Democratic and Social Participation

Page 399

One benefit of converging media is the great potential for individuals and groups to participate more actively in the political process and contribute more directly to the culture. With traditional media, only the professionals (news organizations, television networks, studios, and so on) act as gatekeepers, controlling the creation and distribution of information and entertainment. Those outlets require enormous capital investment as well as highly technical production skills and capability. Internet use, on the other hand, doesn’t require the same degree of skill, money, or access. This means that individuals online have the opportunity to discover and provide voices competing with those of traditional media; they also have a means to connect with others locally and globally.

Connecting Marginalized Voices. How did revolts in Tunisia and Egypt so quickly escalate to thousands of citizens in the streets, eventually resulting in their governments toppling despite efforts to squelch Internet access and limit news media coverage? How did friends, relatives, rescue workers, and relief organizations make connections in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan? And how do fans of quirky shows, people dealing with rare illnesses, and individuals seeking specific goals even find each other? The use of the Web, e-mail, texting, and social networking (in combination with traditional modes of communication) allows groups that would not get much media coverage or whose members are not centralized geographically to better connect, provide alternative sources of information, and spread the word about their causes. They may also build social capital, which refers to the valuable resources (such as information and support) that come from having connections and relationships among people (Williams, 2006). Social networking via Facebook in particular has been shown to increase the strength of what would otherwise be weak ties among acquaintances or friends who have moved to different geographic locations (Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007). Although we would probably prefer that some groups or individuals not have such connectedness—such as hate groups, terrorists, and sexual predators—remember that open access means facilitating the participation of many different voices, not just the ones we like.

Empowering Individuals. Even artist Andy Warhol, who once predicted that eventually everyone would have the opportunity to be famous for fifteen minutes, might have been surprised by the ease with which anyone can put themselves into media today. Blogs, YouTube, and even professional news organizations offer opportunities for citizen journalists to report and comment on events in their communities. Individuals can also contribute their own entertainment messages online.

Many forms of user-generated content have emerged, ranging from simple home videos uploaded to YouTube to elaborate mash-ups of popular songs or artworks (Pavlik & McIntosh, 2011). Content that manages to break into mass media culture is said to have “gone viral”—that is, spread from user to user (like an infection) via a link or Web post. Teen idol Justin Bieber first rose to fame in this manner, and in 2011, Rebecca Black’s heavily autotuned song “Friday” went viral after comic Daniel Tosh joked about it on his Tosh 2.0 blog (Shultz, 2011). Tosh himself felt the negative effects of viral content when outrage over a distasteful joke he made in a small comedy club became viral news in 2012. Social networking on Facebook or Twitter has also allowed individuals to elevate their everyday personal lives to public ones. Our status updates and photos can alert everyone we know (and friends of friends of people we know) as to what we are doing, feeling, and thinking. We even use social networking to feel more connected to the personal thoughts and feelings of celebrities, limited of course to the thoughts they purposely release to us via Twitter.

In short, media convergence enables individual voices to contribute to news, politics, and culture. While the quality of their messages varies greatly, there is some sense that allowing more voices to contribute to what has become known as the marketplace of ideas—the open forum in which ideas compete—is beneficial for society as a whole (Abrams v. United States, 1919).