23. Deliberation vs Participation in the US
Blog-readers: as polarized as US senators
(more polarized than TV news audiences/non-
blog readers)
Cross-cutting exposure to blogs with
different ideological positions doesn't lower
participation (especially on the left)
Farrell et al. (2008)
24. III. Is New Media More Participatory
and Democratic?
25. Anyone can contribute but not everyone
does...
Wikipedia: 1% of users responsible for half of the
site's edits
Digg: top 100 users responsible for half of the
site's top stories
98% chance your submission won't make the
Digg frontpage today
28. Top political bloggers vs top columnists
elite education: 66% of columnists vs 73 % of
bloggers
doctoral degrees: 20% of columnists vs more
than 50% of bloggers
columnists score better on gender/ethnic balance
Top bloggers far better educated than CEOs of
American companies
Matthew Hindman, Myth of Digital Democracy (2009)
30. Does technology erode state power?
“The role of the nation state will change
dramatically and there will be no more room for
nationalism than there is for smallpox...many of
the values of a nation-state will give way to
those of both larger and smaller electronic
communities...”
Being Digital (1996), Nicolas Negroponte
32. 2. Anti-vaccination
2007 study by U of Toronto: 153 YouTube
videos about vaccination and immunization.
More than half of the videos portrayed
vaccinations negatively or ambiguously.
Of those videos, almost half contained
messages that contradict the 2006 Canadian
Immunization Guide
45. Iran: Spinning Religious Discourse
“Bureau for the Development of Religious Web
Logs” established at the Religious School of
Qom in 2006
350 teachers and clergy in Qom were trained,
with at least 800 students
Particular concern: blogging women