The Myth of Digital Democracy

Matthew Hindman

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780691138688, 9780691137612
• eBook ISBN: 9781400837496
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Is the Internet democratizing American politics? Do political Web sites and blogs mobilize inactive citizens and make the public sphere more inclusive? The Myth of Digital Democracy reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the Internet has done little to broaden political discourse but in fact empowers a small set of elites--some new, but most familiar.


Matthew Hindman argues that, though hundreds of thousands of Americans blog about politics, blogs receive only a miniscule portion of Web traffic, and most blog readership goes to a handful of mainstream, highly educated professionals. He shows how, despite the wealth of independent Web sites, online news audiences are concentrated on the top twenty outlets, and online organizing and fund-raising are dominated by a few powerful interest groups. Hindman tracks nearly three million Web pages, analyzing how their links are structured, how citizens search for political content, and how leading search engines like Google and Yahoo! funnel traffic to popular outlets. He finds that while the Internet has increased some forms of political participation and transformed the way interest groups and candidates organize, mobilize, and raise funds, elites still strongly shape how political material on the Web is presented and accessed.



The Myth of Digital Democracy. debunks popular notions about political discourse in the digital age, revealing how the Internet has neither diminished the audience share of corporate media nor given greater voice to ordinary citizens.

Index

Page numbers in boldface refer to illustrations and tables.

access to Internet: and blogging as means of political expression, 11, 107–8, 117–18; businesses and online access to marketplace, 9, 13, 86; contrasted with traditional media, 83–84, 98–99; digital divide and inequitable, 9, 11, 22, 69, 142; and “disintermediation” of political activity, 10; hyperlinking as measure of Internet inclusivity, 39–41; infrastructure or architecture and, 13–14, 39, 130–31; Internet perceived to be inclusive media, 1–4, 8, 18, 39–41, 132–33. See also barriers to participation; gatekeepers

Adamic, Lada, 42, 44, 106

advocacy communities, 8, 17, 57, 59, 66, 81, 130, 132, 134–35, 140, 142. See also specific groups, e.g., MoveOn.org

age: blogger demographics, 104; blog readership and, 104–5, 106; Internet use and, 11, 23, 67–68, 81, 106

Albert, Reka, 41, 42n2, 47n6, 72, 150

AltaVista: keyword search mechanism and, 43; and log data and query analysis, 69; Yahoo!’s acquisition of, 85

Althouse, Ann, 124

Amazon.com, 31–32, 62, 86

An Army of Davids (Reynolds), 99, 117, 127, 134

Anderson, Chris, 99, 135

Arbitron data, 90, 92–93

Armstrong, Jerome, 127

As We May Think (Bush), 1

audience: accessibility and, 11; “audience reach,” 60; as bifurcated between most- and least-read outlets, 134–35; and blog readership, 4, 11, 104–6, 109n1, 113, 117–18, 118n1, 121, 128, 137; changing media habits of, 91–92; concentration of, 11, 17, 82–83, 90–91, 113–14, 128, 133–35, 137; Hitwise data on audience share, 90–91; for Internet vs. traditional media, 4, 8, 66, 90, 91–94, 93, 125–27; link density as proxy for, 56–57; mass public as, 6–7; midrange outlet audience share, 93; narrowcasting or pointcasting...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• One: The Internet and the “Democratization” of Politics
• Two: The Lessons of Howard Dean
• Three: “Googlearchy”: The Link Structure of Political Web Sites
• Four: Political Traffic and the Politics of Search
• Five: Online Concentration
• Six: Blogs: The New Elite Media
• Seven: Elite Politics and the “Missing Middle”
• Appendix: On Data and Methodology
• References
• Index