Inequality and Like-minded Groups in the Digital Age
Digital natives
In the digital age, the internet is believed to play a prominent role to increase political engagement by reducing the cost of accessibility and increasing convenience. Furthermore, the interference of the internet in traditional media has been promised to broaden opportunities of the young generation/digital natives who spend their time more on the internet (Brundidage & Rice, 2009; Mossberger, 2008). Personally, this claim sounds theoretical based on two reasons. The first reason is having access to the internet or being exposed to political discussions online does not mean all of those young people are interested in political engagement or they might not even read those messages. But if they are interested in political engagement, in which situation and levels that the internet does really broaden younger opportunities for political engagement? Some youth might be involved in online political engagement inactively which means they only read information but no shares, no discussion at all. The second justification is the quality of information on which I am specifically focusing how do we know that information on the internet does not manipulate people mind? For example, recently, Facebook has been questioned about doing advertising of political lies. Although online might have a slight influence on the digital natives to political engagement, information is getting richer (Brundidage & Rice, 2009). Also, the internet has increased the pace of information dissemination really quickly. As a result of the internet, from my perspective, young people are likely to be exposed to both false (risks) and correct information (benefits) which is different from the other groups.
Do the information rich get richer and the like-minded more similar?
According to Brundidage and Rice (2009), the internet contributes to exposure to a diversity of political disagreements. However, these authors found that online discussions have marginal impacts on heterogeneous political discussion networks. The reason is that people tend to involve with the political networks which they agree with. I partially agree with these authors because even Facebook or Google, they also use the algorithm to filter the results of new searches or to emerge advertisements. For example, if you searched flight tickets from New Zealand many times a few weeks ago and now you search “flight” in Google, it might suggest links of flights from New Zealand. You might also see flight advertisements on Facebook or other websites. Therefore, it is not only personal controls to be the selective exposure but it is also the technological controls.
A controversial issue:
A controversial issue is that Facebook, which is a private company, is legally enforceable obligations by the United States government to be responsible for the contents of political ads. On the contrary, let’s imagine in the form of traditional media that Facebook is a television company inviting a politician to interview. The interviewee tells a lie, would it be the television’s fault not to spot the lie? Or is it more moral to deal with the person who tells lies? Having said that, in general, social media should be also responsible for controlling the published contents which are violent, hazardous and abused, still political advertisements are in the grey-area.
Inequality in New Zealand
Mossberger (2008) presents the different proportions of white people having access to the internet more than African people in the United States. This author also compares the different groups of geographies, jobs, incomes, education and ages, language, and availability. However, I will discuss only jobs and geographies related to the digital divide.
I have observed that when I was working part-time at a mall in Wellington, I could not find someone to talk about the policies of the government at all. Most of them are interested in sports and shopping. This might partially result from workplace rules because we are permitted to access cell phones on when we are on the 30-minute break. Right after work, we are more likely to have activities with families and friends like watch games, hang out or have dinners. Another factor is that most of my colleague are working as full-time staff (8 hours or 10 hours per day, 5 days per week). By comparing work, I tend to have more time accessing online, particularly political discussions when I am in school. Therefore, careers also have significant impacts on engaging online.
Regarding geographic factors, in some rural areas, it might be hard to have good access to the internet. This could lead to inequality because people might feel frustrated with the slow internet to access large files such as images and videos. I have experienced no internet at all or slow internet connections when I travelled and stayed outside of towns. Additionally, some urban citizens started to use 5G (internet) which is 4.5–8 times faster compared to 4G. In China, they tested network surgery on an animal successfully with 5G. Therefore, living in rural areas could be seen as a disadvantage situation which it indicates inequality when one group of the population having good access to online political engagement, while the other groups either have difficulties or have no access at all to participate in online political engagement. Thus, in New Zealand, personally, I experienced the digital divide under different circumstances including workplace and geographic factors.
References
Brundidage, J., & Rice, R. E. (2009). Political Engagement Online: Do the Information Rich Get Richer and the Like-minded More Similar? In A. Chadwick & P. N. Howard (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vuw/detail.action?docID=356393
Mossberger, K. (2008). Toward Digital Citizenship: Addressing Inequality in the Information Age. In A. Chadwick & P. N. Howard (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vuw/detail.action?docID=356393
