Introduction
Democracy by definition requires an individual’s input in order to function as intended. The collective opinions of society expressed through democratic practices allows for the establishment of common beliefs and the discovery of truths. As such, blogging as a medium facilitates the improvement of autonomous practices through the creation and dissemination of political information. This essay will provide an extensive argument towards blogging’s positive impact on democratic processes through the nature of information creation and distribution. An analysis of the political blogosphere in comparison to the mainstream media will also highlight key benefits, namely its pervasiveness, accessibility, superior error correction system and growing credibility. Within this essay I will support the views of both Nicholas John Munn and David Coady in their argument that the blogosphere has improved democratic practices, whilst also providing criticisms towards the claims of Alvin Goldman that blogging undermines these duties.
As Goldman (2008) argues, a requirement of democracy is a ‘free press’ due to its unique capacity to identify and portray political truths. The claim that “only a free press” has this ability is however a falsehood. The political blogosphere comprising well over 12 million individuals has provided numerous examples in the identification of truths, not represented within the mainstream media. A specific illustration of this idea occurred through the recent Bring Back Our Girls campaign. The movement originated in Nigeria in response to the kidnapping of an estimated 270 school girls. However, mainstream outlets claimed this reaction was prompted by the actions of an American woman. This claim was made by numerous media entities, and only corrected after assertions within social media and the blogosphere that the hashtag had in fact started within Nigeria. This example identifies the blogosphere ability to identify political truths thus refuting Goldman’s argument.
Mainstream Media vs Blogosphere
Munn’s analysis of Goldman’s argument concludes four apparent advantageous characteristics of the mainstream media; its widespread nature, accessibility, filtration system and credibility (Munn, 2012). Although these factors appear to be legitimate influences contributing to the epistemic value of conventional media, it is however shadowed by the subsequent benefits of blogging.
Firstly, in terms of the widespread nature of the mainstream media, recent years have presented a dramatic decline in the consumption of traditional media formats such as newspapers. One only has to look at Fairfax’s recent redundancies across numerous faculties as representative of this dilemma. This subsequent loss of newspaper and traditional media readership, Munn argues promotes the use of alternate media formats such as blogs and social media in order to access information (Munn, 2012).
The ‘accessibility’ of the mainstream media has also experienced a similar fate. Traditional formats require the employment of various third parties in terms of printing, distribution, cable services and other measures in their dissemination. The blogosphere however is not dependent upon intermediaries. The removal of these third parties from the equation, and the employment of the internet as means of distribution, identify the blogosphere as a superior means to access the same sets of information.
The argument for ‘filtration’ in terms of democracy aims towards the promotion of knowledge and the avoidance of errors. As such, filtration is a beneficial process to democracy (Goldman, 2008). I do not disagree with this claim, and neither does Munn or Coady in their arguments. However, the idea that the political blogosphere is unfiltered and thus the mainstream media is advantageous is false. Goldman claims that the mainstream media provides filtration through the employment of three mechanisms: fact checkers, the use of more than one source and avoiding dependence on anonymous sources (Goldman, 2008). Coady however expands upon these instruments, identifying that they do not provide the epistemic benefits over blogging that Goldman claims.
Firstly the employment of multiple fact checkers as common place within media organizations is a false claim. It is unrealistic to assume that every political piece created undergoes thorough analysis by numerous individuals. Coady uses the example of the New York Time’s policy of writers as their principle fact checkers to identify that this idealistic notion of a construction-line of people to ‘weed out’ inaccuracies and falsehoods is impractical. Again in reference to the Bring Back our Girls Campaign, the inability for media entities to harness the use of publicly available information to determine the source of the campaign is representative of the idea that mainstream fact checkers are not as successful as Goldman claims.
Secondly, the multiple sources claim is again an idealistic notion. This is reinforced by Coady (2011) claiming that often multiple sources are not utilised when necessary. This is highlighted through his example of the New York Time’s article ‘U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack that Killed G.I.s’ (a 23 page article citing one source). Even if mainstream news articles employed the use of multiple sources in each piece, this would not distinguish it from the blogosphere. Bloggers actively employ numerous sources in order to establish individual credibility and to gain readership, the only distinction being that this is not a mandatory condition and not all bloggers may take this stance.
Ideas of limiting anonymous sources are also identified to present no weight over the blogosphere. Although it is true that some media entities enforce such limitations, conventional media has the tendency to present information in such a manner that it lowers veristic quality (Coady, 2011). Bloggers however are traditionally distanced from those in power and as such they are forced to analyses numerous sources to arrive at the truth. This relates to Goldman’s claim that the credibility of mainstream media surpasses that of the blogosphere.
Coady calls upon the writing of Richard Posner in order to identify the enhanced error correction system of the blogosphere.
“[T]he blogosphere as a whole has a better error-correction machinery than the conventional media do. The rapidity with which vast masses of information are pooled and sifted leaves the conventional media in the dust.” (Posner, 2005, cited In Coady, 2011, pp. 280)
Thus, the success of blogging’s fact checking should not be determined through individual blogs, but by the blogging community as a whole. The collective efforts of all those involved (numerically, millions) equates significantly greater than that of the mainstream media, both in terms of fact checkers and the speed of error correction. This identifies an obvious benefit of the blogosphere towards democracy through it superior ability to identify political truths and correct errors.
The ‘enhanced’ credibility of the mainstream media over the blogosphere appears to somewhat contradict its own argument in that many bloggers hold journalistic credentials themselves. Goldman claims that the motivation of a journalist’s career is in itself motivation for performance, whilst bloggers are more prone to be influenced by political beliefs. This conception of amateur bloggers is however an outdated belief (understandable considering the elapsed time period since Goldman’s essay). As stated by Munn, blogs have undergone a state of convergence within the mainstream media through the employment of bloggers as professional journalists and vice versa (Munn, 2012). Blogs are also emerging as their own business environments containing professional qualities such as the Huffington Post. As such this ‘amateurism’ is a false notion. Munn provides further evidence towards this claiming that spheres of influence within the blogosphere are relatively concentrated within several acclaimed sites.
Blogging as an Interactive Practise
One major feature of the political blogosphere is that it is interactive. Unlike the mainstream media, blogs allow for reader interaction and contribution as identified through means such as reblogging and commenting. It is rare to find such interactive qualities within the mainstream media. Although methods such as letters to the editor do exist, they are inferior in terms of instantaneity and do not allow for direct discussion between individuals. Coady supports this notion through the belief that blogging encourages both the production and consumption of content (Coady, 2012). This in turn acts as a highly democratic practise, more so than the purely consumptive nature of the mainstream media.
This ability for individuals to arrive at the truth through engagement with media is however criticised by Goldman, in the belief that if one is poor at assessing channel reliability they may arrive at false conclusions (Goldman, 2008). Consequently he believes that filtration by ‘professionals’ will reduce this possibility. Be that as it may, as stated before many individuals within the blogosphere are in fact professionals with large spheres of influence. The filtration system of the conventional media is also by no means ideal.
Conclusion
Through blogging’s growing popularity within recent years it is apparent that this medium has facilitated the improvement of democratic practises. An analysis of the arguments of Munn, Coady and Goldman has identified blogging’s clear advantages over the mainstream media in terms of its widespread nature, accessibility, filtration system and growing credibility. Blogging as an interactive function also allows for audience collaboration within individual pieces through means such as commenting. While unlike the mainstream media, blogging allows for the simultaneous creation of information rather than mere consumption. Goldman’s original claim that ‘only a free press’ has the ability to identify and portray political truths has therefore been identified as false. Blogging as a medium is able to present the same sets of information through superior means, and in doing so promotes the improvement of democratic practices rather than undermining them.
References
Coady, D 2011, ‘An Epistemic Defense of the Blogosphere’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 277-294
Goldman, A I 2008, ‘The Social Epistemology of Blogging’, in J. van den Hover and J. Weckert (ed), Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.111-22.
Munn, N J 2012, ‘The New Political Blogosphere’, Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, 26(1), pp.55-70.
Jesse Max Muir 