Silicon Flatirons- The end of Politics as we Knew it?

I attended the Silicon Flatirons conference on "The End of Politics as We Knew It?" Topics touched on during the conference included the traditional media and its response to technological change and the Internets impact on political participation. Both were fascinating subjects and there are a few points I'd like to touch upon that were brought up during the conference.

One topic discussion was consolidation of the media. I find this to be a very interesting and scary topic. I am currently taking a Techno-Culture Convergence class and the first few weeks have focused on media consolidation. I also read The New Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian. While the conference discussion briefly mentions the negatives on media consolidation, such as a loss of quality news programing due to speed, the majority of the speakers supported the role of large media companies as being 'gatekeepers' of media content. One speaker also mentioned how the convergence of media has created more competition between companies and more options for viewers. However, in The New Media Monopoly, a less optimistic version of media convergence is purposed. Bagdikian discusses the corruption within and between the major media conglomerates and discusses how the media market is not the 'free and competitive' market that media cooperations make themselves out to be. The book portrays media as being driven by profits and that rather than major media being competitive, they have instead created a cartel environment. Most major media companies collaborate with other media companies on projects and share several common people on their board of directors. This is not typical behavior for companies which are competing, instead the companies are colluding with one another. The book discusses other problems with the consolidation of media including how large media corporations control politics and are creating their own laws by contributing large amounts of money to political campaigns and how big businesses control media content by threatening to pull advertising dollars from the company. The book is a good read and I wish more discussion would have focused on being critical of convergence of media rather than a "that's the way it is" attitude.

The reactions to large media were also a focus of the conference, with an emphasis on blogs. While it's true that bloggers do not have a profession standards such as journalists, they are self-correcting and based on feedback from others. Journalists have an ethic to follow and maintain, but just how credible are their stories and who is doing the checking? I remember a story recently about a big name journalist at a big name paper getting fired for having, for a long time, created fictional stories. Where was the credibility there? I believe that both blogging and traditional journalism have their place, but I have also seen good journalism decline in recent years. Stories are becoming less like news and more like entertainment and I don't believe news should be entertainment. Also, journalists are trained to be critical and report on the facts, but in recent years, have been failing to live up to that standard. Where was the critical analysis of the governments claims of weapons of mass destruction? The news medial simply took what the government was telling them and reporting it rather than critically analyzing the stories and asking politicians hard questions.

The talk of political polarization in this country and the information regarding incumbent elections were also points of interest to me. I prefer not to be extremely political or to talk about my politics, which is difficult sometimes considering one of my majors is economics (which I think is close to being the basis of all political thought currently), but I do believe this country is becoming to partisan. I don't necessarily understand this trend to be more extreme in ones political beliefs. I was always under the impression that most people were moderate or held beliefs that were on both ends of the spectrum. But I'd have to be blind not to notice the increasing criticisms based on ideas being too 'left' or too 'right' rather than looking a an idea for what it's worth in terms of truth and benefits to the public.

The rest of the conference was on using the Internet in political campaigning. I found that discussion less engaging because it seems that main reason politicians have websites is to raise money. There was some talk of what the Internet could become for politics (eg. and open forum for ideas and discussion) but its seems that for now, the Internet will simply be a money making, vote promoting tool rather than the engaging political forum it could be.

Overall, a very thought provoking conference.