful employment and If anyone can provide assistance in the Greater Boston area it would be greatly appreciated.
My name is Nathan J. Fragala and I recently graduated from an outstanding internationally recognized private college in Burlington, Vermont and I am currently working in retail sales surrounded by incompetent employees and inept managers who barely graduated High School. In college I worked hard to distinguish myself under the assumption that my mind would make me money. But having searched several months for respectable work with little to show for it but a bunch of automated email responses, I now feel as though my efforts would have been better spent learning a trade.
The middle management grease which facilitates the effective operation of a functioning domestic economy has all but dried up since 2008 leaving the vastly expanding educated workforce with nothing but entry level jobs left vacant in the wake of a fierce "promote-from-within" corporate belt tightening ethos. Why take a chance on an outsider who is clearly more capable of doing the job when we can promote the dropout who is clearly intent on dying at his desk? While sound in theory, in practice this type of corporate culture is severely affecting America's competitiveness as a global economic leader. It's pining responsibility on hands unfit for the job while those most capable are forced into positions where they can do the least good. The economy goes bad and its the disenfranchised and unwarranted who benefit; not the people who can actually make a difference. Like many others, I'm here bolster my chances of finding gainful employment and If anyone can provide assistance in the Greater Boston area it would be greatly appreciated.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Unplugged: A Response to MT Anderson's book "FEED"
It has been twenty-nine hours, thirty-one minutes, and twenty-six seconds since I last came in contact with technology. My eyes appear well rested; my mind is clear; and the merciless sensation to shop at Wal-Mart has somewhat dissipated during my time unplugged from the world.
In M. T. Anderson’s novel “Feed” characters are subjected to a never-ending battery of advertisements and information that almost forcibly injects relative data directly into their brains without much thought or impetus. This is something we can all relate to as we walk down the Church Street Marketplace or enter a shopping mall. “When we got off the ship, our feeds were going fugue with all the banners…I was trying to talk to Link, but I couldn’t because I was getting bannered so hard…The whole time was like that (Anderson, 8).”
During my time unplugged I couldn’t help but notice that despite my seeming disconnect from the technical world surrounding me, I was still subject to it no matter how far or how long I remained unplugged. I shut off my cell phone and the messages just piled up (much to my girlfriends dismay); I walked to the lake to play my guitar and watch the sunset but on the way I was bombarded with advertisements and technology in the form of radio programs, people on the street talking about the new shoes they just bought, and even looking down on my person I found constant reminders of this “feed” we cannot escape. Things such as my shoes, my shirt, and even my guitar seemed to scream at me like it was some subliminal plot by advertisers to remind me that no matter how hard I tried I would never truly escape the modern world and its trappings.
My girlfriend thought the whole idea was ridiculous. “Why shut off your cell phone- what if someone needed to call you,” she said with anger on her lips. To which I replied, “I was supposed to shut off or distance myself from everything technological for a day so I couldn’t get to my cell phone.” To which she replied, “Well you could have at least checked you e-mail!” That’s when I decided to end the conversation.
The time I spent unplugged from the world was a real eye opener for me personally not because I have a deep seeded connection to modern technology but rather because I personally try not to. I don’t care too much if I forget my cell phone or don’t check my e-mail for a few days so I never really felt like I had a strong connection or need for those technologies. However, when I purposely tried to distance myself from them I couldn’t help but realize that they were attaching themselves to me. Even if I wanted to I could never entirely shut off from the world so in a way I felt almost like Titus and his gang of friends in M. T. Andersons book. I began to realize that there is indeed a “feed” plugging us all in to this intangible network of technologies and advertisements and throughout this course I intend to find out how strong that connection is and what I can do to stop it.
In M. T. Anderson’s novel “Feed” characters are subjected to a never-ending battery of advertisements and information that almost forcibly injects relative data directly into their brains without much thought or impetus. This is something we can all relate to as we walk down the Church Street Marketplace or enter a shopping mall. “When we got off the ship, our feeds were going fugue with all the banners…I was trying to talk to Link, but I couldn’t because I was getting bannered so hard…The whole time was like that (Anderson, 8).”
During my time unplugged I couldn’t help but notice that despite my seeming disconnect from the technical world surrounding me, I was still subject to it no matter how far or how long I remained unplugged. I shut off my cell phone and the messages just piled up (much to my girlfriends dismay); I walked to the lake to play my guitar and watch the sunset but on the way I was bombarded with advertisements and technology in the form of radio programs, people on the street talking about the new shoes they just bought, and even looking down on my person I found constant reminders of this “feed” we cannot escape. Things such as my shoes, my shirt, and even my guitar seemed to scream at me like it was some subliminal plot by advertisers to remind me that no matter how hard I tried I would never truly escape the modern world and its trappings.
My girlfriend thought the whole idea was ridiculous. “Why shut off your cell phone- what if someone needed to call you,” she said with anger on her lips. To which I replied, “I was supposed to shut off or distance myself from everything technological for a day so I couldn’t get to my cell phone.” To which she replied, “Well you could have at least checked you e-mail!” That’s when I decided to end the conversation.
The time I spent unplugged from the world was a real eye opener for me personally not because I have a deep seeded connection to modern technology but rather because I personally try not to. I don’t care too much if I forget my cell phone or don’t check my e-mail for a few days so I never really felt like I had a strong connection or need for those technologies. However, when I purposely tried to distance myself from them I couldn’t help but realize that they were attaching themselves to me. Even if I wanted to I could never entirely shut off from the world so in a way I felt almost like Titus and his gang of friends in M. T. Andersons book. I began to realize that there is indeed a “feed” plugging us all in to this intangible network of technologies and advertisements and throughout this course I intend to find out how strong that connection is and what I can do to stop it.
5 Technology Revelations
“Top Five Media and Technology Revelations”
“He said, facing toward her feet, ‘Her mother and I didn’t want to get her a feed at all. I did not have one. Neither did her mother. I said none for my family.
‘Then one day, when her mother had left, and I needed work, I was at a job interview. I was an excellent candidate. Two men were interviewing me. Talking about this and that. Then they were silent, just looking at me. I grew uncomfortable. They began looking at each other, and doing what I might call smirking.
‘I realized that they had chatted me, and that I had not responded. They found this funny. Risible. That a man would not have a feed. So they were chatting about me in my presence. Teasing me when I could not heat. Free to assess me as they would, right in front of me.
‘I did not get the job.
‘It was thus that I realized that my daughter would need the feed. She had to live in the world…”
- Feed, page 288
1.) Transformation of the Traditional Mass Media Institutions.
“Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it…[Our Ministry of Culture] does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical, and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves (Postman, 141).” In Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” the author discusses the impact of entertainment television on American sociopolitical comprehension. Television programs, advertisements, and political campaigns have been slowly adapting to the overwhelming desire people have for information and this is leading to a lack of understanding and analysis that is necessary for a functioning society. The media have become so overwhelmingly carefully with their controlled flood of information that Americans are loosing the ability to concentrate and comprehend abstract thought. What we see on the surface is becoming the basis of our understanding and this “information packaged as entertainment” is impacting our ability to make informed decisions; having consequences that reverberate not only in our daily lives, but in our democracy as well. Perhaps the Internet will provide an increased sense of dimension and context that will help subvert the media from presenting information merely as entertainment.
As we have seen in the past decade or so, the Internet is assimilating with every aspect of our daily lives. People spend almost as much time (if not moar) on the Internet as they do watching television and media outlets have been quick to incorporate these trends into their programming. “Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets…[This spares readers] the ‘less efficient’ method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles (Carr).”
It is not out of desire, however, that traditional media evolve; it is out of necessity. “The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations… Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules (Carr).” When you consider the viral nature of the web it becomes easy to see why traditional media have had to adapt to changes in the way people gather and interpret information. People can now actively participate in a dialogue with millions of others to critique the “consensus culture” mass media prescribes. “Broadcasting provides the common culture, and the Web offers more localized channels for responding to that culture (Jenkins, 211).” This diversifies the monologue traditional media had once preached to a disenfranchised public because it allows everyday people to voice their opinions, gain the support of others, and create a dialogue that introduces counter- perspective to the media’s prescribed public perception.
Modern political campaigns have also been forced to integrate the Internet as a major part of their election strategy because people are beginning to expect, nay demand, the increased dimension the web can place on information- dimension traditional media could never achieve. “The new media operate within different principles than the broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication (Jenkins, 208).” This is contributing to an increase in political transparency that is tearing down many of the perceived barriers people once thought prevented them from meaningful political action which many believe is reinvigorating the populace to become active members of a functioning democracy.
This is one of the most startling revelations I have had over the course of the semester because my classmates and I are witness to an evolution of traditional media as a consequence of the Internet. This is a relatively recent technology that is revolutionizing the entire world and as people who for a time lived in a world without Google, YouTube, and Facebook, we will be able to watch/participate/interact as new and old media collide and form a whole new media infrastructure. Hopefully, it will be to the betterment not only to our political democracy but also to society as a whole.
This is a video explaining the role the Web played on the U.S. Presidential Primaries in 2008 and how recent nominees have revolutionized “campaigning, mobilizing, and mud slinging” in the age of the Internet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn_TsRjiunY
2.) The Shift in the Publics Role as Members of an American Democracy.
We are in the midst of a “Digital Revolution.” Television, radio, movies, telephones, PDA’s, interpersonal communication of all forms, classrooms, bedrooms, and yes, even bathrooms are becoming incorporated into a digital realm. The web has become an almost mandatory facet of our daily lives and has allowed for a sort of collective intelligence to form. If we have an idea we can post it on a blog, receive comments, imbed media, and link to other discussions that contribute to a sort of global dialogue between those with Internet access that helps us better understand the world. This dialogue has revolutionized the way we interpret information and has given us the opportunity to delve more deeply into more subjects than was ever possible before the Internets emergence. One of the most significant contributions the Web has made is to the public’s role as members of our democracy and it is the subject of my second revelation.
When people talk about a “Digital Revolution” and its impact on American politics what they are talking about is a, “shift in the public’s role in the political process, bringing realm of political discourse closer to the everyday life experiences of citizens (Jenkins, 208).” With the tools provided by the Internet people are now able to gather information about candidates, debate policy differences, and even monitor up to the minute polling data downloaded directly to their Blackberry. The “Digital Revolution” has had its impact on many aspect of modern life in America but I think most significant is its impact on democracy. What we are seeing is a destabilization of the political groundwork that laid the foundation of our democracy for so many years. Where once the broadcast media exercised almost complete control over what was considered to be “public” opinion, now everyday Americans without network support can garner supporters, promote ideals, and contribute to a political dialogue that shapes our modern political process. “What [we] are talking about is changing the ways people think about community and power so that they are able to mobilize collective intelligence to transform governance (Jenkins, 208).” Individuals who once felt ostracized by pop-politics for having opposing positions on political issues now have a myriad of channels to voice their opposition and introduce counter perspective in what was once a very shallow pool of opinion controlled by broadcast media.
One of the most important impacts the “Digital Revolution” has had on American politics is in the Blogosphere. This is a digital realm where everyday Americans with Internet access can voice their opinions about anything and everything and publish it on the Web for all to see. But the Blogosphere’s true worth comes in its ability to foster discussion, namely political, which is able to curtail mass media’s stranglehold on public opinion and influence politics in a meaningful way. “Blogging may on one level be facilitating the flow of ideas across the media landscape; on other levels, [Bloggers] are ensuring an ever more divisive political debate (Jenkins, 216).” Bloggers are even able to take democracy a step further by encouraging the formation of coalitions and Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) designed to promote their ideals and organize political action such as the February 2003 “Virtual March on Washington.” This is the logic behind what Henry Jenkins calls convergence politics: “the effort to use grassroots media to mobilize and mainstream media to publicize.”
Because the Internet is a narrowcast media that is “peer-to-peer” rather than “one-to-many,” Bloggers are able to create a sort of community classroom in which policy is debated and plans for political action are formed. Like any classroom there will be a lot of blabber-mouthing and incoherent gibberish, but in a few small pockets there will be meaningful discussion taking place where people of varying positions are deliberating policy issues and forming coalitions designed for action. In this arena they are able to pose opinions, support or refute them with data, and ask the all-important question to their peers “What do you think?” This is something that cannot be achieved with traditional media’s monologue to America and it is the reason why one-to-many communication is so detrimental. Counter perspective is essential to any functioning democracy and the Blogosphere provides a avenue for people to voice their opinions and act upon them.
As mainstream journalism becomes increasingly unreliable and tainted by the concerns of private interest groups, “being driven by ideological agendas rather than professional standards, burying stories that run counter to their economic interests, and trivializing politics in their focus on power struggle and horse races,” Bloggers introduce a counter perspective that is increasing the democratizing potential of the Internet and putting an emphasis on the publics role in a functioning democracy (Jenkins, 216).
This Daily Show episode hosts guest Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and explains Blogging to viewers and its importance as a meaningful information medium in the wake of the “Digital Revolution.”
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=212819
3.) Just How Much Traditional Media Continue to Manipulate the Way Americans See the World.
My third revelation came to me upon a reassessment of Alisa Millers TED talk from week four in which she discusses why the U.S. media focuses almost entirely on America despite living in an increasingly interconnected world. In the U.S. some 79% of news coverage in February of 2007 was within our borders while abroad important international events such as the IPCC’s confirmation of man’s impact on global warming received one tenth the coverage of Anna Nicole’s death by drug overdose. “The combines coverage of Russia, China, and India by U.S. newscasters reached just 1% (Miller).” And the Web doesn’t do much better. “The Internet does not facilitate widespread participation in politics, nor does it raise the level of political dialogue. The Internet leads to more information clutter; it becomes necessary for any message to get louder. Much of the political information, therefore, will inevitably become distorted, shrill, and simplistic (Noam).” While there are an infinite amount of resources for international information on the Internet, the top news sites covered the same stories as the major networks and the other news they do cover is often too simplistic to justify its importance. As Miller points out however, the amount of Americans who seek out international news regularly grew from 37 to 52% in the past 20 years so why aren’t news organizations covering a broader scope of information?
The short answer to this question might be that it’s cheaper to focus on news at home than it is to maintain an office abroad (foreign news bureaus have been eliminated by 1/2) but I think the answer is a little more endemic of the American consumer. The American consumer is not just a consumer of product he is also a consumer of information. In some ways the two are different but in others they are in fact one in the same. We are consumers of information even as we consume product and often times the products we consume tell of the character of the individual. Taken as a whole, the sum of our consumer activities can reflect our character as a nation and therefore the commercial market is a significant factor in how we consume information. Neil Postman explains-
“Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country—these tell everything about the fears, fancies, and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product bit what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and towards making consumers feel valuable…the consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.”
-Postman, page 128
What Postman is arguing here is that Americans are becoming increasingly susceptible to a two-dimensional interpretation of information. As we continue to allow the commercial mainstream media to manipulate the way we see the world we are limiting our ability to concentrate and articulate complex information. When we see the For Motor Company publishing commercials showcasing their new line of F150 super duties that can stop a military cargo plane we are subject to a clever misdirection of consumer interest that puts our focus on the big plane and the truck that’s stopping it rather than the logical comprehension of owning a truck in this kind of economy. But the issue here isn’t the misdirection, it’s the impact it has on our interpretation of information.
Because we are so inundated with this type of two-dimensional information presentation by the mass media, it becomes natural for us to take things at face value. Perhaps you are a construction worker or an engineer that is on the fence about purchasing a truck, Postman argues that if Ford Motor Company can accurately manipulate you into feeling valuable as a consumer of Ford product, either by absurd tests of largely useless features or maybe guilt imposed by the failing American auto industry, it can bypass more important pieces of information such as gas mileage, after purchase support, and power train warranty that seem like logical informative factors to base your decision.
The issue is that the shallow interpretation of information promoted by the commercial media has ramifications in every aspect of American life. “Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged [by the mass media] (Carr). Political, International, and local news is taking its cues from consumer advertisements, both on television and on the web, by restricting the sort of in depth analysis that is needed for such important issues. Primetime network news organization use this kind of mentality to routinely reduce the world into one big story at a time while political candidates use it to skirt the public record and appeal to voters on a strictly personal basis. "By bringing politicians close to us, the American mass media appeal to our natural cockiness about judging character. In doing so, the media also establish a model of politics that emphasizes politicians over politics and psychology over economics (Hart, 68)." This is what Hart calls “personality politics” and it has a serious impact on our nation’s ability to function as a democracy because we are effectively incapable of making complex decisions based on relevant information (such as a candidates qualifications).
Hopefully the “convergence culture” alluded to by Jenkins will set in motion a restructuring of how information is presented- in one phase information s broadcasted to millions and in the second people are given access to accompanying information that allows them to make their own judgments.
This is the Alisa Miller TED Talk in which she explains some important statistics concerning the grip mass media has on information. It is significant because she graphically illustrates how much network news organizations focus on the U.S. even as we push towards a truly interconnected world.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html
This is another provocative video with some great analysis of Mass Media’s detrimental influence on today’s society:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4_YMl9k0w-
4.) America’s Growing Addiction to Information.
“[The] explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession (Williams).”
The fourth revelation I have made this semester is the sheer addiction to information spreading like wild fire across America. It seems that in a post 9/11 world anyone and everyone is concerned about the next “Big News” to hit the airwaves only now we needn’t rely on television to feed our addiction to information; we can simply power up our PDA, laptop, or cell phone. As Alex Williams, contributor to the New York Times, points out, “For many Americans, the hunger for information is reminiscent of those harried, harrowing months after Sept. 11, 2001. But seven years ago, there was no iPhone, no Twitter, and no YouTube.” We are now capable of getting information whenever and wherever we want to feed our information impulses and this, like any addiction, has its downfall.
“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy…That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle (Carr). Carr’s experiences are not at all an isolated event. The Internet has flooded so our minds with pop-ups, spam, and instant messaging that we are beginning to think like a computer. Like Johnny Five from the hit 80’s movies “Short Circuit” we are on a never-ending quest for input. But the Internet, while widening the channel in which we locate data, has also limited us in the amount of extrapolation and insight we devote to it. Why form your own theories on ethnocentric interclass racism when you can read a Harvard professors masters dissertation on the subject- or even better link to an open source online encyclopedia and get bulleted outline? In a post 9/11 world it seems information is being used as a currency for people to feel a sense of comfort in a world that is largely unpredictable. “In times when people think their fate is tied to enormous events that are out of their hands, stockpiling information can give some people a sense of control, social scientists said (Williams).”
But if this sense of control is a fallacy created by the broadcast news media’s two-dimensional presentation of information, then perhaps this revelation is more startling than it appears. For if we continue to allow traditional forms of media to manipulate our interpretation of information we will be no more informed on anything which will make us incapable of making the important informed decisions that are essential to a functioning democracy.
This video showcases many of the detrimental effects of an information addiction not only in the political sphere but it the way our minds are becoming literally hardwired to the Web. I found the relationships it made with negative aspects of playing video games, impacts an information addiction have on school or work, and information based relationships provocative to say the least. This video exemplifies why I call it an information addiction in every sense of the word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p2GW-HgNI&feature=related-
5.) The Growing Threat Information is Posing on Democracy Itself.
As alluded to in the conclusion of my previous revelation- our growing addiction to information has serious potential consequences if the information we digest is manipulated by the commercial mass media. My fifth and final revelation this semester is the threat our information addiction, which resulted from the “Digital Revolution,” is posing on Americans as consumers and as members of a democracy.
“Mainstream mass media and commercial websites…systematically prioritize certain types of sites and information at the expense of others, leading to a narrowing of the Internet’s value as a means by which to give voice to alternative perspectives and increase the communicative aspect that constitute the public sphere (Longford, Graham, and Patten).” Both the Net and broadcast media are in large part commercial entities designed specifically to get consumers to purchase product. Sites like Myspace and Facebook, which started innocently enough eventually succumbed to the pressures of commercial interests. According to Yahoo News, Myspace sold to News Corp for more than a half a billion dollars simply because advertisers wanted to capture the visitors attention and direct them to their products and services and if advertisers are willing to pay that much for page views, what’s to stop them from manipulated information int heir favor?
Google, Yahoo, and Ask are all commercial search engines and they, as Longford etc. suggest, systematically prioritize what information gets sent to the top of your search results, in effect burying what you were looking for under a pile of commercial interests. Broadcast news media do the same thing with the stories they cover by focusing on stories that are favorable to their commercial sponsors and we have become so inundated that we take everything at face value. We take little to no time extrapolating information and this is causing us to complacent with two-dimensional data, which has monumental negative affects on our ability to function as a democracy. Counter perspective is essential to any democracy and at least on broadcast media they have to appeal to a wide range of consumers. On the Internet people are free to limit every aspect of what information they come across. “The ability of Internet users to personalize and constrict the flow of information using browser settings, listservs, customized web portals, and RSS news feeds—may actually promote the very sort of ‘cyberbalkanization’ that is detrimental to the public sphere (Longford, Graham, Patten).”
The Internets capacity for “hyper-atomization” allows close-minded people to avoid entirely any alternative perspective that might contradict their opinions. This lack of information makes these people completely subject to their beliefs and unfit for democratic participation. And while the Internet has significant democratic potential, because it is still subject to the information manipulation of commercial interest everyday people are becoming no more fit for democratic participation than they once were. As Longford etc. puts it, “Reluctance of our governments and political parties to enhance the Internet as anything more than a supplement to existing [commercial] practices has mean that, while the Internet has change the practice of [gathering political information], democracy has not been deepened…The corporate colonization of the Internet and out lack of willingness to treat the Internet as a public good has hampered the Internet’s potential to facilitate the sort of democratic transformation of the public sphere that could deepen…democracy.”
This is potentially my biggest revelation: that information itself might threaten our very democracy and we might live in an age of misinformation.
In an excellent speech conducted by Bill Moyers on media reform he states: “In his magisterial book Media Monopoly Ben Bagdikien wrote, ‘The result of the of relatively narrow corporate ideologies has been the creation of widely established political and economic illusions with little visible contradictions in the media to which the majority of the people is exclusively exposed.’ In other words, what we need to know to make democracy work for all Americans is compromised by media institutions deeply embedded in the power structures of society.” This opening quote exemplifies exactly what I am talking about in the previous revelation. I only hope that the entire class will watch all three of these thought provoking and excellent videos on the threat mass media poses on democracy itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p2GW-HgNI&feature=related
“He said, facing toward her feet, ‘Her mother and I didn’t want to get her a feed at all. I did not have one. Neither did her mother. I said none for my family.
‘Then one day, when her mother had left, and I needed work, I was at a job interview. I was an excellent candidate. Two men were interviewing me. Talking about this and that. Then they were silent, just looking at me. I grew uncomfortable. They began looking at each other, and doing what I might call smirking.
‘I realized that they had chatted me, and that I had not responded. They found this funny. Risible. That a man would not have a feed. So they were chatting about me in my presence. Teasing me when I could not heat. Free to assess me as they would, right in front of me.
‘I did not get the job.
‘It was thus that I realized that my daughter would need the feed. She had to live in the world…”
- Feed, page 288
1.) Transformation of the Traditional Mass Media Institutions.
“Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it…[Our Ministry of Culture] does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical, and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves (Postman, 141).” In Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” the author discusses the impact of entertainment television on American sociopolitical comprehension. Television programs, advertisements, and political campaigns have been slowly adapting to the overwhelming desire people have for information and this is leading to a lack of understanding and analysis that is necessary for a functioning society. The media have become so overwhelmingly carefully with their controlled flood of information that Americans are loosing the ability to concentrate and comprehend abstract thought. What we see on the surface is becoming the basis of our understanding and this “information packaged as entertainment” is impacting our ability to make informed decisions; having consequences that reverberate not only in our daily lives, but in our democracy as well. Perhaps the Internet will provide an increased sense of dimension and context that will help subvert the media from presenting information merely as entertainment.
As we have seen in the past decade or so, the Internet is assimilating with every aspect of our daily lives. People spend almost as much time (if not moar) on the Internet as they do watching television and media outlets have been quick to incorporate these trends into their programming. “Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets…[This spares readers] the ‘less efficient’ method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles (Carr).”
It is not out of desire, however, that traditional media evolve; it is out of necessity. “The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations… Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules (Carr).” When you consider the viral nature of the web it becomes easy to see why traditional media have had to adapt to changes in the way people gather and interpret information. People can now actively participate in a dialogue with millions of others to critique the “consensus culture” mass media prescribes. “Broadcasting provides the common culture, and the Web offers more localized channels for responding to that culture (Jenkins, 211).” This diversifies the monologue traditional media had once preached to a disenfranchised public because it allows everyday people to voice their opinions, gain the support of others, and create a dialogue that introduces counter- perspective to the media’s prescribed public perception.
Modern political campaigns have also been forced to integrate the Internet as a major part of their election strategy because people are beginning to expect, nay demand, the increased dimension the web can place on information- dimension traditional media could never achieve. “The new media operate within different principles than the broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication (Jenkins, 208).” This is contributing to an increase in political transparency that is tearing down many of the perceived barriers people once thought prevented them from meaningful political action which many believe is reinvigorating the populace to become active members of a functioning democracy.
This is one of the most startling revelations I have had over the course of the semester because my classmates and I are witness to an evolution of traditional media as a consequence of the Internet. This is a relatively recent technology that is revolutionizing the entire world and as people who for a time lived in a world without Google, YouTube, and Facebook, we will be able to watch/participate/interact as new and old media collide and form a whole new media infrastructure. Hopefully, it will be to the betterment not only to our political democracy but also to society as a whole.
This is a video explaining the role the Web played on the U.S. Presidential Primaries in 2008 and how recent nominees have revolutionized “campaigning, mobilizing, and mud slinging” in the age of the Internet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn_TsRjiunY
2.) The Shift in the Publics Role as Members of an American Democracy.
We are in the midst of a “Digital Revolution.” Television, radio, movies, telephones, PDA’s, interpersonal communication of all forms, classrooms, bedrooms, and yes, even bathrooms are becoming incorporated into a digital realm. The web has become an almost mandatory facet of our daily lives and has allowed for a sort of collective intelligence to form. If we have an idea we can post it on a blog, receive comments, imbed media, and link to other discussions that contribute to a sort of global dialogue between those with Internet access that helps us better understand the world. This dialogue has revolutionized the way we interpret information and has given us the opportunity to delve more deeply into more subjects than was ever possible before the Internets emergence. One of the most significant contributions the Web has made is to the public’s role as members of our democracy and it is the subject of my second revelation.
When people talk about a “Digital Revolution” and its impact on American politics what they are talking about is a, “shift in the public’s role in the political process, bringing realm of political discourse closer to the everyday life experiences of citizens (Jenkins, 208).” With the tools provided by the Internet people are now able to gather information about candidates, debate policy differences, and even monitor up to the minute polling data downloaded directly to their Blackberry. The “Digital Revolution” has had its impact on many aspect of modern life in America but I think most significant is its impact on democracy. What we are seeing is a destabilization of the political groundwork that laid the foundation of our democracy for so many years. Where once the broadcast media exercised almost complete control over what was considered to be “public” opinion, now everyday Americans without network support can garner supporters, promote ideals, and contribute to a political dialogue that shapes our modern political process. “What [we] are talking about is changing the ways people think about community and power so that they are able to mobilize collective intelligence to transform governance (Jenkins, 208).” Individuals who once felt ostracized by pop-politics for having opposing positions on political issues now have a myriad of channels to voice their opposition and introduce counter perspective in what was once a very shallow pool of opinion controlled by broadcast media.
One of the most important impacts the “Digital Revolution” has had on American politics is in the Blogosphere. This is a digital realm where everyday Americans with Internet access can voice their opinions about anything and everything and publish it on the Web for all to see. But the Blogosphere’s true worth comes in its ability to foster discussion, namely political, which is able to curtail mass media’s stranglehold on public opinion and influence politics in a meaningful way. “Blogging may on one level be facilitating the flow of ideas across the media landscape; on other levels, [Bloggers] are ensuring an ever more divisive political debate (Jenkins, 216).” Bloggers are even able to take democracy a step further by encouraging the formation of coalitions and Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) designed to promote their ideals and organize political action such as the February 2003 “Virtual March on Washington.” This is the logic behind what Henry Jenkins calls convergence politics: “the effort to use grassroots media to mobilize and mainstream media to publicize.”
Because the Internet is a narrowcast media that is “peer-to-peer” rather than “one-to-many,” Bloggers are able to create a sort of community classroom in which policy is debated and plans for political action are formed. Like any classroom there will be a lot of blabber-mouthing and incoherent gibberish, but in a few small pockets there will be meaningful discussion taking place where people of varying positions are deliberating policy issues and forming coalitions designed for action. In this arena they are able to pose opinions, support or refute them with data, and ask the all-important question to their peers “What do you think?” This is something that cannot be achieved with traditional media’s monologue to America and it is the reason why one-to-many communication is so detrimental. Counter perspective is essential to any functioning democracy and the Blogosphere provides a avenue for people to voice their opinions and act upon them.
As mainstream journalism becomes increasingly unreliable and tainted by the concerns of private interest groups, “being driven by ideological agendas rather than professional standards, burying stories that run counter to their economic interests, and trivializing politics in their focus on power struggle and horse races,” Bloggers introduce a counter perspective that is increasing the democratizing potential of the Internet and putting an emphasis on the publics role in a functioning democracy (Jenkins, 216).
This Daily Show episode hosts guest Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and explains Blogging to viewers and its importance as a meaningful information medium in the wake of the “Digital Revolution.”
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=212819
3.) Just How Much Traditional Media Continue to Manipulate the Way Americans See the World.
My third revelation came to me upon a reassessment of Alisa Millers TED talk from week four in which she discusses why the U.S. media focuses almost entirely on America despite living in an increasingly interconnected world. In the U.S. some 79% of news coverage in February of 2007 was within our borders while abroad important international events such as the IPCC’s confirmation of man’s impact on global warming received one tenth the coverage of Anna Nicole’s death by drug overdose. “The combines coverage of Russia, China, and India by U.S. newscasters reached just 1% (Miller).” And the Web doesn’t do much better. “The Internet does not facilitate widespread participation in politics, nor does it raise the level of political dialogue. The Internet leads to more information clutter; it becomes necessary for any message to get louder. Much of the political information, therefore, will inevitably become distorted, shrill, and simplistic (Noam).” While there are an infinite amount of resources for international information on the Internet, the top news sites covered the same stories as the major networks and the other news they do cover is often too simplistic to justify its importance. As Miller points out however, the amount of Americans who seek out international news regularly grew from 37 to 52% in the past 20 years so why aren’t news organizations covering a broader scope of information?
The short answer to this question might be that it’s cheaper to focus on news at home than it is to maintain an office abroad (foreign news bureaus have been eliminated by 1/2) but I think the answer is a little more endemic of the American consumer. The American consumer is not just a consumer of product he is also a consumer of information. In some ways the two are different but in others they are in fact one in the same. We are consumers of information even as we consume product and often times the products we consume tell of the character of the individual. Taken as a whole, the sum of our consumer activities can reflect our character as a nation and therefore the commercial market is a significant factor in how we consume information. Neil Postman explains-
“Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country—these tell everything about the fears, fancies, and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product bit what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and towards making consumers feel valuable…the consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.”
-Postman, page 128
What Postman is arguing here is that Americans are becoming increasingly susceptible to a two-dimensional interpretation of information. As we continue to allow the commercial mainstream media to manipulate the way we see the world we are limiting our ability to concentrate and articulate complex information. When we see the For Motor Company publishing commercials showcasing their new line of F150 super duties that can stop a military cargo plane we are subject to a clever misdirection of consumer interest that puts our focus on the big plane and the truck that’s stopping it rather than the logical comprehension of owning a truck in this kind of economy. But the issue here isn’t the misdirection, it’s the impact it has on our interpretation of information.
Because we are so inundated with this type of two-dimensional information presentation by the mass media, it becomes natural for us to take things at face value. Perhaps you are a construction worker or an engineer that is on the fence about purchasing a truck, Postman argues that if Ford Motor Company can accurately manipulate you into feeling valuable as a consumer of Ford product, either by absurd tests of largely useless features or maybe guilt imposed by the failing American auto industry, it can bypass more important pieces of information such as gas mileage, after purchase support, and power train warranty that seem like logical informative factors to base your decision.
The issue is that the shallow interpretation of information promoted by the commercial media has ramifications in every aspect of American life. “Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged [by the mass media] (Carr). Political, International, and local news is taking its cues from consumer advertisements, both on television and on the web, by restricting the sort of in depth analysis that is needed for such important issues. Primetime network news organization use this kind of mentality to routinely reduce the world into one big story at a time while political candidates use it to skirt the public record and appeal to voters on a strictly personal basis. "By bringing politicians close to us, the American mass media appeal to our natural cockiness about judging character. In doing so, the media also establish a model of politics that emphasizes politicians over politics and psychology over economics (Hart, 68)." This is what Hart calls “personality politics” and it has a serious impact on our nation’s ability to function as a democracy because we are effectively incapable of making complex decisions based on relevant information (such as a candidates qualifications).
Hopefully the “convergence culture” alluded to by Jenkins will set in motion a restructuring of how information is presented- in one phase information s broadcasted to millions and in the second people are given access to accompanying information that allows them to make their own judgments.
This is the Alisa Miller TED Talk in which she explains some important statistics concerning the grip mass media has on information. It is significant because she graphically illustrates how much network news organizations focus on the U.S. even as we push towards a truly interconnected world.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alisa_miller_shares_the_news_about_the_news.html
This is another provocative video with some great analysis of Mass Media’s detrimental influence on today’s society:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4_YMl9k0w-
4.) America’s Growing Addiction to Information.
“[The] explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession (Williams).”
The fourth revelation I have made this semester is the sheer addiction to information spreading like wild fire across America. It seems that in a post 9/11 world anyone and everyone is concerned about the next “Big News” to hit the airwaves only now we needn’t rely on television to feed our addiction to information; we can simply power up our PDA, laptop, or cell phone. As Alex Williams, contributor to the New York Times, points out, “For many Americans, the hunger for information is reminiscent of those harried, harrowing months after Sept. 11, 2001. But seven years ago, there was no iPhone, no Twitter, and no YouTube.” We are now capable of getting information whenever and wherever we want to feed our information impulses and this, like any addiction, has its downfall.
“Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy…That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle (Carr). Carr’s experiences are not at all an isolated event. The Internet has flooded so our minds with pop-ups, spam, and instant messaging that we are beginning to think like a computer. Like Johnny Five from the hit 80’s movies “Short Circuit” we are on a never-ending quest for input. But the Internet, while widening the channel in which we locate data, has also limited us in the amount of extrapolation and insight we devote to it. Why form your own theories on ethnocentric interclass racism when you can read a Harvard professors masters dissertation on the subject- or even better link to an open source online encyclopedia and get bulleted outline? In a post 9/11 world it seems information is being used as a currency for people to feel a sense of comfort in a world that is largely unpredictable. “In times when people think their fate is tied to enormous events that are out of their hands, stockpiling information can give some people a sense of control, social scientists said (Williams).”
But if this sense of control is a fallacy created by the broadcast news media’s two-dimensional presentation of information, then perhaps this revelation is more startling than it appears. For if we continue to allow traditional forms of media to manipulate our interpretation of information we will be no more informed on anything which will make us incapable of making the important informed decisions that are essential to a functioning democracy.
This video showcases many of the detrimental effects of an information addiction not only in the political sphere but it the way our minds are becoming literally hardwired to the Web. I found the relationships it made with negative aspects of playing video games, impacts an information addiction have on school or work, and information based relationships provocative to say the least. This video exemplifies why I call it an information addiction in every sense of the word.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p2GW-HgNI&feature=related-
5.) The Growing Threat Information is Posing on Democracy Itself.
As alluded to in the conclusion of my previous revelation- our growing addiction to information has serious potential consequences if the information we digest is manipulated by the commercial mass media. My fifth and final revelation this semester is the threat our information addiction, which resulted from the “Digital Revolution,” is posing on Americans as consumers and as members of a democracy.
“Mainstream mass media and commercial websites…systematically prioritize certain types of sites and information at the expense of others, leading to a narrowing of the Internet’s value as a means by which to give voice to alternative perspectives and increase the communicative aspect that constitute the public sphere (Longford, Graham, and Patten).” Both the Net and broadcast media are in large part commercial entities designed specifically to get consumers to purchase product. Sites like Myspace and Facebook, which started innocently enough eventually succumbed to the pressures of commercial interests. According to Yahoo News, Myspace sold to News Corp for more than a half a billion dollars simply because advertisers wanted to capture the visitors attention and direct them to their products and services and if advertisers are willing to pay that much for page views, what’s to stop them from manipulated information int heir favor?
Google, Yahoo, and Ask are all commercial search engines and they, as Longford etc. suggest, systematically prioritize what information gets sent to the top of your search results, in effect burying what you were looking for under a pile of commercial interests. Broadcast news media do the same thing with the stories they cover by focusing on stories that are favorable to their commercial sponsors and we have become so inundated that we take everything at face value. We take little to no time extrapolating information and this is causing us to complacent with two-dimensional data, which has monumental negative affects on our ability to function as a democracy. Counter perspective is essential to any democracy and at least on broadcast media they have to appeal to a wide range of consumers. On the Internet people are free to limit every aspect of what information they come across. “The ability of Internet users to personalize and constrict the flow of information using browser settings, listservs, customized web portals, and RSS news feeds—may actually promote the very sort of ‘cyberbalkanization’ that is detrimental to the public sphere (Longford, Graham, Patten).”
The Internets capacity for “hyper-atomization” allows close-minded people to avoid entirely any alternative perspective that might contradict their opinions. This lack of information makes these people completely subject to their beliefs and unfit for democratic participation. And while the Internet has significant democratic potential, because it is still subject to the information manipulation of commercial interest everyday people are becoming no more fit for democratic participation than they once were. As Longford etc. puts it, “Reluctance of our governments and political parties to enhance the Internet as anything more than a supplement to existing [commercial] practices has mean that, while the Internet has change the practice of [gathering political information], democracy has not been deepened…The corporate colonization of the Internet and out lack of willingness to treat the Internet as a public good has hampered the Internet’s potential to facilitate the sort of democratic transformation of the public sphere that could deepen…democracy.”
This is potentially my biggest revelation: that information itself might threaten our very democracy and we might live in an age of misinformation.
In an excellent speech conducted by Bill Moyers on media reform he states: “In his magisterial book Media Monopoly Ben Bagdikien wrote, ‘The result of the of relatively narrow corporate ideologies has been the creation of widely established political and economic illusions with little visible contradictions in the media to which the majority of the people is exclusively exposed.’ In other words, what we need to know to make democracy work for all Americans is compromised by media institutions deeply embedded in the power structures of society.” This opening quote exemplifies exactly what I am talking about in the previous revelation. I only hope that the entire class will watch all three of these thought provoking and excellent videos on the threat mass media poses on democracy itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p2GW-HgNI&feature=related
Where People Get Information
The PEW Internet and American Life Project survey revealed some great information and empirically stratified some characteristics of the American web surfer. I have talked previously about envisioning the populace as a singular entity surfing the vast sea of information that is increasingly saturating our daily lives. Each one of us actively searches for information on a daily basis and how we retrieve that information reflects the direction of where the flow of information is taking us. It is important to remember that while primary data such as surveys and questionares like the PEW document are useful in gathering empirical data, they limit any room for elaboration and should not be taken as the final word on any subject.
Some of the most significant information contained within the PEW survey involves the disparities between politically active young and old American web surfers. While the amount of people who actively search out political information on the web has nearly doubled in the past four years the trend is almost exclusive to young people. "...More than a quarter of [Americans] younger than age 30 have gotten campaign information from social networking sites...Just 4% of Americans in their 30s, and % of those ages 40 and older, have gotten news about [politics] in this way (PEW, 5)."
The PEW survey also points out that the majority of people who find political information online do so by "coming across" it while surfing the web. The "Long Tail" of websites that acompanies the major corporate news sites (MSNBC, CNN, Google News, AOL News) illustrates how the collective utilizes the web to satisfy an addiction to information that has both positive and negative consequences.
Where People Get
Campaign News Online
Total 18-29 30+
% % %
MSNBC.com 26 30 24
CNN.com 23 30 21
Yahoo News 22 27 19
Google News 9 10 9
Fox News 9 5 10
AOL News 7 5 8
NY Times 6 5 6
Drudge Report 3 1 4
MySpace 3 8 *
YouTube 2 6 *
BBC 2 2 2
USA Today 1 0 2
Washington Pst 1 1 1
Obviously the top three news sites are MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News but the notable mention of independant sites is significant because it shows that people are using multiple sources to gather their information. "For every person getting campaign news from a site like MSNBC or CNN, there is a person getting campaign news from a website that targets a far smaller audience (PEW, 16)." This could lead to a broadening of perspective that will hopefully creep into the Televised Media- still the predominant source of news media in America and considered by over 64% of Americans as unfavorably bias (PEW, 21).
Two final points about the PEW survey are that nearly half of uneducated Americans actually prefer bias news coverage that "reflects their political leadings" and that 54% of Americans think the Iraq War "is not going well (PEW, 22)." Overall I think that the growing trends illustrated by the PEW document are positive but I worry about the potentially disruptive transition from old guard to new as the generation who were born with Internet access begin to lead the country. If older Americans continue to ignore the tech-revolution how will that play out as newer technologies continue to radically alter the way we receive and perceive the increasing flow of information?
-NJF-
Some of the most significant information contained within the PEW survey involves the disparities between politically active young and old American web surfers. While the amount of people who actively search out political information on the web has nearly doubled in the past four years the trend is almost exclusive to young people. "...More than a quarter of [Americans] younger than age 30 have gotten campaign information from social networking sites...Just 4% of Americans in their 30s, and % of those ages 40 and older, have gotten news about [politics] in this way (PEW, 5)."
The PEW survey also points out that the majority of people who find political information online do so by "coming across" it while surfing the web. The "Long Tail" of websites that acompanies the major corporate news sites (MSNBC, CNN, Google News, AOL News) illustrates how the collective utilizes the web to satisfy an addiction to information that has both positive and negative consequences.
Where People Get
Campaign News Online
Total 18-29 30+
% % %
MSNBC.com 26 30 24
CNN.com 23 30 21
Yahoo News 22 27 19
Google News 9 10 9
Fox News 9 5 10
AOL News 7 5 8
NY Times 6 5 6
Drudge Report 3 1 4
MySpace 3 8 *
YouTube 2 6 *
BBC 2 2 2
USA Today 1 0 2
Washington Pst 1 1 1
Obviously the top three news sites are MSNBC, CNN, and Yahoo News but the notable mention of independant sites is significant because it shows that people are using multiple sources to gather their information. "For every person getting campaign news from a site like MSNBC or CNN, there is a person getting campaign news from a website that targets a far smaller audience (PEW, 16)." This could lead to a broadening of perspective that will hopefully creep into the Televised Media- still the predominant source of news media in America and considered by over 64% of Americans as unfavorably bias (PEW, 21).
Two final points about the PEW survey are that nearly half of uneducated Americans actually prefer bias news coverage that "reflects their political leadings" and that 54% of Americans think the Iraq War "is not going well (PEW, 22)." Overall I think that the growing trends illustrated by the PEW document are positive but I worry about the potentially disruptive transition from old guard to new as the generation who were born with Internet access begin to lead the country. If older Americans continue to ignore the tech-revolution how will that play out as newer technologies continue to radically alter the way we receive and perceive the increasing flow of information?
-NJF-
The Paradigm Shift in What it Means to be a Citizen in the Information Age
According to the famous Greek theologian Aristotle the citizen is best defined as, “a man who shares in the administration of justice and in holding of office…The good citizen must possess the knowledge and capacity required for ruling as well as being ruled.”1 To the Ancient Greeks, any person without sincere concern for the commonwealth of the populace was not a capable of being a citizen of the republic. Any man whom held himself above the wellbeing of the masses was considered lacking in civic virtue and consequently was not fit for democratic citizenship. This concept originated from the sociopolitical structure of ancient Greece, which was based around those who own and those who are owned. In modern society ownership over individuals no longer exists but with the dawn of the Information Age, were computers are making vast amounts of input readily accessible to everyday people, came a new form of ownership which is threatening the very essence of what it means to be a citizen in modern society.
The ownership that defines “modern slavery” is based upon the presentation of information by the Broadcast Media. Over the past several decades Broadcast Media outlets have garnered such a dense concentration of power over public perception that they often define how the populace interprets information. Like Nazi propaganda during World War II, the corporate controlled Broadcast Media has been manipulating information in order to serve the moneyed concerns of private interest groups. Political parties, corporations, and powerful people alike have been influencing the mass media to present partisan information that is favorable to their agenda and this is conditioning the populace to become ignorant, apathetic, and susceptible to believing that the political process is a popularity contest where the winner is always 100% right. “As long as the overarching narrative of American political life is that of [a war between parties], our leaders will govern through a winner-take-all perspective. Every issue gets settled through bloody partisan warfare…In such a world, nobody can govern and nobody can compromise.”2 When we degenerate the political process into a pissing contest we loose site of the real issues and become blinded by the made up reality defined by the people whom control the information. This is the very essence of what the author refers to as “modern slavery,” the conditioning of the populace by mass media to believe that popular opinion dictates Universal Truth. But there is a rising tide swelling beneath the sea of Broadcast Media that threatens to undermine the control it exerts over public perception.
What are aptly referred to as Narrowcast Media are the channels of communication that exist largely apart from the mainstream commercial media. Public Access Television, flyers, and community discussion groups can all be considered Narrowcast
Media outlets because they are largely separated from commercial concerns but the largest and most significant Narrowcast media is a relatively recent communication and information network known as the Internet which many feel will revolutionize the American political process. “Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet we can place the tools of… [democratic citizenship] into the hands of the common person- and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth.”3
The Internet’s significance in the political process has seen such tremendous growth over the past few elections that some see it as harbinger of a paradigm shift in the American political process; affecting everything from how we gather and interpret political information to influencing the central infrastructure upon which our nation’s political system is built. “Narrowcast media operate with different principles than the Broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication.”4 Voters can now find information for themselves about political campaigns from a myriad of sources on the net effectively bypassing the more traditional general interest intermediaries such as the Broadcast Media. This is contributing to a more decisive and diverse understanding of political candidates, which is making us more informed as citizens. “The [modern] notion of an informed citizen took shape in the context of the [Digital] revolution which made it conceivable that voters could follow the nuances of public policy debates. The [modern] notion of the informed citizen challenged more traditional notions of citizenship that deferred to the expertise of aristocrats or political parties.”5
By operating on the principles of access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication Narrowcast Media has promoted civic engagement and helped redefine the line between fact and fiction that Broadcast Media has usurped to serve the moneyed concerns of private interest groups. We longer need to depend on the general interest intermediary for political information because we now have access to thousands of information sources on the web. Ideally the ease of civic engagement provided by Narrowcast Media makes us more capable of achieving the Aristotelian virtues of democratic citizenry, however, because the majority of Americans have been conditioned by Broadcast Media to believe that Universal Truth is measured in mass appeal many Americans are now using Narrowcast Media outlets to continue limiting their scope of understanding- contradicting the very essence of what Narrowcast Media hopes to achieve. “[With the advent of the Internet] the market for news, entertainment, and information has finally been perfected. Consumers are able to see exactly what they want. When the power to filter is unlimited, people can decide, in advance and with perfect accuracy, what they will and will not encounter.”6
By using e-based general interest intermediaries such as TheDailyBeast.com to focus only on the issues that they are told to focus on these people are no better suited for democratic citizenship and are, in-fact, more susceptible to outside influence because they limit themselves to interpreting only the information that they have been conditioned to deem as relevant. “Picture parents watching small children at the community pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on [their area of interest].”7 This, much like the predetermined information presented by the Broadcast Media, continues to threaten the very foundation of a functioning democratic society and therefore we must redefine what it means to be a citizen in the Information Age and expose the fundamentals of mass media information presentation that are specifically designed to limit our understanding and make us susceptible to outside influence.
For the purpose of exposing the new meaning of democratic citizenship in the Information Age the author has assembled a panel of four influential figures each of which plays a significant role in the affected realms of this ensuing pandemic: Fareed Zakaria, International Journalist and Realist whose media background and third party comprehension of American politics will provide meaningful insight into the paradigm shift occurring in politics as a result of the Digital Revolution; Joseph Trippi, campaign manager for Vermont senator Howard Dean and author of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything” a book showcasing the disintegration of existing political infrastructures and the integral role the Internet will play in the future of American politics; Head of marketing for News Corporation, the corporate entity owned by Rupert Murdoch which generates 25+ billion dollars in annual revenue and whom will exemplify the quintessential role Broadcast Medial plays in the manipulation of public opinion; and finally, John Stewart of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” who coupled with his team of Emmy Award wining writers should introduce a provocative satyr of the Broadcast Media, provide a Narrowcast perspective of the paradigm shift in American politics, and bridge the generational gap between young and old voters.
The panel will conduct a phased debate that will utilize the expansive reach of mass media and the peer-to-peer networking of the Internet. This is the very essence of what Henry Jenkins calls “convergence politics,” or “the effort to use grassroots (Narrowcast) media to mobilize and mainstream media to publicize.”8 The panel organizers will first increase awareness of the debate by generating a presence on the web that contains relevant information, discussion boards, and links to supporting websites. This will create the necessary “buzz” and will get younger, less traditional media viewers to focus on the debate when it is aired by the Broadcast Media. The panel of experts will then conduct the debate on a respectable Broadcast News Media outlet in order to maximize public awareness of the issues being discussed. And finally, it will follow up the debate by using its existing Internet presence to foster collaboration between viewers, provide more information, and perhaps provide resources for action such as an online petition, coalition, or a virtual “march on Washington” as defined by the Montgomery text.
Political participation diminishes or even eliminates the power distance between the government and the populace. By teaching people to actively seek out relevant political information that contributes to meaningful decision-making, we promote the civic virtue that Aristotle held in such high esteem. By participating in government at the local or national level, whether in a town meeting, a jury, or even through political discussion on the Internet the informed citizen learns the habits of deliberating, creating, and obeying rules, and rising above private concerns to analyze the common good. By succumbing to apathy, ignorance, and information manipulation we become content with complacency and allow ourselves to be influenced by private interest groups. This makes us not informed citizens but rather “sheeple” ready to be lead to slaughter by the private interests of the corporate controlled media or the partisan views of corporate controlled politicians.
-NJF-
Works Cited
1.) Sinyai, Clayton. “Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement.” 2006, ILR Press, Ithaca and London.
(1) Ibid., page 3
2.) Montgomery, Kathryn. “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.” The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London England.
(3) Ibid., page 207
3.) Sunstein, Cass R. “Republic.com 2.0.” Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford.
(6) Ibid., page 4
4.) Jenkins, Henry. “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.” New York University Press, New York and London
(2) Ibid., page 238
(4) Ibid., page 208
(5) Ibid., page 226
(7) Ibid., page 226
(8) Ibid., page 220
5.) Fragala, Nathan J. “-Concerning PEW Survey-“ Discussion Post. HIS 415-82AB
The ownership that defines “modern slavery” is based upon the presentation of information by the Broadcast Media. Over the past several decades Broadcast Media outlets have garnered such a dense concentration of power over public perception that they often define how the populace interprets information. Like Nazi propaganda during World War II, the corporate controlled Broadcast Media has been manipulating information in order to serve the moneyed concerns of private interest groups. Political parties, corporations, and powerful people alike have been influencing the mass media to present partisan information that is favorable to their agenda and this is conditioning the populace to become ignorant, apathetic, and susceptible to believing that the political process is a popularity contest where the winner is always 100% right. “As long as the overarching narrative of American political life is that of [a war between parties], our leaders will govern through a winner-take-all perspective. Every issue gets settled through bloody partisan warfare…In such a world, nobody can govern and nobody can compromise.”2 When we degenerate the political process into a pissing contest we loose site of the real issues and become blinded by the made up reality defined by the people whom control the information. This is the very essence of what the author refers to as “modern slavery,” the conditioning of the populace by mass media to believe that popular opinion dictates Universal Truth. But there is a rising tide swelling beneath the sea of Broadcast Media that threatens to undermine the control it exerts over public perception.
What are aptly referred to as Narrowcast Media are the channels of communication that exist largely apart from the mainstream commercial media. Public Access Television, flyers, and community discussion groups can all be considered Narrowcast
Media outlets because they are largely separated from commercial concerns but the largest and most significant Narrowcast media is a relatively recent communication and information network known as the Internet which many feel will revolutionize the American political process. “Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet we can place the tools of… [democratic citizenship] into the hands of the common person- and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth.”3
The Internet’s significance in the political process has seen such tremendous growth over the past few elections that some see it as harbinger of a paradigm shift in the American political process; affecting everything from how we gather and interpret political information to influencing the central infrastructure upon which our nation’s political system is built. “Narrowcast media operate with different principles than the Broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long: access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication.”4 Voters can now find information for themselves about political campaigns from a myriad of sources on the net effectively bypassing the more traditional general interest intermediaries such as the Broadcast Media. This is contributing to a more decisive and diverse understanding of political candidates, which is making us more informed as citizens. “The [modern] notion of an informed citizen took shape in the context of the [Digital] revolution which made it conceivable that voters could follow the nuances of public policy debates. The [modern] notion of the informed citizen challenged more traditional notions of citizenship that deferred to the expertise of aristocrats or political parties.”5
By operating on the principles of access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication Narrowcast Media has promoted civic engagement and helped redefine the line between fact and fiction that Broadcast Media has usurped to serve the moneyed concerns of private interest groups. We longer need to depend on the general interest intermediary for political information because we now have access to thousands of information sources on the web. Ideally the ease of civic engagement provided by Narrowcast Media makes us more capable of achieving the Aristotelian virtues of democratic citizenry, however, because the majority of Americans have been conditioned by Broadcast Media to believe that Universal Truth is measured in mass appeal many Americans are now using Narrowcast Media outlets to continue limiting their scope of understanding- contradicting the very essence of what Narrowcast Media hopes to achieve. “[With the advent of the Internet] the market for news, entertainment, and information has finally been perfected. Consumers are able to see exactly what they want. When the power to filter is unlimited, people can decide, in advance and with perfect accuracy, what they will and will not encounter.”6
By using e-based general interest intermediaries such as TheDailyBeast.com to focus only on the issues that they are told to focus on these people are no better suited for democratic citizenship and are, in-fact, more susceptible to outside influence because they limit themselves to interpreting only the information that they have been conditioned to deem as relevant. “Picture parents watching small children at the community pool. They are not gathering information; they are keeping an eye on [their area of interest].”7 This, much like the predetermined information presented by the Broadcast Media, continues to threaten the very foundation of a functioning democratic society and therefore we must redefine what it means to be a citizen in the Information Age and expose the fundamentals of mass media information presentation that are specifically designed to limit our understanding and make us susceptible to outside influence.
For the purpose of exposing the new meaning of democratic citizenship in the Information Age the author has assembled a panel of four influential figures each of which plays a significant role in the affected realms of this ensuing pandemic: Fareed Zakaria, International Journalist and Realist whose media background and third party comprehension of American politics will provide meaningful insight into the paradigm shift occurring in politics as a result of the Digital Revolution; Joseph Trippi, campaign manager for Vermont senator Howard Dean and author of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything” a book showcasing the disintegration of existing political infrastructures and the integral role the Internet will play in the future of American politics; Head of marketing for News Corporation, the corporate entity owned by Rupert Murdoch which generates 25+ billion dollars in annual revenue and whom will exemplify the quintessential role Broadcast Medial plays in the manipulation of public opinion; and finally, John Stewart of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” who coupled with his team of Emmy Award wining writers should introduce a provocative satyr of the Broadcast Media, provide a Narrowcast perspective of the paradigm shift in American politics, and bridge the generational gap between young and old voters.
The panel will conduct a phased debate that will utilize the expansive reach of mass media and the peer-to-peer networking of the Internet. This is the very essence of what Henry Jenkins calls “convergence politics,” or “the effort to use grassroots (Narrowcast) media to mobilize and mainstream media to publicize.”8 The panel organizers will first increase awareness of the debate by generating a presence on the web that contains relevant information, discussion boards, and links to supporting websites. This will create the necessary “buzz” and will get younger, less traditional media viewers to focus on the debate when it is aired by the Broadcast Media. The panel of experts will then conduct the debate on a respectable Broadcast News Media outlet in order to maximize public awareness of the issues being discussed. And finally, it will follow up the debate by using its existing Internet presence to foster collaboration between viewers, provide more information, and perhaps provide resources for action such as an online petition, coalition, or a virtual “march on Washington” as defined by the Montgomery text.
Political participation diminishes or even eliminates the power distance between the government and the populace. By teaching people to actively seek out relevant political information that contributes to meaningful decision-making, we promote the civic virtue that Aristotle held in such high esteem. By participating in government at the local or national level, whether in a town meeting, a jury, or even through political discussion on the Internet the informed citizen learns the habits of deliberating, creating, and obeying rules, and rising above private concerns to analyze the common good. By succumbing to apathy, ignorance, and information manipulation we become content with complacency and allow ourselves to be influenced by private interest groups. This makes us not informed citizens but rather “sheeple” ready to be lead to slaughter by the private interests of the corporate controlled media or the partisan views of corporate controlled politicians.
-NJF-
Works Cited
1.) Sinyai, Clayton. “Schools of Democracy: A Political History of the American Labor Movement.” 2006, ILR Press, Ithaca and London.
(1) Ibid., page 3
2.) Montgomery, Kathryn. “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.” The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London England.
(3) Ibid., page 207
3.) Sunstein, Cass R. “Republic.com 2.0.” Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford.
(6) Ibid., page 4
4.) Jenkins, Henry. “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.” New York University Press, New York and London
(2) Ibid., page 238
(4) Ibid., page 208
(5) Ibid., page 226
(7) Ibid., page 226
(8) Ibid., page 220
5.) Fragala, Nathan J. “-Concerning PEW Survey-“ Discussion Post. HIS 415-82AB
Does Technology Improve Our Politics, Our Government, Our Democracy?
“To understand the complexity of the relationship between the Internet and [the electoral, deliberative, and monitorial] dimensions of democracy, we must recognize that the democratic potential of any communication technology will always be limited by the character of existing social, political, and economic power relations, as well as by the attitudes, orientation, and activities of governments, citizens, and corporations.”1 It seems that despite the democratizing potential of narrowcast communication technologies such as the Internet, our interpretation of the democratic status quo will always be subject to the contextual arrangement made manifest by broadcast media and established societal institutions. The problem with this is that the corporate controlled mass media limits the amount of alternative perspectives in order to favor their vision of what can and cannot be considered “popular” culture, which contributes to a failure in democracy. “[Mass media] systematically prioritize certain types of…information at the expense of others, leading to a narrowing of the [media’s] value as a means by which to give voice to alternative perspectives.”2 When perspective is limited the democracy suffers and this is what the media has been doing over the past several decades. Political ideals, purchasing patterns, and even religious beliefs are tailored to fit the mass media’s prescription of what’s “popular” because we are a social species who is easily lead by bandwagons. If the majority say’s it’s right then the general consensus is that it is. This mental manipulation is a major degradation of America as a democratic nation because when we allow the masses to define the norm all of a sudden we become susceptible to the manipulation of private interests and expel the alternate perspectives that make a democracy function.
It’s as if there are, at least, two worlds in America; one of the well-to-do, and another of the struggling for if ever there was an absence of universal truth it’s found in the seedy underbelly of popular culture. Attitudes, values, and ideals, are seemingly manufactured by the private concerns of mass media in an attempt to manipulate the vast swells of public opinion into channels of their own design. Take, for example, our country’s instigation of the Iraq War. In a post 9/11 America the majority of people felt, with some justice, a sense of urgency to enter the Middle East. Fanning the flames of these attitudes was the mass media and almost immediately feelings of urgency became fires of rage that swept across the nation. Right Wing political pandering coupled with extensive media coverage/support caused many somewhat rational Americans to ignore common sense and buy into deceptive media tactics designed specifically to mislead the public into an unjustified war based on blood and oil.
According to a Pew research study conducted in March of 2008, some 78% of Americans in 2003 felt it was the right decision to invade Iraq.3 That number has now decline about half to around 34% but it just shows how much the media played a role in manipulating public opinion. There was little information, almost no international support, and yet the majority of Americans bought into the war. Because the President and the corporate controlled media was able to pander effectively to people’s emotions after the attacks of 9/11, common sense was replaced with common nonsense and mass media’s stranglehold on public perception was exemplified.
So if the media has such a grip on public perception that it can almost define the consensus of thought, what influence do political ads have on the very nature of our democracy? In order to better answer this question I analyzed and assessed Democrat and Republican political ads from 2000 to 2008 to see if I could find any trends that might mirror the current status of American Politics.
One of the most significant points of my assessment is the apparent decrease in relevant information from 2000 to 2008. The 2000 election ads were primarily information based with ads focusing on differences in policies and the effects they would have. The majority of “attack” ads brought up relevant information concerning differences in policy and although there were some like the Republican’s “Dangerous World” ad that were predominantly based on fear, the consensus of all the ads was one of relevant information based on opposition rather than attack.
In 2004 there was a surge of web and other privately sponsored ads such as the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” that really showcased the growing trend of attacking presidential nominees by both private and public sponsors. The web created a whole new medium for ads to be published and instead of focusing more on relevant information and party differences, they published ads like “John Kerry, International Man of Mystery” and “Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed,” which related Kerry and others to people like Austin Powers and Adolph Hitler. More significantly was the increase in fear and emotion based tactics such as the Republican’s “Finish it” ad and the Democrat’s “Juvenile” ad. The commercials from the 2004 election showed little to no increase in relevant information and instead focused on degrading the opposing candidate and appealing to the sentiments of war torn Americans.
During the 2008 election the sheer amount of ads shot in upwards of 50 different commercials aired on both on television and the Internet. The negative trend continued, however, as approximately 54% of Democrat ads attacked the opposing party, which was still less than the 62% of Republican ads that attacked Obama/Biden. Emphasis was placed on the Internet in 2008 as several more ads were web based this year than in the past eight years- all of them negative (Spare the Democrat’s “Yes We Can” ad). One of the important things to note about 2008 is that while the Democrats posted several ads with relevant information, such as the “American Stories, American Solutions” webisode, the majority of the 2008 Republican ads on the livingroomcandidate.org website were profoundly negative. However, for the most part ads on both sides of the political spectrum contained little information voters could use to base meaningful judgments and focused more on bashing or returning fire on the opposing candidate- something the media has prescribed since the beginning.
In my personal assessment of almost every political ad from 2000 to 2008, I have come to the conclusion that the mass media has progressively deteriorated the state of American politics for the past 8 years not because ads have changed drastically, but because they should have. By now we should see an increasing trend in meaningful information and despite Obama’s significant efforts to do otherwise, the majority of campaign ads still favor the same old mass media prescribed politicking based on negative ads, retribution, and heart-string plucking. This illustrates the argument I made earlier that the mass media has a stranglehold on public perception, which is causing a degradation of America as a democratic nation. Because the media rather than the public have dictated the status quo for so many years, it has slowed and even regressed the somewhat common sense transition of campaign ads from fear and attack to meaningful information with which voters can base election decisions. Although President Elect Obama has shown some outstanding characteristics in pushing for the latter during this election, he is still subject to what the mass media dictates as normal because the media, rather than the masses, continue to dictate the status quo.
As narrowcast media continue to expand and more people begin to realize the democratizing power of the Internet, I believe that in future elections we will see a trend towards more information-based politics concerned with meaningful information rather than pander, fear, and attack. We are just getting used to the recent tools for democracy provided to us by the Internet and it will take some time for these tools to disenfranchise the existing power structure. As more and more people continue to blog, post, comment, and form web based coalitions and NGO’s designed to influence change, the true power of the Internet as a democratic tool will be realized and this nation will be the better for it. Until then we must do what we can by posting opposition and creating web-based coalitions that will combine the influence of many into a wave of reform that will renovate the American political process.
Works Cited
1.) Longford, Graham, and Steve Patten. "Democracy in the age of the Internet."(Forum:
Democracy & the Internet). University of New Brunswick Law Journal. 56
(Annual 2007): 5(11).
(1) Ibid., page 6
(2) Ibid., page 12
2.) Pew Research Center Publications, “Public Attitudes Toward the
War in Iraq: 2003-2008.” March 19, 2008.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/770/iraq-war-five-year-
anniversary
(3) Ibid., Link
3.) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2004
It’s as if there are, at least, two worlds in America; one of the well-to-do, and another of the struggling for if ever there was an absence of universal truth it’s found in the seedy underbelly of popular culture. Attitudes, values, and ideals, are seemingly manufactured by the private concerns of mass media in an attempt to manipulate the vast swells of public opinion into channels of their own design. Take, for example, our country’s instigation of the Iraq War. In a post 9/11 America the majority of people felt, with some justice, a sense of urgency to enter the Middle East. Fanning the flames of these attitudes was the mass media and almost immediately feelings of urgency became fires of rage that swept across the nation. Right Wing political pandering coupled with extensive media coverage/support caused many somewhat rational Americans to ignore common sense and buy into deceptive media tactics designed specifically to mislead the public into an unjustified war based on blood and oil.
According to a Pew research study conducted in March of 2008, some 78% of Americans in 2003 felt it was the right decision to invade Iraq.3 That number has now decline about half to around 34% but it just shows how much the media played a role in manipulating public opinion. There was little information, almost no international support, and yet the majority of Americans bought into the war. Because the President and the corporate controlled media was able to pander effectively to people’s emotions after the attacks of 9/11, common sense was replaced with common nonsense and mass media’s stranglehold on public perception was exemplified.
So if the media has such a grip on public perception that it can almost define the consensus of thought, what influence do political ads have on the very nature of our democracy? In order to better answer this question I analyzed and assessed Democrat and Republican political ads from 2000 to 2008 to see if I could find any trends that might mirror the current status of American Politics.
One of the most significant points of my assessment is the apparent decrease in relevant information from 2000 to 2008. The 2000 election ads were primarily information based with ads focusing on differences in policies and the effects they would have. The majority of “attack” ads brought up relevant information concerning differences in policy and although there were some like the Republican’s “Dangerous World” ad that were predominantly based on fear, the consensus of all the ads was one of relevant information based on opposition rather than attack.
In 2004 there was a surge of web and other privately sponsored ads such as the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” that really showcased the growing trend of attacking presidential nominees by both private and public sponsors. The web created a whole new medium for ads to be published and instead of focusing more on relevant information and party differences, they published ads like “John Kerry, International Man of Mystery” and “Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-eyed,” which related Kerry and others to people like Austin Powers and Adolph Hitler. More significantly was the increase in fear and emotion based tactics such as the Republican’s “Finish it” ad and the Democrat’s “Juvenile” ad. The commercials from the 2004 election showed little to no increase in relevant information and instead focused on degrading the opposing candidate and appealing to the sentiments of war torn Americans.
During the 2008 election the sheer amount of ads shot in upwards of 50 different commercials aired on both on television and the Internet. The negative trend continued, however, as approximately 54% of Democrat ads attacked the opposing party, which was still less than the 62% of Republican ads that attacked Obama/Biden. Emphasis was placed on the Internet in 2008 as several more ads were web based this year than in the past eight years- all of them negative (Spare the Democrat’s “Yes We Can” ad). One of the important things to note about 2008 is that while the Democrats posted several ads with relevant information, such as the “American Stories, American Solutions” webisode, the majority of the 2008 Republican ads on the livingroomcandidate.org website were profoundly negative. However, for the most part ads on both sides of the political spectrum contained little information voters could use to base meaningful judgments and focused more on bashing or returning fire on the opposing candidate- something the media has prescribed since the beginning.
In my personal assessment of almost every political ad from 2000 to 2008, I have come to the conclusion that the mass media has progressively deteriorated the state of American politics for the past 8 years not because ads have changed drastically, but because they should have. By now we should see an increasing trend in meaningful information and despite Obama’s significant efforts to do otherwise, the majority of campaign ads still favor the same old mass media prescribed politicking based on negative ads, retribution, and heart-string plucking. This illustrates the argument I made earlier that the mass media has a stranglehold on public perception, which is causing a degradation of America as a democratic nation. Because the media rather than the public have dictated the status quo for so many years, it has slowed and even regressed the somewhat common sense transition of campaign ads from fear and attack to meaningful information with which voters can base election decisions. Although President Elect Obama has shown some outstanding characteristics in pushing for the latter during this election, he is still subject to what the mass media dictates as normal because the media, rather than the masses, continue to dictate the status quo.
As narrowcast media continue to expand and more people begin to realize the democratizing power of the Internet, I believe that in future elections we will see a trend towards more information-based politics concerned with meaningful information rather than pander, fear, and attack. We are just getting used to the recent tools for democracy provided to us by the Internet and it will take some time for these tools to disenfranchise the existing power structure. As more and more people continue to blog, post, comment, and form web based coalitions and NGO’s designed to influence change, the true power of the Internet as a democratic tool will be realized and this nation will be the better for it. Until then we must do what we can by posting opposition and creating web-based coalitions that will combine the influence of many into a wave of reform that will renovate the American political process.
Works Cited
1.) Longford, Graham, and Steve Patten. "Democracy in the age of the Internet."(Forum:
Democracy & the Internet). University of New Brunswick Law Journal. 56
(Annual 2007): 5(11).
(1) Ibid., page 6
(2) Ibid., page 12
2.) Pew Research Center Publications, “Public Attitudes Toward the
War in Iraq: 2003-2008.” March 19, 2008.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/770/iraq-war-five-year-
anniversary
(3) Ibid., Link
3.) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2004
Defining Politics and Technology
Politics:
Aristotle defined Politics as the process by which many people make decisions. In other words Political decisions are based on what the masses decide rather than a singular individual or group of individuals. But Aristotle also warned of Politics “devolving into democracy,” which in the classical sense meant that rule would be governed by demos or common people. In this sense Aristotle was suggesting that people in power should collaborate with the demos in order to make decisions for the greater good of the community but the powerful should always remain distant from the common people. Who better to make the decisions than the ones with the most power?
The trouble with this line of thought, in modern times, is that the people in charge no longer have a vested interest in the ultimate satisfaction of the demos. In Ancient Greece the “common” people exercised much of the power within the political system because they were the communal lubricant that kept society moving and if they were not satisfied then the city, and the people in charge, suffered. Today, however, there is a growing void between the people in charge and the common people Aristotle referred to as the demos. Investors, corporate executives, and government agencies have been treating people more like sheep in recent years than essential parts of any healthy society and this is largely due to the public’s perception of Politics. To them the demos is a means to an end and as people become increasingly detached from the Political world this trend will only continue.
In M. T. Anderson’s novel “Feed” characters are subjected to a constant flow of information that often times overwhelms them from contemplating meaningful thoughts about life, love, society and Politics. By overwhelming their senses with Information rather then Knowledge the powers that be in “Feed” can use the flood of information as an opiate designed to subliminate social deviants and garner support for their self-serving policies. If people remain apathetic towards Politics and entrenched within a sea of Information rather than Knowledge how can they ever begin to close the void between self-serving policy makers and themselves? Therefore, my definition of Politics refers to the policies and practices implemented by people in positions of power that are deemed socially acceptable on the basis of mass appeal despite the lack of Knowledge existent within a sea of Information.
Technology:
Technology can be a hard concept to grasp for some people. Some think that technology is something tangible that makes life easier or less complicated. Others think that technology is something that benefits the entire human race. I personally believe that there is some truth to both of these interpretations. Tactile Nuclear Warheads (TNW’s) for example certainly make war easier but they do not benefit the human race.
The problem with defining the term “technology” is that people often have different views on what makes life easier and what benefits the human race. Using the TNW example illustrated earlier we can infer that there are often two sides to the same coin. The technology that was created to combust the atom was created to destroy human life, yet, the technology developed to fly the Nuclear Warhead to an enemy also was implemented to help man venture into space which might lead to untold benefits for the entire species. So how does one define “technology?” Webster’s House Dictionary defines technology as something that someone uses to cope with his or her environment but in the Cynthia Crossen’s book “Tainted Truth” she illustrates how technology is actually making it more difficult for us to adapt to our environment. “[Data gathered] by new technologies bring a sense of rationality to complex decisions- the ones once made with common sense, experience, and intelligence (Crossen 14).” The Internet is full of information and that is giving us the sense that we know a lot more than we used to but in reality it is just a false blanket of security that can blind us from making meaningful decisions that might actually make life easier or less complicated.
Take the Information versus Knowledge debate discussed earlier; technology has created a sea of information that anyone from across the globe can access directly, yet, along with this vast body of information comes ambiguity. How are we to know if Barak Obama’s fiscal plan is more efficient than John McCain’s if there are 40,000 different websites emphasizing different information that caters specifically to private interests? In M.T. Anderson’s book “Feed” technology has actually become a social hindrance that some characters attempt to forcibly expel from their lives thinking it will result in a sense of clarity in a world where a sea of information clouds their vision. The flood of cheap, readily accessible, and for the most part useless technology that has swelled in recent years, much like The Feed in Anderson’s book, is quickly clouding us from advancing the meaningful technologies that could be revolutionizing the world. Useful technologies like a 3G network should not be venerated because they allow wealthy upper-class college kids to download Cliff Notes in class when they should be being used to bring wireless technologies to rural populations or cheap computers to inner city schools. I define technology as something tangible that has a useful application in making someone’s life better in a meaningful way, not as something meaningless that caters to the lazy.
Aristotle defined Politics as the process by which many people make decisions. In other words Political decisions are based on what the masses decide rather than a singular individual or group of individuals. But Aristotle also warned of Politics “devolving into democracy,” which in the classical sense meant that rule would be governed by demos or common people. In this sense Aristotle was suggesting that people in power should collaborate with the demos in order to make decisions for the greater good of the community but the powerful should always remain distant from the common people. Who better to make the decisions than the ones with the most power?
The trouble with this line of thought, in modern times, is that the people in charge no longer have a vested interest in the ultimate satisfaction of the demos. In Ancient Greece the “common” people exercised much of the power within the political system because they were the communal lubricant that kept society moving and if they were not satisfied then the city, and the people in charge, suffered. Today, however, there is a growing void between the people in charge and the common people Aristotle referred to as the demos. Investors, corporate executives, and government agencies have been treating people more like sheep in recent years than essential parts of any healthy society and this is largely due to the public’s perception of Politics. To them the demos is a means to an end and as people become increasingly detached from the Political world this trend will only continue.
In M. T. Anderson’s novel “Feed” characters are subjected to a constant flow of information that often times overwhelms them from contemplating meaningful thoughts about life, love, society and Politics. By overwhelming their senses with Information rather then Knowledge the powers that be in “Feed” can use the flood of information as an opiate designed to subliminate social deviants and garner support for their self-serving policies. If people remain apathetic towards Politics and entrenched within a sea of Information rather than Knowledge how can they ever begin to close the void between self-serving policy makers and themselves? Therefore, my definition of Politics refers to the policies and practices implemented by people in positions of power that are deemed socially acceptable on the basis of mass appeal despite the lack of Knowledge existent within a sea of Information.
Technology:
Technology can be a hard concept to grasp for some people. Some think that technology is something tangible that makes life easier or less complicated. Others think that technology is something that benefits the entire human race. I personally believe that there is some truth to both of these interpretations. Tactile Nuclear Warheads (TNW’s) for example certainly make war easier but they do not benefit the human race.
The problem with defining the term “technology” is that people often have different views on what makes life easier and what benefits the human race. Using the TNW example illustrated earlier we can infer that there are often two sides to the same coin. The technology that was created to combust the atom was created to destroy human life, yet, the technology developed to fly the Nuclear Warhead to an enemy also was implemented to help man venture into space which might lead to untold benefits for the entire species. So how does one define “technology?” Webster’s House Dictionary defines technology as something that someone uses to cope with his or her environment but in the Cynthia Crossen’s book “Tainted Truth” she illustrates how technology is actually making it more difficult for us to adapt to our environment. “[Data gathered] by new technologies bring a sense of rationality to complex decisions- the ones once made with common sense, experience, and intelligence (Crossen 14).” The Internet is full of information and that is giving us the sense that we know a lot more than we used to but in reality it is just a false blanket of security that can blind us from making meaningful decisions that might actually make life easier or less complicated.
Take the Information versus Knowledge debate discussed earlier; technology has created a sea of information that anyone from across the globe can access directly, yet, along with this vast body of information comes ambiguity. How are we to know if Barak Obama’s fiscal plan is more efficient than John McCain’s if there are 40,000 different websites emphasizing different information that caters specifically to private interests? In M.T. Anderson’s book “Feed” technology has actually become a social hindrance that some characters attempt to forcibly expel from their lives thinking it will result in a sense of clarity in a world where a sea of information clouds their vision. The flood of cheap, readily accessible, and for the most part useless technology that has swelled in recent years, much like The Feed in Anderson’s book, is quickly clouding us from advancing the meaningful technologies that could be revolutionizing the world. Useful technologies like a 3G network should not be venerated because they allow wealthy upper-class college kids to download Cliff Notes in class when they should be being used to bring wireless technologies to rural populations or cheap computers to inner city schools. I define technology as something tangible that has a useful application in making someone’s life better in a meaningful way, not as something meaningless that caters to the lazy.
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