We have addressed how the mass media and American politics affect one another in many different ways during this quarter. Though we have highlighted many areas of concern we have also discussed many methods used to improve the way political information is communicated and the increasing number of ways that individual citizens improve their voice within our democracy. One theme we have constantly touched on is how much has changed over time. Consider the following:
2 months ago: you started this class
10 months ago: the Federal Courts threw out net neutrality protections opening the door to FCC action
2 years ago ago: Obama reelected
2 years ago ago: Facebook topped 1 billion users
3 years ago: Arab Spring spreads, Occupy movement
4 years ago: FCC Open Internet Ruling
5 years ago: Green Revolution in Iran, TEA Party movement begins, Google starts personalizing searches
6 years ago: Obama elected with most innovative web based campaign in history
8 years ago: most people had never heard of Barack Obama, Twitter begins
9 years ago: YouTube and flickr
11 years ago: Facebook starts (for college students only for a few years)
13 years ago: wikipedia
14 years ago: innovative uses of campaigning online
16 years ago: MoveOn.org started, also this thing called Google
20 years ago: Clinton launches first White House website
34 years ago: CNN starts ushering in 24 hour cable news
46 years ago: Three networks devote 30 minutes to news 5 days a week, Cronkite the most trusted man in America
54 years ago: first televised debate - JFK vs. Nixon
61 years ago: television becoming commonplace across America
81 years ago: fireside chats begin
89 years ago: radios enter homes in record numbers
95 year ago: Woodrow Wilson was the first president broadcast on the radio
100 years ago: all mass media was still in print
238 years ago Common Sense was published and sold over 100,000 copies - most in American history
564 years ago: The printing press was invented
The point: much has changed, and often in a short period of time. Looking forward what do you predict will be the most important ways that the media will impact politics (and vice versa) two, five, 10, or even 20 years from now? What can and should be done to help make these changes as positive as possible?
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It is never easy to make predictions about the future, since by definition it is subject to changes and radical innovations. Who could have predicted the invention of internet or TV before it was actually there? What we can assume is the stiffening of some actual trends. One of them is the rise of non-professional journalism, as it is discussed by authors such as Richard Davis. There is tod ay a symbiotic relationship between bloggers and journalists, with a very slight overlap between them. Bloggers might see themselves as a black-market for journalism, as subjective activists or as new gatekeepers. In the future, they could influence the evolution of the profession of actual journalists. Indeed, bloggers standardize and normalize alternative methods of news reporting, using concrete and personal experiences. A good example would be the gain in stature of Vice News and the immersionist journalism. This would certainly affect the coverage of politics too. The media would not depend as much on official sources, and there could be a shift towards media superiority over politicians in the adversarial relationship.
ReplyDeleteWhen talking about the future, another trend comes to mind: the fragmentation of the public, which is crucial because it leads to more polarization on the political spectrum. The public is steering towards more and more interaction and choice of their news. This is not necessarily conscious. With the rising “big data”, outlets are formulating formulas to offer targeted content to the audience. This trend is very likely to grow stronger in the upcoming years.
Like Claire mentioned, it is difficult to predict technological advances especially long term because things that may seem unrealistic now quickly become reality. Despite this, we can examine the current trends of technology and make short term predictions. I believe in the next five years we will see less people purchasing computers and more people switching to handheld tablets. You will no longer need to be in an area offering wi-fi, your tablet will be accessible to the internet at all times. With this, journalists will be able to write and blog information at all times of the day in all areas of the world.
ReplyDeleteIn the next ten years I have heard talk of the ability to use your body as an input service. Known as ‘bioacoustic sensing’, this technology essentially uses highly sensitive acoustic sensors on your body, which listen for the sound of your finger touching your skin. This allows the skin to be used as a finger surface, whereby you could dial a phone number onto your hand, for example, or use your forearm as a scrolling interface. This mind-blowing technology would allow you to record voices or write notes using nothing but your body. This would assist journalists in capturing information at any second necessary. Individuals outside of media would then become a more influential part of media as more people would use this technology to catch their own stories and share it with the public in their own ways.
In terms of politics, I believe with this new technology there will be even more of a watchdog over politician’s every move. A political leader won’t be able to step out of his house without the potential of being recorded by anyone they may be around. This can be dangerous as it may add to more coverage of scandals rather than hard political news. Despite this, I believe with more accessibility to the internet politicians will be able to respond and react to media coverage of them quicker and more efficiently. They can also communicate with their constituents easier and have an increased amount of interactivity with them.
I am sure there will be many more advances in technology in the next 20 years that will impact the media in ways that I can’t even now imagine. All in all, I believe the best way we can keep these advances possible is to make sure they are carried out as ethically responsible as possible.
As Claire mentioned, it is very hard to predict the future especially with the fast paced change we have experienced and the ways that technology and digital communication has evolved even in the last few years. Though, I feel that from some of the trends we have been reviewing in class that fragmentation is a key determinate of how we could predict such trends to go.
ReplyDeleteAs the media landscape is expanding through the internet and the various tools it provides, audiences are growing bigger and even more staggering is the number of actors that have come into the arena as well. With things such as the blogosphere and YouTube we have a variety of people adapting to this watchdog role of not only political scrutiny but even of the media outlets themselves.
In this sense I feel that the interaction between the media and politics will be dramatically altered in the coming years with more polarization, not only of the public but of political actors themselves. The accessibility of the internet allows people to be attuned to ideas they agree with and block out those that they don’t. In this sense, I would see people building biased and maybe even basing their efforts off of opinion itself. Conversely I would foresee that political actors may even use this avenue to deflect interacting with each other and simply draw on these avenues for direct support.
The word “options” is something that plays a key role in this I feel. The more diversified the news media landscape and means for communication become, the more they are clouded with opinion and bias will make it harder for objective means to shine but also inherently easier for people to become politically engaged by their own means even if it isn’t necessarily beneficial to society as whole. I feel that independent regulation in this sense will become a vital tool in the upcoming years which is sure to posit a great magnitude of change.
While many people recognize the democratizing effect that the internet has on different segments of the population, I predict a pattern similar by that found by Schlozman, Verba, and Grady in our latest reading assignment. I would expect that the disparity in political participation through the internet in regards to socio economic status will not differ so much from traditional forms of political participation. What does seem to be a trend is that young people use the Internet to participate politically. As these people grow up and others take their place, it would follow that more and more people would use the Internet for political activities. I also think that going public will become more and more valuable as the scope of the potential audience becomes larger. While many people will still not be seeking out political information during their use of the Internet, if politicians are able to appear in their newsfeeds or Google searches more often through videos featuring their public appeals this will be beneficial to those that have previously relied on more traditional methods to increase their name recognition or publicity in general.
ReplyDeleteI am a firm believer that the media is crucial for politics. Whether it’s for the public’s benefit or politicians/organization’s benefit, media has the ability to allow one message to reach so many people worldwide. It allows people to connect and have a two-way dialogue from miles apart. However, despite my praise for the media, I am concerned for its future relationship with politics. For one, as more and more content is put on the Internet it allows for more choices, thus more reasons for people to choose not to stay in tuned with politics. Especially among millennials, as we saw in the past reading, we are the most in tuned with the Internet, but we are not very politically active. Will this change as we get older or will the gap between those who follow politics and those who don’t grow even wider? If there are more distractions on the Internet, why follow politics – this is a harsh way to think, but I see it with so many of my friends. Not only does the Internet pose challenges to politics, the mainstream traditional media does also. First, newspapers drive the news agenda and have more of the “iron core” information, however, newspapers are slowly dying as publications are moving to the Internet. How is a credible source going to stand out from the others and drive the agenda if it all looks the same? In addition, broadcast news is changing to have more entertaining content because of profit pressures of the news industry. As these media change more and more, how will people (who want to learn about politics) know where to get reliable news with all of the noise in the way?
ReplyDeleteI wish there was more an incentive to allow news sources to do in-depth reporting and investigation over societal issues. While, there are pieces that do that out there, they are swallowed up in the mess of stories that are on the same subject expect given with no context. Everyday I read the same news stories from multiple sources and while one might be better than the other, they are all a blur and I do not remember what information came from which source. Also, it is hard for me to collect my thoughts and stay updated on the news because every half hour a new article is written about something that happened but it reaches only on the surface information. It is exhausting. I couldn’t imagine someone who wasn’t a media literate as I am to try to do the same.
I can’t really predict the ways in which technology will affect politics going forward because of the rate at which innovation is occurring. From what I have seen in the early stages of the Internet the issue is really about the way information is manipulated and fragmented. The access to information is so vast and it can be difficult to decipher what is fact or fiction. Going forward I think we have to be aware of that threat. We have already seen the effect of having a media that markets to ideology with broadcast news networks like Fox and MSNBC and we have to make sure that level of bias stays as marginal as possible in the future.
ReplyDeleteAs others have mentioned, it's truly hard to predict what the relationship between the media and politics will be like in the future. However, I agree with what Mehreen said about how political news is only going to become more polarized. The internet is a really big place, and while internet news is typically less regulated than television news and print media, I foresee many more biased news websites popping up and becoming popular. Unfortunately, people are, for the most part, just as partisan as the politicians they support...so partisan news will probably be the norm. News delivery will become more opinion-based rather than just stating the facts. At that point, even more so than today, it will truly be a difficult task in determining fact from opinion...or in some cases fiction. Hopefully though, on a brighter note, there will still be a handful (maybe more!) of news outlets that strive to conduct non-biased research, report the facts without an obvious agenda, and keep those who are aware of the fallibility of the media informed properly.
ReplyDeleteFor those that believe everything that they read (ugh), there's still no hope for them in the future. Unfortunately, by extension, I think the gap between the politically literate and politically blind will grow as news media becomes more partisan.
Based on the readings for today about blogging and the public’s influence on foreign policy and what we have studied, read, and discussed so far, I cannot help but agree with Andrew Wolanski on his prediction that political news will become even more polarized in the future. First of all, as we have studied, there is no clearly set standard of how journalists can make their reporting as objective as possible. Also, with the internet, a space vastly free and unregulated, and the ability of speaking up without actually facing someone and a direct debate in real life, people have become much more outspoken and unafraid to share their views and opinions no matter how biased and self-centered they are. As author Richard Davis states, going from personal diaries to political news and information gatherers and disseminators, bloggers envision themselves not as unanimous writers for a close circle of friends, family, and followers, but as the future of journalism (Davis 296). Taking this into consideration along with the notion that bloggers may start producing content that holds a sense of legitimacy and is held to a universal higher standard equating with news media expectations for reliable sources (Davis 300), we may be seeing more and more blogging, less traditional media, and a lot of commentary with a lot of personal experience, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and bias into it. Let’s not forget that social media is growing every day, and as we have discussed in class, it allows individuals to follow the political figures they want to follow and be exposed to the political content and ideas they believe in, without taking a look at the opposing side and alternate ideas. All this takes together leads me to think that the future holds for us a lot more polarized politics and a lot more personalized, immediate news content that holds different individuals personal bias and ideas into it. All this inevitably leads to the widening of the gap between politically literate and politically illiterate groups (sadly!).
ReplyDeleteI currently serve on SGA as one of the two Senators for the College of LAS. One of the most memorable meetings of SGA that I had was when the main director of Information Services at DePaul came in and gave his schpeil about what IS is, does and how they help the student body. A fellow senator asked him a question, ‘How do you see technology and media at DePaul changing over the next five or ten years?’
ReplyDeleteHis response struck me.
He laughed, mentioned that it was a phenomenal question to ask and then responded to the question, ‘I have no idea’ he said.
He went on to elaborate that the farthest that IS can possibly see into the future in terms of adapting to ever changing media and technology, or responding to threats online, at the very most, is 12 months. And even then, it’s only slightly accurate.
Thus to me, asking the question of how media will change and affect politics over the next decade is a question that cannot be answered. I cannot say how things will change, because to be honest, I have absolutely no idea. Media has changed and has continued to change at an exponential pace, turning the technology that was created only a few short years before it, obsolete. Within the last 10 years, the onset of the information aged has fundamentally transformed media, permanently.
All we can do, in my opinion, is speculate. Perhaps there will be great technological changes that could once again fundamentally change the way people take in media, or perhaps not. Perhaps the media will continue to re-enforce the bias and partisan divisions in the American electorate, or perhaps through some new form of media access, or change in media goals will help to close that divide.
Overall, what I believe needs to continue, and hopefully increase over the next few years, is an increase in participation in politics through the media, and a greater intake of objective news by the American Electorate. This to me is the way that any changes in the relationship or dynamics between the media and politicians will remain positive for the American people.
With an ocean of information all around us, accuracy in reporting, or good, wholesome news has an opportunity to get lost, and I hope that media sources can be the ones to cut through the noise, and deliver to their viewers, readers, and listeners, the only thing that really matters: the truth.
I think it’s really hard to predict how the Internet will continue to evolve even over the course of the next year, let alone further down the line. But even looking at the next presidential election, I think we’ll see a lot more candidates “going public” and making bigger announcements on their terms. We’ve already seen how political figures like President Obama and the First Lady have really used social media to get in touch with voters and the general public, and I think it’s going to become even more prevalent in the future with political figures bypassing the media all together and putting out information when they’re ready. That’s not to say political candidates don’t need the media – if the media doesn’t talk about the candidate, it will be hard for people (other than for citizens who already support or actively follow them) to find them. But, I think that’s going to be a major move in the future.
ReplyDeleteI also read an interesting article on Vulture about John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” show, and how it’s grown to be more influential than Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert’s “Colbert Report.” The author went on to describe how the show has gotten people taking about real issues, and has made an impact in politics (one of the examples offered was the net neutrality issue.) Based off this, as well as the higher ratings on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and Comedy Central’s opinion shows, I think a growing number of people will start getting their news from these sources. While they are biased, the shows offer a look into political topics the average citizen might not understand. I think there’s something to be said about these shows because they have a way of breaking down a larger argument and making it more digestible to viewers, which is why I think they’re so popular. In the future, I see more people getting their news this way because of how much simpler they can make an issue for viewers.
I think the media will impact politics the most by increasing voting. I think this is an operation that will take at least a decade, possibly two, to truly improve. As we read in the article on Tuesday, many people don’t know enough information or have enough knowledge to make a decision and cast their ballot. In the future, politicians and the media will create a solution to make the everyday citizen become more involved, thus causing voting percentages to increase. Instead of labeling the news reports with intimidating words or phrases, the newscasters might try simplifying the summary and at then at the end, state the term (such as “this has become known as net neutrality”). They will also find a method that increases the vote of college students and young people. A problem that I have is that I live in a completely different region of the country. But the only news and advertisements I saw during the past midterm election featured Pat Quinn & Bruce Rauner. I hope that the media will devise a method in which students can vote from their computers or submit a ballot to a location near (or on) their college campus-that way they are still able to vote. I also think that both television networks and online media will develop programs/ TV shows in which they contain a compendium of candidates throughout the country for all the viewers to see. For instance, a news networks, such as CNN, will have television shows dedicated to news for each state. Each state will have a particular amount of time; so that way not only students, but also people traveling, can still be informed as to what is happening in their state.
ReplyDeleteI feel that in the future, the direction to which the media will travel in will involve an increased emphasis on expanding the awareness of global news. Not only will news outlets engage in a more effective effort to attain credible information regarding the occurrences that take place in foreign countries, but there will also be an increased degree of social interaction on a global scale in regard to political issues. The discussion of political matters will not simply be limited to the issues that are relevant to a particular country, but all countries involved in the global political conversation. Inevitably, this occurrence will contribute towards a greater political understanding across the entire planet, and will therefore decrease the levels of tension between countries in regard to foreign affairs. An additional notable possibility for the future of the media could be that television may become obsolete. With the increasing number of citizens utilizing the internet in order to attain news, combined with the increasing adherence to online streaming, television may soon become dead technology. In the supposed circumstance to which people no longer access the news by viewing television, advertising efforts will also be directed towards the internet. However, at this point in time, innovation will likely surface that will allow the user to filter or disable any potential advertisements that may have otherwise appeared. While advertisements will become optional or even non-existent, the level of media bias will also decrease due to the lack of sponsors to which media outlets need to appease. Media outlets will be obligated to utilize other means to generate funding, and will therefore lose their currently existing degree of financial prominence.
ReplyDeleteIt is really interesting to look at that list and see the changes that have occurred in even the past 10 years. Media and technology is now changing at an alarming speed and this is bound to have a direct effect on politics. As our current tech generation ages with the new innovations, I feel that politics will be mostly media and technology based. Long gone will be traditional forms, such as print, and I have a feeling that TV will become less important as well. A new form of media may become popular and politicians may utilize that form, however that is hard to say. As much as I hope this does not occur, a negative change that may occur has to do with the rising prevalence of social media. Elections may become social media popularity contests in which the winner is elected merely on social grounds. Because the media and technology are becoming more convenient, this may yield quantity over quality. If elections become a quantity contest and a social election, there needs to be government regulation in order to deter this.
ReplyDeleteTo speculate, I think that the future of politics and media—their intersection at least—will expand on some of the current innovations that are already transpiring. I’ll make 3 predictions!
ReplyDeleteNumber 1: The “newshole” will continue to shrink.
Call me pessimistic, but the attention span of the average American is minimal especially without colorful pictures, flashing lights, and shiny things. In my opinion, the shrinking newshole will not only apply to TV, but also to web based media. In turn, online articles, blogs, and video clips will contain more infotainment and ads to distract us from hard political news.
Number 2: The demise of television news and magical resuscitation of print media.
This is a highly risky prediction to make, I know. However, I think that Millennials and Generation Y have a way of repurposing old trends and paying homage to the past, to escape the exponentially quick innovation speed of technology. Like vinyl records, Millennials will begin to see print media—newspapers and magazines—as a hobby of cultural sophistication. So, why the death of TV? Well, I suppose that the declining trends will continue because TV takes away from the non-stop pace of everyday life. You can take the internet (with video media) as well as print media anywhere. Whereas, TV limits where and when you can digest your news. More people will live in urban areas, smaller households, less sense of family…less of a need for a large communal screen.
Number 3: Social media apps will be the new source for successfully disseminating political information.
In the not so distant future, we are going to be hit with politics on all levels of our social media applications. For example, in the run up to the 2016 presidential election Candidates will be sending you snapchats, future political movements will be well documented, referenced, and cited via snapchat, and you will be asked to engage via snapchat to endorse, oppose, and communicate with or about political actors and movements.
Now accepting bets…
I think that the way media will continue to impact politics in the future is more with technology such as the internet. Technology like this will just keep advancing in unexpected ways that we can not think off. I think this will impact politics because then it will just provide it everywhere. I know we can get it everyone now but it can mostly be by choose. I think with technology it will be almost forced in people which will have people becoming more or aware by what is happening. A current example I can give is like facebook. By facebook because for example a person states that they are a against abortion and start putting all these things on this issue, it is a political issue that I am not really interested in becoming a part of but I become aware of because with the social media technology it was forced to become aware of it.
ReplyDeleteI think to turn this into something positive is by letting the people know about an issue or what is going on . It is always nice to try to let people become aware about what is going on in the world but i think we should try not to force it in them a negative.
As technology has grew exponentially so has our way of communication and that will continue to do so in the future. I believe media will have a much bigger impact on politics in the years to come. The internet will one day take over television as the public's main source of media, I think that as millennials get older that, that will draw politicians to do more within the internet atmosphere, whether that will be daily blogs or youtube videos to the public. The past two presidential elections have shown this as well as the past midterm. We are seeing an increase in politicians having a larger campaign on the internet and a larger volunteer turnout over the internet and internet based events. You will also see a larger presence of independent media such as blogs and youtube videos having a much larger presence over issues that the public may not have much knowledge of. The Arab Spring has shown that new media such as twitter can increase political activism when there is a large enough presence. I'm not entirely sure how to make this positive or not. It's just something that evolves on its own, let the people decide on how they want to form new media and what information they want and what means they will gain that information.
ReplyDeleteMedia is just a platform for different ideas so I am not sure how media will shape politics in the foreseeable future. Whatever new technology or platform is introduced it will be a tool and society will determine how that tool is to be used. However the key events given in the list are causes but between each there are affects, which was determined by society and were largely unpredicted. For example the printing press helped the flow of information and helped create laws to protect free speech. The radio helped usher a new information age with its own set of laws, TV also had its own affects, todays Net neutrality will have a significant affect on society because the flow of information is unrestricted. For the outcome to be positive we need to increase freedom speech in allowing different prospective to be heard and we need to increase diverse media platforms like BBC, Aljazeera etc. not just the Internet, in order to have an open diverse discussion.
ReplyDelete*cue imagination
ReplyDeleteMedia & Politics... Politics & Media... I think that social media will have the biggest impact on politics, as it already has increasingly in the Obama 2008 Campaign, the Arab Spring, etc... It seems like people and technology are increasingly becoming inseparable through tablets>cell phones>(Apple Watch?)>(GoogleGlass?). With this integration of technology and people, I would expect more Data to be extracted from people. Data meaning anything from what your hobbies are to what you agree or disagree with. Perhaps through new social media applications, this Data will be willingly shared. This could perhaps lead to more ways Data can influence Media, and Media influence Politics. This relationship between Data, Media, and Politics of course works in any direction. For a more democratic society, we would hope that the Data about the people not be misconstrued, and hope that it'd be the driving factor. But as we see today, and have discussed in class, Media organizations have their economic goals and Political organizations and politicians have their political/policy goals, that may or may not drive them to manipulate Data/public opinion. However, "the people" always seem to be in the background of all this and it is up to the people to hold organization accountable. Perhaps with regulations on how the Data can be used. This also means that people should be educated on Data, Media, & Politics in order to promote positive policy change.
The major issue which I am concerned with about the future of media and politics is the continued fragmentation of the American public into more partisan viewing audiences. The main problem I see with this is that when people only draw information from one or two sources and only consider those sources legitimate, they become unwilling to recognize anything beyond those sources as legitimate or useful information. By putting on partisan blinders in their political information consumption the public becomes more polarized. In turn they elect more polarized candidates and these candidates take office with a mandate not to cooperate with legislators from across the aisle but rather to pursue ideological victory at all costs (i.e. the latest government shutdown). I’m not sure what could be done in terms of remedial action, however one idea is to dramatically expand access to higher education. Since colleges and universities places a greater emphasis on critical thought and taking information from multiple sources, expansion of the college educated population could help mitigate the media audience’s political polarization.
ReplyDelete