DPI-665Politics of the Internet

Mar 21, 2012

The Myth of Digital Democracy

And The Filter Bubble

Critiques

Micah L. Sifry

Audio: http://bit.ly/GQqcH9

CC-BY-NC-SA

Topics for discussion

• At the societal level, is the Internet empowering more ordinary people, or hyper-empowering some elites?

Hindman’s key points

• Politics is a relatively low level concern of American web users;

• Most web users don’t know how to use search well and generally rely on the top results they get when they search;

• There is a power law distribution of attention online and web traffic to political sites is highly concentrated;

• Successful political bloggers tend to be highly educated and upper middle-class; and

• The barrier to entry against the biggest sites is quite high.

“Googlearchy”

• Rule by the most heavily linked

• Online speech follows “winner-take-all”

• “Putting up a political Web site is usually equivalent to hosting a talk show on public access TV at 3:30am”

• Is this problematic?

Responding to Hindman

• The web, like life, is unfair. Early movers, people with capital, have advantages.

• You still need a compelling message, yes. But money?

• The functional role of bloggers is different, more independent, more interactive

• The new media ecosystem is more fluid than the old ecosystem (see his top 50 sites)

• Online collaboration hubs multiply power of ordinary people (DailyKos, Reddit)

• Sufficiency principle

Pariser’s key points

• Personalization, or the “filter bubble,” is subtly distorting our view(s) of the world

• Shared dialogue about common knowledge is undermined

• Too much power in the hands of a few platforms and filters

If code is law, what kind?

• What are some of Google and Facebook’s unwritten powers?

• Are these “political” questions?

• What should we do about them?