The techno wonder pundits say that the internet revolutionizes democracy by leveling the playing field (everyone can be an ass online, oh yeah!) But what I find more fascinating about the internet and politics is the role that search plays in polarizing politics. I mean, sure there are dissenting voices all over the internet, but google “John McCain” or “Obama” or “Sarah Palin” or “Joe Biden” and you won’t discover a single dissenting opinion about any of these candidates on the front page of the search results (the exceptions to this rule are probably the small news items that Google includes: but these tend to be main stream media fluff pieces.) If the world is full of dissent but the main lens by which people view the world never reveals this, does this really make a positive impact on democracy? Indeed if I were totally crazy, I might even argue that Google was aiding tyranny when it decided to combat google bombing.
\nIn other words what I’m saying is that I’m tired of blaming the white male voter for going against my political leanings and today I’ve decided it would be fun to pick on Google instead \ud83d\ude42 (And yes I picked Google arbitrarily. If by “picked arbitrarily” you mean decided because it was most dominate search webite.)
\nUpdate:<\/b> In a related note, has anyone tried Spinoculers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The techno wonder pundits say that the internet revolutionizes democracy by leveling the playing field (everyone can be an ass online, oh yeah!) But what I find more fascinating about the internet and politics is the role that search plays in polarizing politics. I mean, sure there are dissenting voices all over the internet, but … <\/p>\n