MAC 325 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: The Huffington Post, Yochai Benkler, Citizen Journalism
26 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 7-1 Hindman: The Myth of Digital Democracy Class 3/13/18
● Who gets heard?
● Visibility - what determines the size of your audience and how much does
audience size matter?
● What is the internet’s impact on American Politics?
● Has civic engagement increased?
● Has the # of citizens allowed to participate increase?
● Hindman thinks that the online public sphere looks like offline public sphere
○ Digital age looks a lot like mass media age - new media, same boss
● How does the Internet do at exposing us to a wide variety of new ideas?
● How do we find content online?
● Where do we look for content online?
● Prior scholarship on structure of internet has used 3 layer cake model → now
add hyperlink
● Cover of book shows top 100 sites at time - crazy how different the 20 are vs the
other 80
● The Long Tail 20 / 80
○ Benkler thinks it’s good because you can find and engage with content
you want to
○ Hindman disagrees - thinks mostly people talking, not a lot of people
listening
■ Baym called this Networked Individualism
● The Babel Objection
● Googlearchy
● Political traffic
○ 1% - specific searches & rarely looking at both sides
● Hindman’s Key Takeaways:
○ “Almost anyone can put up a political Website, but this fact matters little if
few politics sites receive many visitors” (56).
○ Most visited websites tend to be those with already existent offline
presence
○ Similar elites in digital age to mass media age → New model looks a lot
like the old model
● Hindman’s Conclusion
○ Yes the internet can still be democratizing, but only if they’re backed by
some institution, with the brand and infrastructure that entails; less that
you can be a citizen journalist on your own terms but rather join say The
Huffpost
○ You can still be heard but it will likely not be new info to people and will
likely be people you know
● Rebuttal
○ Speaking has inherent value even if you’re not being heard -
self-actualization
Document Summary
Week 7-1 hindman: the myth of digital democracy class 3/13/18. Hindman thinks that the online public sphere looks like offline public sphere. Digital age looks a lot like mass media age - new media, same boss. Prior scholarship on structure of internet has used 3 layer cake model now add hyperlink. Cover of book shows top 100 sites at time - crazy how different the 20 are vs the other 80. Benkler thinks it"s good because you can find and engage with content you want to. Hindman disagrees - thinks mostly people talking, not a lot of people listening. 1% - specific searches & rarely looking at both sides. Almost anyone can put up a political website, but this fact matters little if few politics sites receive many visitors (56). Most visited websites tend to be those with already existent offline presence. Similar elites in digital age to mass media age new model looks a lot like the old model.
