Conventional wisdom has it that the public is disenchanted by main stream media, due to its biased reporting, dictated by corporate funding. In the reading, “Toward a More Participatory Democracy”, Kline goes into these long, embittered rants about how the media has been feeding nothing but garbage, and now with the capabilities of blogging, we the people can now fight back. (Anyone else ready to join his ranks?).
It’s true. The dreaded, big, bad media does have an agenda. Who doesn’t? What I found amusing was after his adolescent whining about how the people are now being empowered by mediums such as blogging, and encouraged their voices to be heard, he went on to point out the “mistakes” made by liberal bloggers last elections, and even mapped out a strategy for utilizing the Net more efficiently. (We’ll get ‘em next time boys!).
I saw the point he was trying to make: highlighting how the blogging was and wasn’t used to its full potential. (Obviously the Republicans did it the “right” way). To me, it just felt chock-full of opinionated rambles and skewed information; the very same thing he claims that blogging will combat.
He offered up plenty of techniques for political activists to use the Net to their advantage, but nothing to the general public when they’re thrown all this information. How do we filter out the garbage, and be sure that John Smith doesn’t have some kind of agenda of his own?
The one thing I did agree with was the encouragement for more independent parties. Theoretically, if a candidate is chosen by the people, funded by the people, and voted for by the people, he’d at least make some sort of effort to satisfy the wants of the people who got him there. Instead of using the Net as a tool to continue the monotonous, never-ending, life-draining, pointless, epic struggle between Democrats and Republicans, let’s set up all people interested in running this sinking ship of a country with a blog, read them, be informed about real issues, and pick the person who is most compatible with the nation’s wants as a whole.
Ready… GO!
1 comment:
Hmm, I read Kline's tone quite differently. Could you point to specific passages that consider embittered and whining?
That said, this post does meet the requirements of the assignment for summary and response.
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