Week Three Position Paper

In this week's readings, I was most struck by the sense of optimism that folks had about the Internet in the early stages of its development. In "Bytes that Bite: The Internet and Deliberative Democracy," Hubertus Buchstein divided contemporary assessors of the Internet into "optimist" and "neutralist" camps (249). Imagine: a world without pessimism regarding the Internet! As I read these pieces which were obviously on very different topics regarding the Internet (its history, its communicative ability, and its political potential), I couldn't help but think of where these early hopes for the Internet have gone.

The reading I was most drawn to this week was Buchstein's. In addressing the optimistic assessment of the Internet for political engagement, Buchstein writes: "the new technology seems to match all basic requirements of Habermas's normative theory of the democratic public sphere: it is a universal, anti-hierarchical, complex and demanding mode of interaction... it offers universal access, uncoerced communication, freedom of expression, an unrestricted agenda, participation outside of traditional political institutions and generates public opinion through processes of discussion" (251). I was frankly taken aback by this assessment of the Internet as an entity. Even at the relatively early stage of the Internet that this piece was written (1997), this utopian view seems naive in the extreme. It had been less than ten years (1988) since Al Gore had "invented the Internet," tying the very development of Internet infrastructure explicitly to political sponsorship (Leiner et al. 11). Current debates surrounding net neutrality illustrate how far down the commercial rabbit hole we have gone, making claims of "universal access" frankly laughable. Moreover, the cost of entry in terms of hardware to access the Internet are still palpable. While public libraries generally provide some computers for use by the general public, their perennial lack of funding puts a damper on providing unfettered access to the information superhighway.

Beyond the overly sunny assessments of the Internet's limitless potential and universal accessibility, I was struck by how many of the potential pitfalls outlined by the "neutralist" camp have come to fruition. For example, Buchstein highlights national concerns with encrypted communication in an entirely open forum: "The end of censorship leads to a situation in which the state has no means by which to regulate hate speech on the net… It is difficult to imagine enforcing the legal right of 'factual correction' or libel laws on defamation of a person in cyberspace" (253). This section brought to mind two seemingly disparate (but, really, not all that disparate) elements: the 2016 election and the rise of overt white supremacist demonstrations.

As the 2016 presidential election showed us, sound bites and bombast draw far more attention than careful and deliberative reasoning. Again, this is not surprising in the least; for example, as Franco et al. point out in "Anatomy of a Flame: Conflict and Community Building on the Internet," that in the flame war they studied "messages, some long and clearly well thought-out, were cited hardly at all. One respondent posted four messages that we read as relevant to the flame, but received not one citation from another member of the community... [Grundner's] call for solutions, especially, prompted a small flood of suggestions and volunteerism. It seems doubtful that such a call to arms from any other member of the listserv could have generated such a strong and immediate response" (18). Despite the stated goals of this listserv community to build effective communicative networks, the respondents were much more interested in "flaming" or shaming perceived wrongs and staying focused on the locus of the flame, Grundner, whose initial sexist remarks began the flame war, rather than "clearly well thought-out" deliberative contributions or moving towards a solution until the spark of the flame itself suggested doing so.

Regarding the rise of overt white supremacist displays: many folks feel emboldened by the election of the current president seeing his election as a vindication of their views. However, and to bring things full circle, we are learning more each day about foreign interference with the election, including focused campaigns of misinformation and misdirection (hardly Habermas's "uncoerced communication"). Moreover, the "echo chambers" or "feedback loops" of social media, predicted by Nicholas Negroponte and his "individualized newspaper" (Buchstein 256), further reverberates people's opinions by editing out dissent.

Essentially, my takeaway from looking back at the early age of the Internet is that I see our current status quo rather pessimistically, but being a pessimist in general, maybe that's just me?

Contemporary Commentary on the "Echo Chamber" Effect of Social Media:

Here's the "Fake News Game" I mentioned in class:

Here's the Malcolm Gladwell article I mentioned:

Here's an overview of research on the Internet's impact on the Arab Spring: