Background on Political Consciousness and Media (4/7/2004)

Characteristics: old versus new media

• Old media: one directional (mass media); slower; more established
• New media: bidirectional (exchange); faster; more convenient for user, more dynamic, more global, more difficult to control/regulate; easier to filter; cheaper at the margin; personalization

• 20th century media (broadcasting): one-to-many, with little opportunity to talk back; tended to draw people away from each other - authoritative rather than interactive
• Also some positive effects - broadcasting government proceedings in some countries, for example
• Television and movies increase focus on images, 2-dimensional. "The medium is the message" - McLuhan; point ignored in early persuasion research of the 1950s; images tend to equalize experiences, attenuating differences that exist between real life experiences
  
• "Old" media in many ways anti-democratic - increased power of a few ruling over the many across vast distances (e.g. fascism in the 1930s, the rwanda genocide)
  
• Internet and new media provide new possibilities for decentralized social decision making, dialogue, and dissemination.  Will this potential be realized?
• Barber - 3 possibilities: Panglossian - complacency, Pandoran - caution, Jeffersonian - hope (analogy to automobiles)
  
• Rheingold - need for people to be able to come together based on affinity, with technologocical and social infrastructure that supports the "public sphere"; smart mobs and the commons; presence detection
  
• Sunstein - danger of narrowcasting, selective exposure, group polarization
• Cain - dangers of government by plebiscite
  

• Failure of representative government to reflect the will of the people (e.g. health care, gun control) - may sometimes be seen as failure of "tyrrany of the majority" (e.g. free speech, separation of church and state, guns?)
• Popular misconceptions (e.g. 70% believed Saddam responsible for 9/11; foreign aid, overhead costs of private versus public health insurance, wealth and income inequality)
• Failure of plebiscites seemingly in the interests of the majority, e.g.
• Prop 217 in California (1996) - 51% voted against restoring a slightly higher marginal tax rate (10-11% instead of 9.3%) on the top 1% of income recipients, even though 99% or residents would experience no tax increase and it would raise needed revenue for public services
• CA Proposition 186 and Federal health care reform - 1994; Prop 186 (Single payer health insurance for all Californians) lost by a large margin, and even 42% of the uninsured voted against it
• Education and prison bond votes from 70s to 90s favored more costly incarceration instead of spending on schools
• Success of popular initiatives limiting individual rights (e.g. CA Props 187 - 1994, 209 - 1996, 227 - 1998, 21/22 - 2000) - democracy versus freedom and the libertarian critique
  
• "Sledgehammer" effect - overly broad legislation (e.g. Prop 13 - 1978, rent control in San Francisco, social security)
• Rapid rise in wealth/income inequality in u.s. since ~1977, tax changes that benefit the wealthy or better-off (decline in top tax bracket from 85.5%  in the late 50s to 26.7% in 1989 (35% in 2004); for median family rose from 9.06% to 24.3% during the same interval)
• Rise of supranational institutions that subvert local democracy  (WTO, IMF/World Bank, Hague protocols)
• Failures of leadership (e.g. Iraq War - failure of congressional and media oversight)