6 Introduction
activities as well as how it could increasingly restrict public freedoms,
while Kellner argued that the Internet, by encouraging participation,
had “the potential to invigorate democracy”.
11
In more recent years, the
view has tended to be much more ambivalent, as much due to the monopolisation of digital technologies and spaces by big tech. Balnaves and
Willson welcomed the decreasing homogenisation of the Internet-using
community, but that the increasingly “black box” relations that users
had with digital technology meant that they could not understand it and
that this could result in a relative disempowerment for users in terms of
sociopolitical engagement, while Lee Salter began to question whether
the Internet could even be considered as a public sphere at all.
12
Such
criticism was relatively gentle at that moment when the Big Five were
only starting to emerge as a techno-oligarchy, and more recently their
effects on the potential use of the Internet as a public sphere in the sense
discussed by Habermas have come increasingly under scrutiny. Thus,
Fenton more recently has described its effects as those of a “fake democracy”, while Pfetsch draws attention to an increasingly disconnected audience.
13
Similarly, Nguyen observes that while online resources provide
a source of information undreamed of by previous generations, the practice of communication online via filter bubbles tends towards further
fragmentation and “the intensification and radicalisation of viewpoints”
as we are more likely to converse with those who think like us and hear
fewer and fewer oppositional points of view.
14
Some commentators,
such as the contributors to Managing Democracy in the Digital Age,
explore practical considerations and challenges for encouraging participation, but are also fully aware of the dangers not simply of censorious,
authoritarian regimes but with a sense of growing disenfranchisement
among voters in liberal democracies.
15
Some of the ways in which technology affects our patterns of behaviour are considered in Chapter 1, which explores in more detail
notions of media and technological determinism, the idea that new technologies shape human culture and society. In its widest form, it is clear
that the development of our societies has always been influenced by the
technological innovations we introduce, but a failure of much so-called
“hard” media determinism has been an assumption that technology is
somehow “outside” society, and that its introduction will implement
changes in a reductionist fashion. This is a common assumption among
those engaged in tech companies: for example, Mark Zuckerberg and
other founders of Facebook appear to have blithely assumed that social media was a tool that would bring people together through simpler
communication, applying a simplistic model of cause and effect that in
recent years has proved woefully inadequate to describe the actual consequences of Facebook across a wide range of incidents. The impact of
technology is dynamic and frequently turbulent: just as the invention of
printing led to a whole series of consequences from the Reformation to
activities as well as how it could increasingly restrict public freedoms,
while Kellner argued that the Internet, by encouraging participation,
had “the potential to invigorate democracy”.
11
In more recent years, the
view has tended to be much more ambivalent, as much due to the monopolisation of digital technologies and spaces by big tech. Balnaves and
Willson welcomed the decreasing homogenisation of the Internet-using
community, but that the increasingly “black box” relations that users
had with digital technology meant that they could not understand it and
that this could result in a relative disempowerment for users in terms of
sociopolitical engagement, while Lee Salter began to question whether
the Internet could even be considered as a public sphere at all.
12
Such
criticism was relatively gentle at that moment when the Big Five were
only starting to emerge as a techno-oligarchy, and more recently their
effects on the potential use of the Internet as a public sphere in the sense
discussed by Habermas have come increasingly under scrutiny. Thus,
Fenton more recently has described its effects as those of a “fake democracy”, while Pfetsch draws attention to an increasingly disconnected audience.
13
Similarly, Nguyen observes that while online resources provide
a source of information undreamed of by previous generations, the practice of communication online via filter bubbles tends towards further
fragmentation and “the intensification and radicalisation of viewpoints”
as we are more likely to converse with those who think like us and hear
fewer and fewer oppositional points of view.
14
Some commentators,
such as the contributors to Managing Democracy in the Digital Age,
explore practical considerations and challenges for encouraging participation, but are also fully aware of the dangers not simply of censorious,
authoritarian regimes but with a sense of growing disenfranchisement
among voters in liberal democracies.
15
Some of the ways in which technology affects our patterns of behaviour are considered in Chapter 1, which explores in more detail
notions of media and technological determinism, the idea that new technologies shape human culture and society. In its widest form, it is clear
that the development of our societies has always been influenced by the
technological innovations we introduce, but a failure of much so-called
“hard” media determinism has been an assumption that technology is
somehow “outside” society, and that its introduction will implement
changes in a reductionist fashion. This is a common assumption among
those engaged in tech companies: for example, Mark Zuckerberg and
other founders of Facebook appear to have blithely assumed that social media was a tool that would bring people together through simpler
communication, applying a simplistic model of cause and effect that in
recent years has proved woefully inadequate to describe the actual consequences of Facebook across a wide range of incidents. The impact of
technology is dynamic and frequently turbulent: just as the invention of
printing led to a whole series of consequences from the Reformation to