"Death panel." Two words posted online ignited the national healthcare debate and arguably led to the crimson tide that swept the nation in the midterm elections November 2.
So much has changed in the political world since those two words were posted in August of 2009 -- eons ago in Internet time -- that their significance has been overlooked. It's not just the potency of the image created by those words that's important, it's how they were delivered and by whom. In the age of instant communication, a Facebook post by a private citizen proved more powerful than the presidential pulpit.
While President Obama's mastery of the online channel as a campaign marketing medium helped to propel him to an historic victory, the Internet is now used as a weapon of mass destruction against his agenda. Today, a Tweet of 140 characters or less can take the POTUS' TOTUS (President of the United States' Teleprompter of the United States) off message.
So how has free speech online changed politics? Here are 10 outcomes of the Web's influence on politics, and their possible impact -- good, bad, or ugly:
1. The media monster still lives.
Bad: The mainstream media bemoans the loss of their monopoly on the message.
Good: Those who adapt survive. The method of delivery is changing, but the beast lives on as shown by the merger of Newsweek, the print magazine launched in 1933, and The Daily Beast, a two-year-young 24/7 news, commentary, culture, and entertainment site.
Ugly: From cacophony to consolidation, a natural weeding-out process will continue.
2. Fiction becomes fact.
Bad: Open access sometimes means unfiltered fiction becomes fact merely by repetition and reposting. And propaganda is easily propagated.
Good: Though there are now millions of instant, anonymous experts online, there are also legions of fact-checkers ready to pounce. The old retail mantra, buyer beware, holds true in the Internet age.
Ugly: Truth never travels at the speed of lies. And lies are never recalled.
3. An echo chamber is born.
Bad: Voices that agree are amplified and critical inquiry can be muted. Do top-trending hashtags truly show a trend, or are they merely echoes rippling to infinity?
Good: The once-unheard gain a stronger voice.
4. YouTube is ubiquitous.
Good: Every cellphone-armed citizen is a video journalist, ready to capture any injustice or infringement on liberty.
Bad: Fearful of the next "Macaca" moment, politicians speak fewer words on the campaign trail.
5. Politics is local no longer.
Good and bad: The nationalization of local campaigns means access to more cash.
6. The poison pen prevails.
Bad: Corporations and Capitol Hill often waste time, money, and resources focusing on reactive messaging rather than good governance.
7. The sun shines on shadows.
Bad: A Wikileak lesson -- when secrets are no longer, lives are put in danger.
Good but ugly: Sunshine laws give the public instant access online to information on how tax dollars are spent, and how the government works.
8. The people have the power.
Good: Every voter now has a voice.
9. We are alone no more.
Good or bad: Movements are born at the moment when just two people agree.
Bad: Big Brother is watching.
10. You cannot have Rwanda again.
Good: "You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken." – Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister, UK
Good, bad, and ugly -- blogs, posts, texts, and Tweets give power back to the people. It's the founders' ultimate fulfillment of freedom of the press as they intended. Not freedom of the press, a media organization, as we understand it in modern terms, but freedom of the printing press. Ordinary citizens now have free and unfettered access to be heard on the public square.
Is free speech online good for democracy? The Internet has become the ultimate leveler. The battle between Twitter and TOTUS may be ugly, but it is good.
— Mark McKinnon has worked for both Democratic and Republican political campaigns. He is co-chairman of Arts+Labs , an alliance of the technology, content, and creative communities.
You're right. If, as a reader, you see something wrong, there are many avenues to review to at least attempt to see if what you're reading is true, unlike when we had only printed media and no real way to find out right from wrong, unless we hours of spare time. That said, I still prefer to read pages rather than screens.:)
But either way, whether information is from screen or print, we can check it out. Will we always be right? No, of course not. Sometimes there is more incorrect information about a subject than there is correct. But at least we can try.
I also agree that it is upon the reader to exercise their own discretion on what they buy as truth and what they have to question. The importance of free information cannot be over emphasized. it does give us leaks into a lot of things and this may help us collectively as a society or even individually.
I believe that all rumours and falsehoods are based on a certain truth far or near. It just takes a very discerning gut to get round to what might be true(or what needs attention at all).
In all i believe the internet (much as it spreads info/misinformation faster) is a lesser evil than printed publications. Internet provides users with space to react immediately and a lot of people out there do critic information. So even when a source tries to scandal/rumour monger about a politician, there are those that support and those that oppose and the battlefield remains fair. Unlike printed publications which are conclusive in a way.
@SteveGNYC - with this particuar forum I think it's mostly opinion. It's a good forum if you have aquestion about a particular ship, port etc. you can get different opinions and make your own decisions. I've gotten a lot of helpful information from it. So it is a mix of opinion and education.
There are many forums that are in place to educate. I think it depends on the forum itself. If you go to experts-exchange or bleeping computer you can find information from members to help you out. I think the key to all this is knowing where to look for the information you want.
It sounds like they're a necessary evil in a sense - you can't stop the bad nor the good, so you have to take them both together. And hope that everyone does the homework necessary to know which side they're one, and why.
I think I'd rather have the healthy debate (all sides speaking) rather than face a censor - that sounds like it could lead to followers going blindly forward.
And yes, I do see the "both ways at the same time" event happen very often. I think it's part of the conversation.
Are forums mostly just opinion? Is there some educating that does occur oon forums too?
@ homesteadtraders - that is also what struck me, the poster heard something and instead of doing a search online, they went directly to the forum. If I want an opinion on something I will go to a forum, if I want information, I will use a search engine. It's important to know where to get information.
I agree, nothing good can come of internet censorship. Once it starts there is no turning back and it could lead to a future that Ray Bradbury imagined.
These forums can be both good and bad in discerning the information. They can clarify the misconceptions which is good, or they get more muddled by the knee-jerk reactions that Mary mentioned. Often they do go both ways, at the same time.
Mark, as it is well known, there is no freedom of Speech in Russia, yet there is a freedom of speech in RuNet. It is pretty interesting to contemplate these two parallel worlds of information. If you want to know the official point of view- turn on TV or buy a newspaper, if you want to know the truth, search the web
You're right, and there lies one of the problems. If people would just double check things as they can before passing it around, I think we'd find less problems with net information.
The person asking the question stated that "he had heard..." but instead of taking a few minutes to use the internet to actually research it himself, he made the comment on a public forum and sort of asked his question that way. Fortunatly he was put right, but what if it was another group who would have taken the wrong information and run with it. I would say it was done innocently, but that is how problems can start.
However, that said, this doesn't mean that there should be internet censorship either. That opens up another can of worms, where I don't think any of us would want to go.
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People of all political stripes should be cheering on the Obama administration's embrace of Web 2.0 platforms. They have challenged themselves to make the federal government more open and innovative, and -- considering the bureaucratic barriers to doing new things in government -- the initial steps being taken by the White House and various agencies are a remarkable achievement.
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Spending cuts are the theme of the Senate's compromise draft of the U.S. economic stimulus package meant to inject cash into a flagging economy. Those include a $2 billion reduction in money for rural broadband deployment, bringing the total down to $7 billion -- though that's still more than the $6 billion allocated for broadband in the House version of the bill.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
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Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
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Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
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