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
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