In an era when it took days for messages to travel between cities or weeks to cross the Atlantic, America’s founders would have been astonished at the rate and volume of information zinging around the world today. The Internet and social media offer unprecedented resources for learning about current events, expressing our opinions, and persuading others to take action. To a degree beyond the founders’ imaginations, the voting public has access to information about its government representatives and the means to hold them accountable.
With the advent of open government databases and apps for exploring relationships between money and politics, the online public can investigate forces shaping decisions that affect our lives as individuals and a society. The White House has just launched an Open Government Platform that aims to “promote government transparency and citizen engagement on a global scale.” Organizations such as MapLight and the Sunlight Foundation show connections between campaign contributions and voting records, track lobbyist registration, and otherwise uncover influence among elected officials, organizations or corporations, and powerful individuals.
A recent study shows that social media users are more likely to be engaged in politics and their communities than average Americans. And, at least among young people, age 15-25, the Internet has emerged as a relatively egalitarian space with 94% to 98% of all racial and ethnic groups having access to a computer that connects to the Internet and 49% to 57% taking some action online daily, according to a new report. (Other studies reveal distinctions in the kinds of activities users pursue online, whether passive consumption or active creation, according to levels of income and education.)
But the Internet is not necessarily a force for civil dialogue, as it can serve to polarize opinion and spread misinformation just as quickly. If our Twitter feed serves up only those voices we agree with, we may grow complacent in our convictions. Still, social networking can uncover differences in opinion as well. Recent research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project revealed that some 38% of social media users have discovered through their friends’ posts that their political views differed from what the user thought they were.
Despite sometimes well-placed cynicism about the effectiveness of “clicktivism,” examples suggest that the Internet and online social networks can be strong advocacy tools to reach those in power: petitions through Change.org or last year’s Internet shut-down in protest of anti-piracy legislation have leveraged grassroots support to influence important policy decisions.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1787, “Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves.” The November election is four months away. With mobile Internet access, the power is literally in your hands to learn about candidates and issues. Be skeptical, ask questions, talk to your friends, whether you agree with them or not. Seize the opportunity to keep the wolves at bay and take an active role in the democracy we all enjoy.
Our founders signed their names to the Declaration of Independence at great risk to their lives, and they concluded the Declaration with “And, for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.”
I strongly suspect our Founders would tweet:
Why are oligarchs with superPACs allowed to overthrow the power of We The People, Congress and SCOTUS with sophistries, and then not sign their names in 2012?
Proves once again that professors can lead us to knowledge like Plato’s “Republic” which cautioned us about “good” and “evil” facts of life that existed in 5th century B.C. But We still fail to figure out how to use that knowledge.
So the fact is that we still have most of the same problems with democracy in 2012 (except they can’t order truth spreading philosophers to drink hemlock anymore) that they had in Ancient Greece.
Can CITRUS and Berkeley Blog use the Internet to inform and persuade others to take actions to restore We The People Democracy during the 2012 election?
Mission #1 must be to demand EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN NOW! The White House must add that mission to their blog.
The most important fact of life today is that the human race has proven we cannot evolve any further until women around the world have equal rights to achieve leadership positions in any institution they choose to compete for.
Human progress is only limited by the refusals of men to give women equal rights and opportunities to lead.
Everything else we have tried throughout the history of civilization has failed to the point where the human race is threatened with self-destruction more than any time in history.
Elizabeth I & II and Victoria all proved beyond all doubt that women are just as good at ruling a nation or empire as men.
Philosophers should have discovered this by now but the fact is that all of the most famous philosophers in history are men, and John Stuart Mill is the only philosopher in over 2000 years of the history of philosophy to write and speak out forcefully against the perpetual subjugation of women which still exists today, especially in America.
It is time to use the newest Internet technologies and social media to maximize unprecedented resources for learning about the imperative for women’s equal rights, expressing our opinions, and persuading others to take action today!
Otherwise the dominant male cultural values of rule by the power of money, immorality, corruption, wars, mendacity, rich against poor, Us vs Them shall continue to destroy quality of life for all future generations.
Women must use the new power of worldwide people-to-people networking today because 2012 superPAC campaign rhetoric has been the most destructive attack against American Democracy, women’s rights, civil rights, morality, quality of life for all and the future of civilization in history.
Is there a like button on here?!
Your advice is excellent, but the Founders would be outraged by our failure to compromise, since compromise is what joined the United States of America together in the first place.
Our SuperPAC oligarchs who own and control the entire republican party, our acceptance of totally immoral candidates such as Gingrich, our class warfare of oligarchs against the rest of us, our never-ending wars and poverty, our failures to protect current generations from hell on earth climate changes like drought, glacial melting, the Colorado firestorms and the Eastern heat-storms for over week are not what our Founders envisioned as their legacy.
So let’s pray the our younger generations use the new technologies of people-to-people networking to the fullest of their abilities to toss all the current political failures out of office and replace them with a whole new culture of honor, morals, integrity, ethics and compromise that base their decisions on acceptable quality of life for all future generations.