ARTelevision

More Informed Or More Agitated? Blame The Internet

from internetweek.com

The Internet has been a bigger factor in this presidential
campaign than any other to date. In this election we've
seen online services like Meetup mobilizing voters; e-mail
campaigns driving fundraising; official blogs promoting
candidates; unofficial blogs -- like Electablog, Noted Now,
and Talking Points -- commenting on the race; sites like
FactCheck.org evaluating candidates' statements; site like
Campaign Desk analyzing campaign media coverage; Webcasts
of polling data like Gallup's Daily Briefing; and My
Polling Place to show us where to cast our vote.

But are people really using this cradle-to-grave array of
online election information to inform their vote? Or is it
just Beltway insiders and journalists chasing process
stories? The Pew Internet & American Life Project has tried
to suss out the situation. According to their new report,
more than 40 percent of Internet users in the U.S. have
gotten information about this year's presidential campaign
online, a 50 percent increase from the 2000 election. Among
broadband users, 31 percent say their primary source of
election-related news is online; 35 percent claim the same
of newspapers. Though this data indicates that people are
going to the Internet for election information, another
finding of the report was perhaps more telling: 20 percent
of Americans surveyed said they prefer news sources that
challenge their point of view and 10 percent said they are
more aware of arguments that oppose their candidate than
arguments in favor.

That this election is the most polarized in recent memory
is generally accepted, but what role has the Internet
played? The Pew data suggests that many people are seeking
out multiple perspectives, a positive step away from the
top-down information culture of broadcast networks. Though
bringing more voices to the discussion should make us more
informed, in this election at least it seems to be making
us just more pissed. Here's to hoping that's more to do
with the current candidates and issues than the information
infrastructure.

And of course one last reminder: vote tomorrow or you
can't complain about the results.

................................................

As I've stated, I see politics as a pursuit of power, not truth. Information is used as a weapon in this pursuit. So it seems clear to me that the more political information one is exposed to the more embattled, bellicose, or world-weary one becomes. Add to that the interactive interface of the Net, which allows for active participation, i.e. argumentation and disputation - with all the attendant ego display, bullying, and grandstanding those forms provide - and it's no surprise to me that we are the worse for it.

You may see this differently...

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tecoyah

Indeed, the information we get from the Net is biased, as is virtually all information. It is important, in my opinion, to gather as much data as possible from as many sources as you can, and then form an opinion based on all the biased data.

All opinions are biased...thus the term "Opinion".

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

seretogis

The Internet at least provides the option of searching for other sources of information -- unlike radio / TV / direct-mail. We've seen the impact that the "new media" can have on things like the CBS National Guard memo scandal -- without the Internet, that document may have never been exposed as a fake. I think we'll see the Internet empower average people with computers more and more, which I see as a good thing.

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seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

roachboy

this is a complicated question, the relation of the net to politics---i think it is still being worked out, in general, and that the questions you raise, art, are mostly a function of the newness of the medium:

there is an enormous amount of information on the net but few if any ways of sorting/classifying it--that this would pose a problem is itself quite interesting, because it points (in a negative way) to the degree to which choices about information (like any other commodity) in the older print/television/radio contexts have been mediated by filtering institutions, which function (quite apart from the politics that are embedded within any such mediation) to sift, to rank to order and thereby tp make meaningful various sources by establishing relations/hierarchies within and between them.

one function of these mediating institutions (an example would be the critical apparatus, analogous to art forum or the music press) is to align information and ideological frameworks for processing information. it seems to take quite a bit of intellectual work to function smoothly in a context that moves in and out, or cuts across, these frameworks.

so one of the advantages of the net as information medium is that you can cross outside the local, nationalist boundaries particular to american politics by simply reading from the international press. one disadvantage of doing this--which is more social/tactical than political--is that systematic indulgence in this moves you outside simple conversation with folk who have not, for whatever reason, affected such a shift.

i think what shapes how people process net information is the informal hierarchies they work out for themselves amongst informations media in general. it might be less disruptive for conservatives, for example, to interact with net information because the hierarchy that shapes their positions in general privileges other media, with other ways of ordering/privileging information.

my suspicion--and this is only a suspcion--is that conservatives rely heavily on tv and local radio as sorting and framing devices.

so i do not think that the problems raised by the multiplication of information sources engendered by the net in its present form is a direct function of the nature of politics. i think it more connected to the social status of the medium.

it is an indirect function of relations to politics, however: the evacuation of meaingful debate and its replacement with opinion management is a real problem, even for american pseudo-democracy, in that it is not in least about informed debate--which is unnecessary in a context where people exercize no meaningful power.

that people would come to function in complex spaces by relying almost exclusively on mediating institutions to pre-chew information commodities is a clear index of how, at the cultural level, hegemony works in the states.

and that people would find themselves bewildered at the multiplication of unfiltered information sources is an index of the extent to which the existing cultural order functions to systematically disable even the possibility of meaningful debate--which is a fine fine way of making sure that no matter how bankrupt the existing order might become, people would still prefer it, not for any reason particular to the order itself, but rather because it spares them the work of having to think for themselves.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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MSD

If I didn't have the internet, I'd still be voting for the least evil candidate.

ARTelevision

Yes, roachboy, I don't disagree with you as far as the ultimate potential value of the availability of information.

As you know, I do not see disputation, debate, or forensics as methodologies that further enlightenment. It is this interactive aspect - the ability to publish, argue, and grandstand - that I see as the most problematic on a personal level. Just as the Net promotes new and varied sexual dysfunctions, I see it promoting similarly pernicious social behaviors.

It has probably become too easy to make public statements today. While this sounds like a counter-intuitive idea, the lack of social restraint and the ability to anonymize one's discourse are the kinds of problems that creep into our lives on a larger-than-ever scale as a function of online participation in political speech on the Internet.

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