“Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly” began with the moderator Henry Jenkins, a well-known professor of Comparative Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology asking a question. Jenkins asks, “How do we measure the success or failure of digital democracy?” That is a good question. Another good question to ask is, can digital democracy be measured at all? “Our World Digitized” seeks out an answer to that question, and many others, in the Internet Age. Jenkins asks questions about free expression, fragmentation, and the importance of Wikipedia. What are the potentials of democracy as we continue moving towards a deeper dependence on the digital world, and will we be happy with the outcome?
Jenkins quotes passages from both speakers’ books. Jenkins first quotes from Cass Sunstein’s novel. Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law School and Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Sunstein states in his novel,
“Any well functioning society depends on relationships of trust and reciprocity, in which people see their fellow citizens as potential allies, willing to help, and deserving of help when help is needed…a well functioning society of free expression must have two distinct requirements: first, people should be exposed to materials they would not have chosen in advance and second, many or most citizens should have a range of common experiences.”
Jenkins goes on to quote the other speaker Yochai Benkler. Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Benkler states in his novel,
“The new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and in an increasingly information-dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere.”
How do these quotes reflect what Sunstein and Benkler think about free expression? Sunstein seems more skeptical of free expression, while Benkler seems more open and convinced that the internet is allowing for more personal freedom. Benkler believes that the digital democracy allows people to participate; they can pursue information. Sunstein believes that many people just take in information and do not participate. In today’s society the internet is flooded with information. Our society does not just sit back and soak in the information that is thrown at us. We instead search the internet for facts; and while we are seeking out information we are leaving our personal mark in the digital world.
In the article “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media,” Danah Boyd states,
“The opportunities for media creation have been rising for decades, but the Internet provided new mechanisms through which people could make their own content available. From blogging to social network sites to media sharing sites to sites that provide social streams, we are seeing countless ways in which a motivated individual can make their personal content available.”
Our society does participate on the internet, because our society, as Boyd said, is motivated.
“In a networked world, people connect to people like themselves. What flows across the network flows through edges of similarity. The ability to connect to others like us allows us to flow information across space and time in impressively new ways…”
Boyd describes what Bekler calls clusters of communities of interests; Bekler’s research shows that there is not a ‘daily me’ on the internet. Instead the internet is creating a ‘daily us’. “…points within a network become linked to other networks, resulting in shard communities of interest. This implies not fragmentation but a balance between free choices and shard concerns,” stated Bekler. Sunstein referenced a study on blogging that found that conservatives link only with other conservatives, which was the same result for liberals. Sunstein stated, “this is not an example of a well-functioning online public sphere.” Bekler has a brighter outlook on the potential fragmentation of the internet, while Sunstein has doubts on a balanced digital world. It seems the question of fragmentation is too difficult to answer. How are we to know if individuals will continue to ‘cluster’? How are we to know if our society will open up to new ideas and branch out on the internet? We cannot and will not know the answer, but I believe that a healthy democracy does mean looking at the information from various angles. If the internet continues to create these ‘clusters of communities’ then we will begin to potentially only see two-sides of the story. How is that a healthy democracy?
“Walking along some street, you see a person, interaction, building that stuns you. If you really look, the fertility and surprise of that will alter what you’re interested in, what you care about, your aesthetic and even political sense.” Sunstein imagines a digital world designed for interaction; a digital world of interaction that would promote collaboration and prevent lies and cruelty. Benkler wants the world to see the internet as an opportunity for involvement and participation. “It’s not just sitting in front of the TV, cursing.” Benkler wants people to practice. He wants our society to have an attitude of seeking, finding and using. It is hard to disagree with either of these men’s visions of the future of our society and the internet. In the end, they both desire the same thing; for our society to be involved in the digital world. More and more people are becoming involved in the digital world; the amount of individuals who use or have access to the internet grows every day. One day our whole world could be connected to the internet, and maybe everyone will practice and participate as Benkler stated. Sunstein’s image of an interactive digital world may also come true, but it is hard to imagine a world without lies and cruelty. While his image is desirable, it seems highly implausible.
As Jenkins states in his video, “Old media is dying.” Jenkins knows that the world of old media is ending and the new media world is just beginning. What does that mean for us? It means we must learn these new social skills. Why does new media literacy matter? It matters because it is a big part of today’s culture. Our society has Facebook to stay connected with ‘friends’. We have Twitter to follow celebrities and to “speak in public with a targeted audience explicitly stated.” The internet has given us the power to look into other people’s lives. “The public and networked nature of the Internet creates the potential for visibility.” We have these abilities but we must learn how to use them; we must become literate in new media in order to better understand the future of the digital world.
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