Politics Found

American politics today are in a state of emergency. Political discourse has become so polarized that discussing politics in any meaningful way with someone of differing viewpoints is considered downright offensive. The Internet has been hailed by many, such as Lawrence Lessig, as being a wonderful tool that removes the face to face discomfort of debate and frees politics from this constraint. Yochai Benkler, in his book The Wealth of Networks, takes a less utopian view. He analyzes several arguments praising the Internet as a panacea and dissmissing it as nothing new at all, or worse, a cause for further isolation of opinions. Benkler clears the dust for us and reveals the Internet to be something much simpler, a tool for expanding and enhancing the public sphere.

The notion of the “public sphere” should be explained. According the Benkler, the public sphere is a “set of practices members of a society use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or recognition” (177). Basically, what public policies people are talking about and how they are talking. Right now, our sphere looks like a cracked egg. There is an amazing gap between parties where no discourse takes place. This smashed sphere is institutionalized by commercial mass media whose interests lie in capturing eyeballs by catering to the lowest common denominator, not repairing discourse in America.

Enter the Internet. Benkler does a complete analysis of its graph and linkage properties, and to summarize, the Internet breaks down into tiered clusters of linkage based on interest. When something of sufficient interest happens within a small community, it can quickly become linked to by a larger community, and so raise the issue into the general public sphere, or not, if it is unworthy. The public sphere is like a catalyst for state action. The Internet multiplies the surface area of that catalyst so more information can be processed.

The Internet does not, however, suddenly depolarize people. Hot-headed argument, termed a “flame war,” runs rampant in all corners of the Internet. Vandalism occurs frequently on Wikipedia, such as on the evolution article. The Internet does not necessarily engender reasoned communication between individuals, but it does dramatically increase the flow of ideas.

So if the Internet is only a nifty tool for freeing the public sphere from corporate agenda and expanding it, how can politics be saved? There is some backlash from the extensive use of focus groups, pollsters, and consultants in politics. According to Joe Klein, author of Politics Lost, the American people thirst for leadership and authenticity in politics. They are disilusioned with the political process, and as such, new ideas for fixing the system have been percolating across the Internet. Instant runoff voting (IRV), also known as ranked choice voting, has risen and become popular. San Francisco now uses it for city elections. The National Popular Vote Bill has passed California legislature. The Diebold scandal and allegations that the 2004 election was stolen have inspired the Open Voting Consortium to design open, secure, foolproof, and trustworthy voting mechanisms. The author has even participated in this discussion by making a personal blog post and discussing the topic on Facebook. The Internet can help politics, but it is not the Internet itself that will save politics. New policies and cultural norms will save politics, and the Internet will help disseminate and implement these ideas.