Participation Inflation

In our discussion of the "equalizing" effects of the Internet today, several people brought up anecdotes of how they participated in politics over the web--crafting e-mails, e-signing a petition, commenting on a blog, donating to a campaign online, etc. Taking into account the Gladwell article in the New Yorker, we might worry that participating in politics has now become too easy, which lowers the value of this participation.

Way back when there were only hand-written or typewriter-typed letters that could only be sent by snail mail to Congressmen, one's effort to participate in politics was obvious and (from a participatory theorist approach) applauded. Today, these same sorts of letters can be written, sent, and received in a matter of minutes (or even seconds, if you're a quick typist!), which makes them effortless and arguably less worthy of our approval. Certainly the speed of this correspondence is preferable for those who are making legitimate contributions to our democratic society, but does it not also raise the bar for the types of political participation that actually matter?

Politicians undoubtedly receive innumerable e-mails each day that are basic copy-and-paste replicas produced by those in charge of listservs, sent out en masse by citizens who were particularly enraged or inspired by a political appeal. While these sorts of pre-written letters were around before the days of the Internet, the effort it took to write, seal, stamp and send these letters likely rendered them more impactful to the politicians who received them, and perhaps even demonstrated that many Americans took whatever issue to be of at least mild importance. This is not the case today, where a very small group of people can easily send a ridiculous number of e-mails to a politician very easily, under the guise of mass support. To the extent that politicians understand this possibility, the policy issue being discussed in these letters may or may not make their way onto the political agenda. In short, the online nature of these participatory acts--in that they are easy to carry out--have made these acts less valuable.

Unfortunately, the decreased value of these acts have not encouraged more people to participate, at least not the types of people we would hope. Rather, the more valuable participatory acts--those that require more effort, such as participating offline in a rally or protest, voting at an actual voting booth instead of taking an online poll, attending an honest-to-goodness community meeting in real time and space--are now too much for the ordinary American, when other, easier options are available. Before, when these were the only options available, even though many people still didn't participate, the effectiveness of participation was clearer. As Alan brought up in class, one must sort through the radical, uneducated comments on blogposts to get to the well-articulated ones, yet all of these comments have the same weight in terms of political participation. As a consequence of giving people more voice, we simply get more noise.

To break through this noise, one must commit higher acts of participation to get a single message across. The drastic increase in campaign spending is a good example--in order to compete, you have to work harder to raise and spend money. And just as is apparent with campaign spending, the same sorts of people are excluded from this participation. At least a few decades ago, if people wanted to get involved and have an impact, they knew how to do it. Now, despite the notion that the Internet has made involvement easier, this low-level involvement is less effective and therefore less valuable. Perhaps this decrease in value can help explain why the Internet has not had the "equalizing" effect one might have anticipated.