The argument against

The Question

"Resolved: The Internet enables citizens to have a greater voice in politics and is, on balance, already a tremendous force for strengthening participatory democracies around the world." The students on both sides of this debate should use one or more explicit examples of the use of Internet in a campaign (issue or candidacy) to buttress their argument.

the argument in favor

Tentative Arguments:

• Sites like Global Voices only attract save-the-world types who do a lot of talking but don't have any real power to effect change. Nobody else will see it.
• If the stories on Global Voices were salient to enough of any given population that their outrage would make a difference, the mainstream media would pick up the story itself. These bloggers are just white noise in the background. As gripping as their stories might be, there won't be more people that care enough to put down their latte and do something about it just because it's online.
• Sunsteins arguments:
  • "Daily Me" - everything is so filtered that it doesn't serve the important function of educating or persuading. In fact, it increases partisanship and extremism.
• The government presence on the internet (and lack of understanding about exactly what government can do to find you) chills speech and political activity online. Whereas before you could send an anonymous tip to a reporter who could publish it safely, now people will fear the government can trace the tip back to the source. So they stay quiet. You can of course still use the old methods, but people may not think of that because the internet is so dominant.
• Misinformation kills. Along with the power to educate comes the power to delude. A smear campaign started by one person with a grudge can really change the outcome of a close election, or discredit an entire issue. And it's often impossible to un-ring the bell. Nobody wants to read retractions. So, individuals have enormous power to screw up the political process.
  • Some websites which have freely open communal editing feature might contain false and biased political information since such feature is likely to attract people to provide inputs that may mislead the fact or truth for, inter alia, their political interests. One of the interesting samples of the false information on the internet that derived from this feature is the John Seigenthaler case where he was accused in the Wikipedia to involve in the Kennedy assassinations (John Seigenthaler case at usatoday.com)