Connectivity and Interaction

President Obama definitely set a strong precedent with his utilization of the internet, and his lead will likely be followed by presidents in the future. Obama and his followers used YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other websites to reach broader audiences. As a result, Obama was able to communicate with diverse audiences and acquire important feedback. He gained a huge advantage over John McCain in such forums. Obama's greatest advantage was probably in the younger generations who are on the internet constantly. Certainly, the presidential campaigns of the future would be wise to attract and listen to audiences online.

Levinson makes a good point in arguing about Obama's campaign revealing his vice president only to those people on the email list. Although email has become widely popular, email can only reach so many people. The fundamental use of the internet is for people to connect and interact with all kinds of people. By revealing the vice president to only those people on the email list, Obama and his advisors were excluding many people who were interested in more information about such things. Levinson basically explains that the internet will definitely be a useful campaigning medium in the future, but older mediums like television, radio, and newspapers still can have a significant impact.

Remembering the Election

Chapter 12 really reminded me of the 2008 elections. Levinson discusses Obama's use of the internet and it just reminds me my experiences during the election. Facebook groups, email lists, advertisements, and Youtube videos all featured Obama or things related to his campaigns. The Youtube debate, personally I think was a great idea. One of the many benefits of the internet is user-created content, and what better example or use than to have people be able to submit video questions for use in debates? Granted the questions were all selected by those involved in organizing the questions, it was nice to see people get involved directly.

I also remember joining Facebook groups related to the campaigns and receiving information about rallies or press releases. Obama used the internet so well that there is no doubt in my mind it helped him run a successful campaign. I am sure we will all see similar execution of internet plans as more and more elections and campaigns happen in our lifetime.

You Digg It?

In complete honesty, I had never heard of Digg until earlier this semester when it was mentioned passively in class. I have still not visited the site, yet plan to at least check it out for myself at some point.

After reading about Digg, in New New Media by Paul Levinson, I have come to the conclusion that it's not that bad an idea. Levinson makes mention of a few alternative sites that serve the same purpose as Digg but have not be as successful. But I don't think there should be such a fuss about the "abuse" of its services as people have begun to "lobby" it, whether fiscally or another means. First and foremost, I'd like to disconnect the association that is overlooked of people who "bury" articles by lets say Ron Paul, and those who use money and other schemes to make certain things more popular.

These are two very different actions because the abuse that is happening when people are providing money to Digg something or promoting articles for money is something that defeats the purpose of the democratic principles of the website. When money is brought into the equation, it is at the cost of rationality and free thought. Let's be serious, who wouldn't "digg" something that may not like or care about for a few bucks? But this is different than those activists who are burying Ron Paul articles, because that's the purpose of the site, if you genuinely disagree with an article or it's content, you bury it. That's all they are doing, it's just in an organized manner.

In all, I think Digg may be a great idea and a good site, I'll found out for myself soon, but let's not treat it as our best source of information and articles. I like to think Digg is a good site to get a little information that will urge you to read something more substantial, similarly to how Wikipedia works, as a base. You Digg it?

The Blogosphere Democracy

Dr. Levinson's chapter on blogging was very interesting. I think the incorporation of his personal experiences with the "new new media" platform definitely enhanced his analysis of the medium. More than that, I think the use of anecdotes was smart way to convey his points, since blogging is a rather recent phenomenon without many measurable, quantifiable effects as of yet.

On page 22, he discusses the democratic nature of blogging, specifically the commenting tool's ability to "serve not only as a voice of the people but as conveyors of truth and correction," "epitomizing the democratic alternative to expert-driven information." In many ways blogging is a much more democratic than the traditional publishing and journalism industries: the opinions of everyday people can be heard, not just the contributors to the WSJ or New York Times editorial pages; there is no editor posing judgment or directing the content in any way and there are little to no monetary-based advertiser interest to keep in mind. Individuals are empowered by their ability to contribute to the world and influence society in some small way. Because of new new media, the monarchy-like hierarchy of traditional publishing has, in many ways, been overthrown.

On the surface, this seems like a great thing, kind of like when American colonists broke away from England years ago with dreams of a fully participatory democratic state. In the years since then, however, political scientists and ordinary observers have realized that a full-fledged democracy sounds great on paper but lacks realistic application. It is the classic "too much voices drown each other out," in that it is very difficult to get anything accomplished when you need the approval of every single individual. This is why America transitioned to a representative democracy and this may be the eventual fate of the blogsophere.

While the comparison is not exact, I tend to feel that there just may be too many voices posting online and that this influx of voices is actually making decision-making and objective research more difficult. It is becoming harder and harder to decipher what is a news item and what is a blog post even on major news websites, who now run just as many blogs and regular articles. I also really struggled trying to find objective information while writing my senior thesis last semester, constantly evaluating the credibility of online sources. Young people today are being inadvertently trained to resist "the expert" in favor of the "guy in his pajamas," which devalues the hard work and years of dedication the expert has that the latter lacks. Overall, the benefits of blogging are obviously positive, easy to see and exciting to analyze but there are costs and complications which I think also deserve attention.