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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (82035)	10/30/2004 1:58:03 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793808

The internet and democratic debate PEW REPORT - PDF Wired Americans hear more points of view about candidates and key issues than other citizens. They are not using the internet to screen out ideas with which they disagree. Summary of Findings The internet contributes to a wider awareness of political arguments. Fears that use of the internet might hurt healthy democratic deliberation are not borne out by online behavior. Increasing numbers of Americans are getting news and information about politics online. More than 40% of those who use the internet have gotten political material during this campaign, according to the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, more than 50% higher than the number who had gotten such information in the 2000 campaign. As internet use has grown, prominent commentators and scholars have expressed concern that this would be harmful to democratic deliberation. They worried that citizens would use the internet to seek information that reinforced their political preferences and avoid material that challenged their views. They feared that people would use internet tools to customize and insulate their information inputs to a degree that held troubling implications for American society. Democracy functions best when people consider a range of arguments, including those that challenge their viewpoint. If people screened out information that disputed their beliefs, then the chances for meaningful discourse on great issues would be stunted and civic polarization would grow. The Pew Internet & American Life Project and the University of Michigan School of Information conducted a survey in June to test those concerns. We focused on the role of the internet related to four dimensions of contemporary politics: the arguments anchoring the campaign between George W. Bush and John Kerry; the arguments for and against the war in Iraq; the arguments for and against gay marriage; and the arguments for and against free trade. And our survey results belie the greatest fears about the impact of the internet on democracy: The internet is contributing to a wider awareness of political views during this year’s campaign season. At a time when political deliberation seems extremely partisan and when people may be tempted to ignore arguments at odds with their views, internet users are not insulating themselves in information echo chambers. Instead, they are exposed to more pewinternet.org