Page 24 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

P1: FpQ/IPH/GYQ
17:40
CY101-Bimber
0 521 80067 6
August 14, 2002
CY101-01
Information and Political Change
8
preserving patterns of power established in the era of broadcasting. Sim-
ilarly, traditional advocacy organizations and parties are moving to ex-
tend their dominance to the new realm of information technology. Their
success might relegate events like the FDIC protest back to the political
periphery. Several recent empirical studies have suggested that intensive
use of information technology may diminish social capital, counteract-
9
ing whatever gains in participatory equality might flow from it. Some
scholars are concerned that the information revolution might advance
the speed of politics, thus undermining deliberation and consolidating
the trend toward government-by-public-opinion-poll. 10
Concerns about fragmentation and the loss of the common public
sphere now comprise an important undercurrent of critique of informa-
tiontechnologybymanyscholars,onetowhichwereturninthefollowing
11
chaptersofthisbook. AmongthoseconcernedisBenjaminBarber,who
eventually shifted away from his earlier enthusiasm, expressing the reser-
vation that contemporary information technology may undermine the
12
qualityofpoliticaldeliberationandthenatureofsocialinteraction. The
most authoritative theoretical claim so far in this vein comes from consti-
tutional scholar Cass Sunstein. He interprets the information revolution
in terms of the decline of the “general interest intermediary” and the fail-
ure of the public common(s), and the replacement of these by a political
communication system that fosters fragmentation and polarization. 13
These possibilities pose some of the central empirical questions that
this book addresses: How is technology affecting society and politics?
Was the Libertarian Party’s success in 1999 merely an outlier, the kind of
counterexample one occasionally tolerates in social science theory? Or

8
Richard Davis, The Web of Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1998); Richard
Davis and Diana Owen, New Media in American Politics (London: Oxford University
Press, 1998).
9
E.g., see Norman Nie and Lutz Ebring, “Internet and Society: A Prelimi-
nary Report,” Feb. 17, 2000, http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/Press Release/
Preliminary Report.pdf. For a different view, see “The Internet Life Report,” The
Pew Internet and American Life Project, Pew Charitable Trusts, May 10, 2000,
http://www.pewinternet.org.
10 Jeffrey B. Abramson, F. Christopher Arterton, and Gary R. Orren, The Electronic
Commonwealth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
11
For a useful summary grounded in political theory, see Anthony G. Wilhelm, Democ-
racy in the Digital Age: Challenges to Political Life in Cyberspace (New York: Routledge,
2000).
12 Benjamin R. Barber, “The New Telecommunications Technology: Endless Frontier or
End of Democracy,” in Roger G. Noll and Monroe E. Price, eds., A Communications
Cornucopia (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998), pp. 72–98.
13 Cass Sunstein, Republic.com (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).

7