There was a time when breaking news was, well, breaking news. Come to think of it, there was a time when news was, well, news! Decades ago, media outlets generated stories at digestible paces and delivered content that was worthy of being reported. First there were newspapers. Next came radio. Even with early television, information was disseminated from all of these sources in a balanced fashion.
Fast-forward to today: wake up and smell the internet. We are now served 24 hour news networks with a generous side of bias. We are fed instantaneous status updates from family, friends, strangers, celebrities, politicians and others through micro- and non-microblogging services like Twitter and WordPress. Mass communication by people we ordinarily wouldn't see on television has been made possible by websites like YouTube. In short, we are bombarded by information. We are citizens of the Information Age.
Imagine what it must be like to be a politician. The avalanche of information that constantly surrounds you ultimately translates into a bunch of noise. What stands out from the noise? Only the most flashy and attention-grabbing stories and updates. Usually, this means that they are exaggerated. When making a political decision, you take into account current events (but only the ones that stand out from the noise - aka, the most flashy ones). However, the Information Age has turned current events into events that are only current for a short time. Here's the result: your political decisions are influenced by exaggerated news stories that only last for, at most, a few days.
A brief example to illustrate this vortex of ever-changing information is how long it has taken to select a Republican presidential nominee to run against Barack Obama. For several months, the front-runners of the Republican party alternated between Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, and others. Never before have I observed such sharp and frequent swings in popularity between candidates. The first major primaries were all won by different candidates. It's only recently that Mitt Romney has a de facto spot with the nomination, and who knows how long that's going to last.
The oscillation in popularity between Republican candidates is reminiscent of stock market volatility. These are both driven by the same motivations: confidence. Investments in candidates are like investments in companies: they are akin to change based on new information. With the Republican candidates, there was either a new scandal, a new plan, a new idea, a new faux pas, or a new "Oops" reported daily, sometimes hourly. This new information resulted in shifting confidence from one candidate to another, and that explains why the political spotlight for Republican candidates had a different occupant from day to day. This is an inexorable byproduct of the Information Age.
With that example presented, return to what it must be like to be a politician. Keeping up with this hurricane of information coming from a thousand different sources would mean constantly adjusting your position on a multitude of issues. This is impractical, as you would barely have time to breathe. And remember, when defining your position, you have to think about your colleagues, your home district, your reelection, your lobbyists, and your checking account. With new, ever-changing information presented to you at frenetic paces, how do you go about keeping your political views straight?
The answer: partisanship. The Information Age has placed our politicians in a sea of chaos. They are tenuously walking planks on seemingly sinking ships. If they fall, they will be consumed by surrounding issues like racism, class warfare, economic and financial crises, international threats, social stability and political scandal.
Adhering to partisanship takes the onus off of politicians because they don't have to think as hard. They join their fellow partisans and hold on for dear life to the most extreme principles of their political dogmas. This gives them a sense of stability. Otherwise, if they were to sit down, critically examine their own views and do some independent research, they would be overwhelmed. There is too much information - too much noise - that distorts our issues. With all of the things politicians have to worry about, there isn't enough time to form their own well-researched opinions on political and social issues. Partisanship allows them to have the image of having well-researched opinions, because all of their colleagues have these same views, and so everybody has the same views. But it's really a farce.
End transmission.
Very interesting post. A great article by a great thinker who's dealing with sort of the same issue (the impact of the deluge of information) is "Open Secrets" by Malcolm Gladwell. Admittedly, it's a little dated, but Gladwell still makes powerful statements about when information (too much or not) is useful at all.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link: http://www.gladwell.com/2007/2007_01_08_a_secrets.html