This blog title is evidence of the type of story ideas journalists have to deal with during the course of their day. 

It contributes to the difficulties of being a journalist today. 
 
While the traditional responsibilities of yesteryear –developing sources and producing well-developed news stories- remain, the way journalists carry out these tasks has changed considerably. 
 
Source building now happens both online and offline. 
 
Deciding which stories to actually produce-- stories about a potato or corruption in local government- entails enacting personal judgment, often to the dismay of others, and wading through a sea of information, again both online and offline, to decipher truth from fiction. 
 
Additionally, journalists are forced to promote their work and themselves as brands. 

This is done through social media, networking, holding community office hours and just being visible within the community. 
 
Then, there’s the drama associated with online activity. 
 
You have to grow a thick skin to take the criticism of your work, which often goes beyond professional critiques into personal territory.  To boot, you may or may not have the support of your superiors. 

Also, you are limited in your personal social media behavior. 
 
Journalists have to take on this wide load of job responsibilities amid notoriously low salaries; long hours; a 
strong likelihood that you’ll have to move around a couple of times to move up the position and pay ladder; and often little appreciation for their work beyond their peers in the industry. 
 
All this makes you wonder why anybody would be crazy to sign up for this job, right?

The answer in short is somebody’s got to do it!

 For some, it’s a calling; for others, it’s a job they don’t particularly like but they are good at it.

 Regardless of the reason, journalists play an important role. 

Journalism, otherwise known as the Fourth Estate, plays an important role in a democracy. 

That relationship between journalism and democracy is the topic of this week’s discussion for #mc7019. 

This week, we read Herbert J. Gans’” News & the News Media in the Digital Age: Implications for Democracy;” Robert McChesney’s “Farewell to Journalism? Time for a Rethinking; Nicco Mele’s “Big News;” Matthew Yglesias’ “The Glory Days of American Journalism;” and Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “The State of the News Media 2013." 
 
The Pew Research Center report “spotlights the dynamics of a kind of vicious cycle now taking place because of deep business problems in the news industry” (Pew Research Center, 2013). 

The top findings from this cycle-- Journalists played a smaller role in shaping what voters heard about candidates and politicians found new ways to get information out, often with little to no journalism vetting.

 Other effects of this cycle coupled with slashed staff reduced quantity of coverage include the following:
    · Nearly one-third —31 percent– of people say they have deserted a particular news outlet
because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.

 ·   Nearly 1,000 people surveyed said news stories are not as thorough as they were previously.

 ·    Of the consumers who reported abandoning certain news outlets, 61 percent said the
decision was based on issues of quality, while 24 percent said there were not enough stories.

 (Pew Research Center, 2013)

 Additional findings included:

 ·   Only about one quarter of the statements in the media about the character and records
of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney came directly from journalists while about half came from political partisans.

 ·    Social media users took a dim view of both candidates

 ·    Horserace coverage was down, but coverage of the issues didn’t fill that gap. In 2012, the
amount of coverage devoted to tactics, strategy and polls declined to 38%. But that attention to policy issues—both foreign and domestic—barely budged, inching up from to 22% in 2012.

 ·     $2.9 Billion spent on political advertising

 ·    Obama made greater use of social media messaging than Romney, but the overall conversation in social media was negative toward both men. In the period studied by Pew Research, for example, the Obama team produced about 25 times more Twitter posts than the Romney campaign. But on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, users were consistently more negative than positive about both candidates—although Romney fared somewhat worse.

 (Pew Research Center, 2013)

 I was not shocked by these findings. 

I consider myself somewhat attune to the details of the last presidential election and journalism’s role in it. 
 
News coverage has grown increasingly partisan, either to the pleasure or dissatisfaction of news consumers. 

As a journalist, however, I would have liked to have seen more qualitative questions/answers in the survey about the news questions.

 From previous experience, I know news consumers often make blanketed statements to describe all media coverage. 
 
Regardless if a particular entity is guilty of the accusations waged against them, they get lumped into the singular category of “the news.”

 I want to know examples of which purportedly objective stories news consumers actually found to be partisan in nature. The same goes for the news outlets themselves. 

I also would have like to have seen examples of a story news consumers found to lack thoroughness. 

In many cases, news consumers have little understanding of how news coverage works; therefore, they make low-information accusations on topics for which they are not truly familiar with.

 Gans’ piece complemented the Pew findings, exploring the impacts on democracy presented by journalists’ dwindling role in delivering political information to the masses.

 He discussed the bulwark theory. 

According to Gans, the bulwark theory argues being informed also enables citizens to participate in politics, choose their political representatives, and instruct them on how they want to be represented.

 As evidenced by several clips of Jimmy Kimmel’s “Confusing Question of the Day,” people are not as informed about political topics as they think they are.


Clip One


Clip Two


Journalists’ role is to help keep citizens informed; thus enabling citizens to participate in the democratic process. 


Journalists can fulfill their roles, according to Gans, by doing the following:


·   Monitoring the Political Environment and Assuring the Country that the Polity Will Survive

 ·   Reporting the Actions and Decisions of Elected Officials

 ·    Airing Political Disagreements and Conflicts

 ·    Defending Democratic Values

 ·    Investigative reporting

 New technologies, however, make it increasingly difficult for journalists to fulfill their job responsibilities.

 The increase in opinion blogs masquerading as news and social media can and have resulted in uninformed citizens (Gans, 2010). 
 
Furthermore, the decreasing role of journalists can result in “a return toward high levels of political corruption, incompetent policy-making, and governmental mismanagement” (Gans, 2013).

 I’m going to reference an article that I’ve referenced before. I PROMISE I’ve done other articles during my years working as a journalist. You can Google my name for proof. 

However, I often talk about this particular article because it was one of the first articles I did that had a major impact on the politics of a community and it impacted me both professionally and personally. 

During my time working as a journalist, I did an in-depth look into candidates for county judge in Victoria County,
Texas.

The story was unique because Matt Ocker, the Republican candidate, was running amid accusations of domestic abuse, assault and aggression in general.  Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate had a record of arrests for driving while intoxicated. 
 
You can read the story here.


Amid criticisms from both near and far, the story did what it was supposed to do—shined light on a possibly incompetent candidate who, if elected, exhibited a high propensity toward governmental mismanagement.

 This piece took me months to finish.

 In the beginning, I multitasked with other stories, but toward the end, I was able to focus on just this one. 

Stories like this come to fruition when you have bosses  who do what they can to ensure their newspaper fulfills its government watchdog duties and gives its reporters the support,time-wise, financially and emotionally, to get the job done.

 Unfortunately, this kind of support is growing more and more rare among media outlets who thrive on a 24-hour news cycle. 

Matthew Yglesias argues that people should “ignore the doomsayers” because the “news-reading public has never had more and better information at their fingertips” (Yglesias, 2013).

 Journalists are producing more content than ever before.

 “For people trying to make a living in journalism, the problems are real enough. But from a social viewpoint, these are excellent problems to have,” Yglesias wrote. 

Gans offers up the following seven tips for journalists to continue their democratic contributions: 

·   Conduct more active reporting.

 ·   Increase and broaden economic reporting.

 ·   Cover citizen news.

 ·     Report additional perspectives on America.


·  Increase watchdogging.

 ·   Make room for informed opinion.

 ·   Enlarge the news audience.

 Mchesney expresses similar sentiments. 
 
These ideals are easier said than done, going back to mydiscussion on necessary support from those in charge. 
 
In terms of big news, Mele wrote, “we don’t know yet whether sufficient resources are in place to enable journalism to fulfill its historic role as guardian of the public interest” (Mele, 2013).


I’ll never forget, but a news consumer told me once that “real journalists don’t work at the Victoria Advocate. They work for the New York Times.”

It’s unfortunate that some ignorant people have this mindset. 

Reporters and editors at smaller media outlets possess just as much ability to exercise accountability and responsibility from government and corporate leaders as employees of other news outlets.

 Also, in the midst of the financial crisis larger media outlets are enduring, many community newspapers are holding their own.

 If called upon, these small outlet employees would be capable of providing the same coverage on a larger scale. 


 This is something news consumers should keep in mind as well as advertisers and news management. 
 
I offer up these questions for discussion:

 1.   There is a fine line between freedom of speech and slander, one which many media companies have not yet learned to successfully maneuver in terms of managing online comments on political stories. 
In recent years, many journalists have lost their jobs while defending themselves against slanderous comments that go beyond criticizing just the story. What are your thoughts on this situation? What can be done to better protect journalists without infringing on the rights of commenters?

 2.   What key insights from those articles and the Pew report in this lesson should news professionals be aware of as they consider the future of digital content and related business models?

 3.   What are your thoughts on non-profit journalism?

4. Should the demands of the audience drive how journalism develops going forward?

5. Is including readers in the journalistic process actually good for journalism and democracy, or is it a form of pandering?

6.  At what point should news outlets draw the line between appeasing consumers and upholding standards of journalism?
  
  

As I was preparing this week’s blog post, I decided to include my  boyfriend, Brad, in the festivities.


Aside from the fact that he’s the love of my life and I enjoy discussing things I’m working on with him, I thought he could offer a welcomed point-of-view on the filter bubble topic.

Brad has worked as a .net developer for the past six years and has a lot of insight into this world of coding, data mining and personalization via the Internet.

We decided to conduct a common experiment.

 I went to Google on my laptop computer, and he went to Google on his cell phone.

We typed “Drake” into the search box, hoping to find results about the rapper named Drake.

 The following  are our top five results:
 
Gheni:

 1.  Stereogum story on Drake’s new song “Going Home.”

 2.  Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig publishes bizarre review of Drake's Nothing Was the Same” album

 3.  Drake | October's Very Own

 4.  Drake (rapper) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 5.  U.S. Magazine story about Selena Gomez Crushing on Drake

 Brad:

 1.  Stereogum story on Drake’s new song “Going Home.”

 2.  U.S. Magazine story about Selena Gomez Crushing on Drake

 3.  Drake’s official website

 4.  Drake University ( an university in Des Moines, IA,
with no affiliation to the rapper)

 5.  Drake (rapper) - Wikipedia, the free
  encyclopedia

 I am not sure what algorithms Google used to determine what results to deliver to each of us, but just like some aspects of our individual personalities, our outputs were different. 

Eli Pariser, author of “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You,” explains our differences in results are not a unique phenomenon. 

That is what happens every day in this new world of filter bubbles. 

Pariser explained the filter bubble as follows:

 “The new generation of Internet filters looks at the things you seem to like—the actual things you’ve done , or the things people like you like—and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you’ll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us—what I’ve come to call a filter bubble—which fundamentally alters the way we
encounter ideas and information” (Pariser, 2011, p. 9).

These filter bubbles are an extension of the concept of personalization, in which our online activity is personalized to our individual preferences. 

Pariser argues the presence of filter bubbles introduces three new dynamics:

 1. “You’re alone in it” (Pariser, 2011, p. 9).

 2. “The filter bubble is invisible. Most viewers of conservative or liberal news sources know that they’re going to a station curated to serve a particular political viewpoint. But Google’s agenda is opaque. Google doesn’t
tell you who it thinks you are or why it’s showing you the results you’re seeing” (Pariser, 2011, p.10).

 3. “You don’t choose to enter the bubble…They come to you—and because they drive up profits for the websites that use them, they’ll become harder and harder to avoid” (Pariser, 2011, p. 10). “The filter bubble’s costs are both personal and cultural” said Pariser (Pariser, 2011, p. 14). 

While filter bubbles insulate information we take interest in, they also keep out new information that may or may not interest us.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your personal opinion, these virtual walls could be catastrophic to personal education growth, the success of our public spheres and potentially to the democracy of the United States of America and life beyond. 

Pariser said “the race to know as much as possible about you has become the central battle of the era for Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft” (Pariser, 2011).

 Really, most websites have joined in on the “fun” (Pariser, 2011, p.7).

All the sites take different approaches in acquiring your information, but most methodologies involve tracking cookies and big data. 
 
Google used click signals, meaning they record your click history and use your records to infer what you might like to see or read (Pariser, 2011, p. 35).

Meanwhile, Facebook is less subtle, asking outright for information about your likes and dislikes (Pariser, 2011, p. 35). 

I found Pariser’s explanation of how Facebook operates their minified fascinating, as I’ve always wondered how they decide whose status updates I see and how often I see them. Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank.

EdgeRank operates on three factors:

 1. Affinity-“The friendlier you are with someone--as determined by the amount of time you spend interacting and checking out his or her profile” (Pariser, 2011, pp. 37-38).

 2. “The relative weight of that type of content--Relationship status updates are weighted very highly” (Pariser, 2011, pp. 37-38). 
 
3. Time--recently posted items are weighted over older ones (Pariser, 2011, pp. 37-38).

Brad knows all too well about how exposure to different posts, based on this ranking system, can evoke a range of emotions. 
 
Brad is Facebook friends with a guy who he does not know offline. 
 
The guy added Brad as a friend a couple of years ago after they "met" each other in a Facebook group for people who all drove the same type of car.

 The guy, who holds very conservative political ideals, often posts negative and factually incorrect information about President Barack Obama.

 “He bashes Obama about stuff that Obama has no control over,” said Brad. “I am neither for nor against Obama. I don’t know enough about his policies.” 

He continued, “Until somebody posts something that seems extremely ignorant, then I research the topic so I can address their stupidity.”

 When I asked why he does not just delete the guy, he responded, “I tend not to delete people unless they upset me with something really stupid. I like to educate people.” 

In his own way, he’s fighting the filter bubble, which provides “less room for the chance encounters that bring insight and learning,” by keeping some diversity of opinion in his social media life (Pariser, 2011, p. 15).

 As a .net developer and coder, Brad said filter bubbles can begin with the coding itself, but its rare.

“If a person knows what they’re looking at, they should come to the same conclusion. Like a math problem, they can approach it in different ways but still come to the same answer,” said Brad. 

There are instances where differences such as gender can create differences, though.

 He gave the example of the new Grand Theft Auto 5 video game, particularly in the strip club scenes.

  “Typically, what woman do you know who wants to program the strip club portion of the game?” asked
  Brad. “They may not have been to a strip club. Those are mostly for men. Nor do I want a woman to do it unless she goes and does research on it.”

 Despite his sexist answer, I admit he might have a point.

Our personal differences matter and add to the creation of personalized filter bubbles.

Many media companies have already jumped on the filter bubble bandwagon, enabling our desire for personalization. 
 
“Las Ultimas Noticias, a major newspaper in Chile, began basing its content entirely on what readers clicked on in 2004: Stories with lots of clicks got follow-ups, and stories with no clicks got killed. The reporters
don’t have beats anymore—they just try to gin up stories that will get clicks” (Pariser, 2011, p.71).

 Also Yahoo’s Upshot blog transitioned to an operating procedure where “a team of editors mine the data produced by streams of search queries to see what terms people are interested in, in real time. Then they produce articles responsive to those queries” (Pariser, 2011, p. 71).

Pariser said he sees the future going as follows:

1. The cost of producing and distributing media of all kinds will continue to fall closer and closer to zero” (Pariser, 2011, pp. 51-52).

 2. "We’ll be deluged with choices of what to pay attention to and we’ll continue to suffer from attention crash... “We’ll rely ever more heavily on human software curators to determine what news we should consume” (Pariser,2011, pp. 51-52).

 3. We’ll rely on a mix of nonprofessional editors and software code to figure out what to watch, read and see. The code will draw heavily on the power of personalization and displace professional human editors” (Pariser,
2011, pp. 51-52).

 While I agree with Pariser’s forecasts, they are troubling. 

I wonder if people will become more ignorant since they will likely be shut off, willing or not, from diverse opinion. 
 
Furthermore, the media’s future could prove problematic. 

While I am all for giving media consumers stories they want to read, I am equally adamant about giving them stories they don’t think or know they need exposure to.

The media’s job is to innovate, advocate and educate. 

This push for personalization endangers this trinity of responsibility.

I was also disturbed to hear Pariser’s story about the advertar.

 I do not want bots friending or following me just to gain personal information about me.

 Lastly, I was even more disturbed to learn from a new television commercial by Microsoft Outlook that Google mines our personal emails for the purposes of targeting us with advertisements and spam.

 Outlook, who claims to respect its users’ privacy, said the commercial said more information can be found at www.scroogled.com.

 I offer these questions for discussion:

 1.  What are  your thoughts on the news media’s usage of personalization as a survival method? What do you think is next on the frontier?

 2.   In this  world of personalization and filter bubbles, do you ever think social media sites like Twitter or Facebook will ever create a component allowing users to see who views their content regardless of whether they comment or interact with a post in some way? The rationale might be that only people who show up on your minified are people who have viewed or interacted with your post and therefore users might want to only interact with them going
forward?

 3.  How can filter bubbles assist a democracy?

 I hope you were not turned off by the overload of stories about Brad in this post, but he’s part of my personal filter bubble. Also he really is a genius about all things related to computer coding.  As always, I love healthy discussions so if you’d like to talk about any of my discussion questions or anything else related to filter bubbles, feel free to contact me! Thanks for  reading!

P.S. In case you haven't noticed, I like to include relevant pictures with my posts.  The following first picture is a picture I posted on Facebook via my Instagram account earlier this afternoon. The picture was of my lunch for the day--seafood, sausage and chicken gumbo.  Not long after posting the picture, a sponsored ad popped up on my Facebook mini feed, presumably targeted at a gumbo lover like myself.

Before starting this blog on Friday afternoon, I perused my  Facebook mini-feed.


Among my Facebook friends’ travel pictures; a recent picture of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s daughter; shared Pinterest pages and a few annoying statuses from people selling goods or services, I came across a couple of political posts. 

One, a NewsOne update on the government shutdown; two, a BuzzFeed story about President Barack Obama and Vice President walking to grab some lunch at a nearby restaurant; and three, A Talking Points Memo blog story relaying comments U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., made to the Omaha World-Herald about
proudly collecting his paycheck during the government shutdown.


I found both stories interesting in different ways. 
 

From NewsOne, I learned exactly what happens when the government shuts down and how it may affect me, aside from my inability to log onto to the Library of Congress’ website earlier this week for research. 

While I would not categorize it as hard political news, from BuzzFeed, I did learn the president and vice president chose Taylor Gourmet because the restaurant gave 10 percent discounts to furloughed government workers.


Lastly, from Talking Points Memo, I learned Terry would not only happily accept his check without, in my opinion, any remorse for the thousands of federal workers not receiving paychecks, but also there were many others
doing the same.


An informed electorate is essential to a successful democracy.


Today, the Internet provided information to me, an active member  of society; thus contributing to our U.S. Democracy’s success. 


This brings me to this week’s #mc7019 topic, (Internet/Media) Effects on Politics and Democracy.


This week, we read Cass Sunstein’s “Is the Internet  Really a Blessing for Democracy;” Henry Farrell’s “The Consequences of  the Internet for Politics;” Diana Mutz’s “Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing
Democratic Theory in Practice;” and Sarah Sobieraj and Jeffrey M. Berry’s “From Incivility to Outrage: Political Discourse in Blogs, Talk Radio, and Cable  News.”


Sunstein, who wrote the article discussed today in 2001, poses the question: Is the Internet a wonderful development for democracy?


His response—“In many ways it certainly is… But in the midst of the celebration, I want to raise a note of
caution.”

I agree with Sunstein’s answer.

Today, we can learn far more information in faster time than ever before.


In particular, interested parties can access political information via government websites, social media or even group discussions taking place online or organized online and held offline.


The Internet is a melting pot of political information, which in theory would serve as an assetto a democracy.

However, Sunstein warns of “one of the most striking powers provided by emerging technologies: the growing power of consumers to “filter” what they see” (Sunstein, 2001).

This is a real problem, particularly in the age of social media, micro-targeting and big data.

Many people develop their social media accounts with others who share their worldview, even going so far as to unfriend/unfollow or block posts from dissenters.  
 
News outlets and advertisers suggest stories and products that planted tracking cookies and algorithms tell them we might like based on our past online activity.


Even Google has hopped onboard, voluntarily customizing what information comes up in our online searches based on past searches. 

While these actions may be convenient and appreciated at times, they can also limit our exposure to diverse thoughts, leaving a potentially negative impact on a democracy and the public sphere. 

According to Sunstein, the public forum doctrine serves three important functions:

 1.   It ensures speakers can have access to a wide array of people.


2.    Allows speakers not only to have general access to heterogeneous people, but also to specific people, and specific institutions, with whom they have a complaint.



3.      Increases the likelihood that people generally will be exposed to a wide variety of people and views. 

The closer we move toward personalization, the more likely it is that these democratic ideals could be
violated:

 1. The need to promote exposure to materials, topics, and positions that people would not have chosen in advance,
  or at least enough exposure to produce a degree of understanding and curiosity;

 2. The value of a range of common experiences;


3. The need for exposure to substantive questions of policy and principle,
  combined with a range of positions on such
questions.


In her article, Mutz tests this theory, analyzing whether exposure to dissenting political viewpoints
impacts personal political beliefs. 


She found exposure to significantly different views “does not appear to play a significant role in deepening people’s knowledge of their own issue positions, but it does have an important impact by familiarizing them with
legitimate rationales for opposing viewpoints” (Mutz, 2002).

 Her results statistically confirmed common thoughts on the topic. 

While public discourse on political topics can be beneficial, this openness can bring along a host of
other issues, namely incivility among contributors.

 Sobieraj and Berry explored this incivility in their study, in which they measure “outrage.” They defined “outrage discourse”  as efforts that “provoke a visceral response from the audience, usually in the form of anger, fear, or moral righteousness through the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism, misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and partial truths about opponents” (Sobieraj  and Berry,2011).

They found “outrage discourse is extensive, takes many different forms and spans media formats” as well as “outrage tactics are largely the same for liberal and conservative media, conservative media use significantly more outrage speech than liberal media” (Sobieraj and Berry,2011).

Online incivility is a subject I’m all too familiar with.

 While working as a journalist, I encountered more than my fair share of online incivility, particularly over political or racial stories. 
 
If you know me personally or know of my career as a journalist, you may know of one such story--the in-depth look into candidates for county judge in Victoria County, Texas. 

You can read the story here.

The story was unique because the Republican candidate was running amid accusations of domestic abuse, assault and aggression in general.  Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate had
a record of arrests for driving while intoxicated. 
 
Ultimately, I received an honorable mention from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors Association. 
 
Locally, I received mixed feedback. 


While many people praised my work for its objectivity and good  reporting, others accused me of having an agenda against this man (even though I was new to the area, did not know the man and this was one of the first articles
I did on my new job) and blamed my article as the reason why the candidate lost the election and

 One man in particular started an email, in-person and online campaign in which he attempted to smear my name and start a war against me, my boss and my paper.  

It was a long battle, but ultimately I won. 
 
I am purposely not saying his name because I don’t want you to give his smear campaign website any more page hits. 
 
Although there were negative reactions to the article, it did its job in sharing new information to the masses regardless of political ideology. 
 
This example demonstrates incivility against objective sharers of information. 

One wonders how those who clearly post biased political information are treated.

 In many cases, they do not fare any better. 
 
I agree with Farrell’s prediction that “over the next decade, the relationship between the Internet and politics will become increasingly important.”

 The Internet, by design, made political participation easier. 

A total of 122 million Americans voted in the 2004 Presidential Election, the greatest turnout since 1968 and the single largest jump since 1952 (Faler, 2005).Studies showed the Internet could have played a part in the
increase of political participation since the 2000 election. "Online information seeking and interactive civic messaging-uses of the Web promote higher civic engagement, even more so than traditional print and broadcast media and face-to-face communication (Pecorino et.al, 2009). Many levels of government
have adapted to the presence of the Internet in one way or another, whether they create a central website or a social media account. In some cases, some government entities incorporate three main features: a high-speed network
offered free of charge or at a subsidized rate to households; some form of community technology center, often based in a community building; and an emphasis on creating content specific to the local community” (Chadwick
p.90).


However, the downside of the Internet and the formation of a democratic citizen include websites advocating for authoritarian government systems as well as those sites promoting acts of terrorism as a means of
  protest against democratic governance; government censure of ideas based on libel and slander laws or those falling under the purview of the Homeland Security Act; and in a potentially extreme situation, the shutdown of the
  Internet. Additionally, the Internet creates a knowledge gap between those who have Internet access and those who don’t. Those who have Internet access at home have opportunities to become more politically engaged, while those who do not have access to it period or only through libraries or school are at a disadvantage.

 Regardless of the negatives and positives, politics have moved online. We just have to figure out how best to maneuver it.

I pose these questions for group
discussion:

 1.   There is a fine line between freedom of speech and slander, one which many media companies have not yet learned to successfully maneuver in terms of managing online comments on political stories.  In recent years, many journalists have lost their jobs while defending themselves against slanderous comments that go beyond
  criticizing just the story. What are your thoughts on this situation? What can be done to better protect journalists without infringing on the rights of commenters?

 2.    What are your predictions of how the Internet will affect politics in the future (new Internet capabilities, etc.)?

3.   If news outlets suggested stories that are opposite of stories you have already read, would you actually take the
time to read them?

 As always, I welcome a healthy debate and feedback. If you’re interested in either one, feel free to comment. 
 
 
References

Chadwick, Andrew. Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New
Communication


Technologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006.


Faler, B. (2005, January 15). Election Turnout in 2004 Was
  Highest Since 1968 (washingtonpost.com). Retrieved April 3, 2013, from
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10492-2005Jan14.html


Hall, E. (2012, October 4). Obama And Biden Go Out For Lunch.
Retrieved October 4, 2013, from
  http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/obama-and-biden-go-out-for-lunch



Manuel-Logan, R. (2013, October 2). What Is A Government
  Shutdown, How Does It Affect You? | News One. Retrieved from
  http://newsone.com/2731991/government-shutdown-effects/


Pecorino, P., Thompson, K., LaRocca, D., Gallagher, P.,&
Cintron, J. (2006, August). Study: Impact of Internet on Democracy. Retrieved
April 3, 2013, from
  http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/CISESHV_TEXT/Chapter-12-Political-Change/Study.html


Sunstein, C. (2001, June 6). The Daily We | Boston Review.
  Retrieved from
  http://bostonreview.net/cass-sunstein-internet-democracy-daily-we?



Thompson, C. (2013, October 4). GOP Rep Says 'Dang Straight' He'll
Collect His Paycheck During Shutdown. Retrieved from http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-rep-says-dang-straight-he-ll-collect-his-paycheck-during-shutdown