Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Separation on the Internet: What does it mean?
When it comes to this idea of people separating themselves out voluntarily on the internet and its effects on the perfect democracy we may have hoped for, I'm going to have to take a position that opposes what the Stephanek reading and what many of my classmates said. Do I think people are just as separated online? Maybe. Do I think it's a bad thing? Not really. First, let me explain a bit. Since we read Jenkins, I couldn't help but keep in mind that while some sites provide a lot of "democracy", stratification happens there. "In" groups happen there. And the sites themselves tend to be based on the members having common interests (Survivor, etc). To me, this system seems to definitely be different than our daily "real" lives, but because we use our own identities (or at least part of them, through our interest in the subject), it isn't surprising to me that we see the same class and social stratification that we do in the real world. Online, what we do is every day more likely to be connected to us at some time in the future than ever before. Potential employers, graduate schools, and many other professional and personal resources could find what you've "done" online and link it to your future in the "real world". Because this is so, we're less likely to be pushed to engage in conversations online that we wouldn't want to answer for later, and we're less likely to step out of our comfort zones. Because I don't see employers and such putting an end to their checking our facebooks, twitters, etc, I don't see people doing much online (at least as themselves) that they wouldn't be able to quickly and easily explain offline.
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I agree with what you're saying here, but at the same time I have to believe that peoples' refusal to leave their comfort zones online comes from a simple lack of desire to do so. It's our comfort zone for a reason, and it's constantly being pushed back and forth in real life. Why on earth would we voluntarily violate that to reach a larger audience online, where the backlash can be as big if not bigger than an offline backlash?
ReplyDeleteI think, especially in this country, that people are happy with the ideology of, "I'm right, and he's wrong, and that's all there is to it," which we have discovered and perpetuated with, specifically, our two-party political system. People are happy calling themselves Republicans or Democrats (even if they don't really know why) and calling "the other" group Conservative asses or Liberal hippies.
ReplyDeleteGoing outside of their comfort zone into the sort of dialogue discussed in the Digital Divide piece would mean having to defend or explain their beliefs, something which many Americans don't want to have to do (or cannot do).
I think that the phrase "opposites attract" is rather fallacious. Like-minded people attract. People with similar interests attract. People who like the same sort of movies attract. There is nothing wrong with these people spending their online or offline time being attracted to each other and discussing politics.
People are never going to agree on issues such as abortion, the role of government, and military spending. So why is it so wrong to talk to people that do agree with you?
I agree with you that we seek out like-minded people to engage with, especially in an online environment. This unfortunately does reduce our exposure to people with different opinions and ideals, and I don't think that we should keep moving in this direction. I think it is important to get exposure to people that are different than us, and the web is the best place to do that because so many different kinds of people use it. That being said, though, the reason all these niche groups get created is because there is such a huge number of people using the Internet. It would be impossible not to make some kind of divisions. I think we just need to find some kind of balance between interacting with like-minded people and interacting with people that are different.
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