The document discusses how the networked environment has impacted politics and power. It argues that the internet has led to a more democratic public sphere by offering more visibility and access to information for many people. While not everyone can be widely heard, topical clustering on the internet structures discussion and provides pathways for certain issues and speakers to gain attention. The document also examines several case studies that show how networked groups have investigated and exposed important political issues.

1. Observing Networked Politics ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Theoretical and empirical investigations of power and participation in the networked environment Sciences Po 26 May 2009 Yochai Benkler [email_address]

2. http://web.archive.org/web/20021202092031/www2.diebold.com/solutions/election/default.htm

5. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold

7. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold Diebold response Media Exposure Maryland-required studies; modifications

8. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold

9. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold Diebold DMCA

10. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold

11. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold

12. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold

13. Overnet ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold

14. Overnet ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Diebold One year later

15. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Politics and Power in Networked Environment Technical-economic-cultural shift at the foundation of the new shift Theoretical divisions about what matters and what is happening over relevant domains of politics and power New empirical context: the transcript is the interaction More effective observation using old models of historical analysis New automated techniques of observation With advantages and disadvantages

16. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Networked Information Economy The most important inputs, into the core economic activities, of the most advanced economies, are widely distributed in the population Material Computation and communications resources Sensing and capture Human Creativity, intuition, experience, and motivation Social capabilities to manage processes

17. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ The most important inputs, into the core economic activities, of the most advanced economies, are widely distributed in the population Behaviors once on the periphery: social motivations, cooperation, friendship, decency, mobilization, hatred, move to the very core of economic life in the most technically and economically advanced societies Networked Information Economy

18. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Commons-based production Individual or collaborative Commercial or noncommercial increases the diversity of actors, motivations, transactional forms, Important because it decentralizes authority to act, paralleling what technology/economy has done for practical capacity to act

19. Peer Production Peer production Large scale cooperation among human contributors without price signals or managerial commands ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________

20. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Apache market share 1995-02/2008 Source: Netcraft Survey December 2008 Free/Open Source Software

22. Price-system Firms Government; Non-profits Market-based Non-market ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Four transactional frameworks

23. Price-system Firms Government; Non-profits Market-based Non-market ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ '90s Market-based reforms

24. Price-system Firms Social sharing & exchange Government; Non-profits Market-based Non-market ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Four transactional frameworks

25. Price-system Firms Social sharing & exchange Government; Non-profits Market-based Non-market ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Second industrial divide loosened

26. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Consumers/Producers => users Authority Quality, accreditation Capital as a proxy for authority, quality, accreditation destabilized Practices of skeptical reading “ how can you trust what you see on the Net” leads to skeptical reading; “ trust the NYT” leads to Iraq WMD coverage Maybe erosion of “there's nothing I can do about it” Destabilized categories of power

27. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ 20 th Century rise of democracy Our experience is largely with a mass mediated public sphere We will begin to learn what it means to have social production in the public sphere

28. citizens professional values: journalism; universities public sphere The Mass Mediated Public Sphere commercial funding: The power of money government influence (funding; access; threats) The power of power parties

29. commercial funding: The power of money citizens professional values: journalism; universities public sphere The Networked Public Sphere government influence (funding; access; threats) The power of power parties?

30. Russ Kick, The Memory Hole, April 2004

41. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ An emerging new ecosystem A few large commercial/professional news organizations, with global reach Distributed social action: politically mobilized peer production platforms; a new party press system on a volunteer model (dailyKos) Individual research and expression in networked clusters of mutual linking Low cost, low profit commercial models, engaged with peer producers (TPM) Nonprofit increased efficacy because of lower costs and capacity to leverage distributed social action (Sunlight)

42. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ “ Internet democratizes” & critique “ Everyone a pamphleteer”

43. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ “ Internet democratizes” & critique “ Everyone a pamphleteer” First Generation Critique Babel Objection (Sunstein) Fragmentation : The “Daily Me”: public sphere disappears Theoretically: heavy focus on “deliberation” and rational decision making; emphasizing common goals and shared fate; not much discussion of organization, salience, conflict; none of power Empirically: armchair anthropology/media studies

44. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Still in the armchair... New observation tools... “ Internet democratizes” & critique “ Everyone a pamphleteer” First Generation Critique Babel Objection (Sunstein) Fragmentation : The “Daily Me”: public sphere disappears The culture of Web speech mutual linking “ see for yourself” aggregation and search capabilities (e.g. Digg; Technorati; Google News) power law distribution of links

45. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ physics CS poli-sci “ Everyone a pamphleteer;” First Generation Critique Second Generation Critique Power law distribution of links, implies attention ( Shirky) You can talk, but no one will hear Barabasi Glance and Adamic Hindman: Very little attention paid to politics at all What there is, highly concentrated and mainstream media still garners massive portion of it Who speaks in the blogosphere at the high end is every bit as elitist as the op-eds “ Internet democratizes” & critique

46. What is a power law?

47. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Network Topology 1999: Barabási and Albert Power laws characterize degree distributions in many diverse network phenomena Preferential attachment: “the rich get richer” Adamic & Huberman: intrinsic growth rate: Interest? Money? Quality?

48. Glance and Adamic Political Blogosphere Small number of highly connected nodes accounts for majority of inlinks

49. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Network Topology 1999: Barabási and Albert Power laws characterize degree distributions in many diverse network phenomena Preferential attachment: “the rich get richer” Adamic & Huberman: intrinsic growth rate: Interest? Money? Quality? How do we explain the reality that a website launched on a Monday to rally for a political cause may have hundreds of thousands of participants by the end of the week? Intuitively trivial: people who care about the same thing will pass messages to each other, and congregate on an action platform Theoretically non-obvious given power law distribution of links as a proxy for attention

50. Bursty relevance and salience: Even in the domain of opinion polls, where reputation is so important, Nate Silver becomes a major source in the span of 6 months

53. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Network Topology Clustering Content-related sites cluster—interlink much more densely than random links on the web

54. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ computer scientists political scientists Network Topology Clustering At sufficiently small scale clusters, the body becomes moderate; the long tail turns out to be a little fat Pennock: universities; companies—still long right tail, but lots of moderately connected sites Chakrabarti—same is true for narrower topical clusters Drezner & Farrell—among political blogs in smaller interest areas

55. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ What is a moderate body?

56. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Self-organizing networked public sphere Topical clusters At small scales, moderate visibility bodies with high visibility tails Many entry points for discussion Mechanism for “peer review” of claims, arguments, observations Intense interest is core value “ Superstars” serve as “broadcasters” across clusters Huge, interconnected “strongly connected core” with many redundant paths among clusters

57. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ More democratic, after all Not “everyone a pamphleteer”; but we are also not all intellectual lemmings Structured web offers more visibility, to more people, in accreditation and filtration clusters Relatively free of financing constraints on speech Emphasizing what is intensely interesting to active users who link and read; not what moderately interested passive consumers New observation methods do not obviate interpretation; they provide new sources of insight and require new rounds of interpretation But difficult to engage without familiarity with, and use of, newer techniques

58. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ “ Everyone a pamphleteer” First Generation Critique Babel Objection Fragmentation Polarization Does mainstream discourse polarize? Sunstein experimental work – Yes; Fishkin, No E.g. Adamic & Glance “ Internet democratizes” & critique

60. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ “ Everyone a pamphleteer” First Generation Critique Babel Objection Fragmentation Polarization But: Linking counteracts polarization Adamic & Glance: ~ 1:6 to 1:7 of the links on top liberal/conservative political blogs link across the ideological divide Gallo, Kane, Hargittai – strong internal linking, but no clear polarization over time; cross linking ~ half substantive or “go read” rather than “can you believe these idiots” Farrell, Lawrence, Sides: blog readers more partisan; left and cross-divide readers participate in voting and politics more than those on the right “ Internet democratizes” & critique

61. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Note: New, mixed techniques; link analysis plus more traditional content analysis “ Everyone a pamphleteer” First Generation Critique Babel Objection Fragmentation Polarization But: Linking counteracts polarization Adamic & Glance: ~ 1:6 to 1:7 of the links on top liberal/conservative political blogs link across the ideological divide Gallo, Kane, Hargittai – strong internal linking, but no clear polarization over time; cross linking ~ half substantive or “go read” rather than “can you believe these idiots” Farrell, Lawrence, Sides: blog readers more partisan; left and cross-divide readers participate in voting and politics more than those on the right “ Internet democratizes” & critique

62. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Kelly and Etling, 2008 Mixed observation techniques

63. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Link analysis provides overall shape and structure of the network; relative weight of different loci Structured observation with human readers to add nuance Current efforts to scale up and generalize harnessing human effort Web based interface provides individual coders with a questionnaire Directs them to a URL, open in a pane, with questions Data collected Currently working on integration with Amazon Mechanical Turk to provide large numbers of contributors, for small payments Early efforts toward distributed translation Mixed observation techniques

64. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ “ Everyone a pamphleteer;” First Generation Critique Babel Objection Fragmentation Polarization Who will be the watchdog? Netanel; Starr 2009 Peer-production of watchdog function Time, research on the Net, and organized action Diebold & Stolen Honor Dan Rather Being there with distributed sensing and ubiquitous communication Macaca “ Bomb Iran” “ Internet democratizes” & critique

66. Macaca Bomb Iran

67. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ “ Everyone a pamphleteer;” First Generation Critique Second Generation Critique Elements of an answer Drezner & Farrell (2004): bloggers can set agenda through mainstream media informing itself about views on the cheap Benkler (2006) Sites themselves have become discursive platforms on a significant scale An attention backbone building on topical clustering, speakers on the periphery can be identified by major sites and broadcast iteratively to higher-level visibility Greater affordances for directed action by mobilized groups “ Internet democratizes” & critique

70. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Participation platforms

71. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Participation platforms

72. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Left/Right divergent practices

73. ~10,000 participants in a platform with visibility roughly equivalent to TNR complicated to call this simply elitism; imperfect to call it fully egalitarian participation

75. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Benkler, Shaw, and Stodden 155 top political blogs Structured observation Link analysis to select high- impact sites Complemented by structured observation =>still small scale increasing capacity using online recruitment and management tools Left/Right divergent practices

76. Adamic & Glance 2005

77. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Benkler, Shaw, and Stodden 155 top political blogs Structured observation Link analysis to select high- impact sites Complemented by structured observation =>still small scale increasing capacity using online recruitment and management tools Left/Right divergent practices

78. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ No single effect Symmetry is overstated Different cultural/historical reception Consistent with stable claims about social psychology of left/right Individualist/hierarchist vs. egalitarian/communitarian? Consistent with story anchored in state of government, media outlets (talk radio; Fox News), and churches on right; no equivalents on left push to adoption of a workaround platform Left/Right divergent practices

79. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Participation, visibility, and agenda setting Developing new, text-based tools New theoretical question How do we think of a more active and visible large elite? New visibility of academics? How do we think about BarbinMD, and about Farrell et al, that bloggers are more politically knowledgeable and activated A new “elite” of information haves able to speak around mass media pathways New party dynamics? Cultural power and participation Beyond deliberation/fragmentation

80. Economics

84. Media Cloud

91. Fox News Jan 1-20, top five stories on googlenews search

92. New York Times Jan 1-20, top five stories on googlenews search

93. Informed Comment Jan 1-20, top five posts on google blog search Both for “ethnic cleansing” and “ethnic nationalism”

94. Media Cloud

98. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Benkler, Shaw, and Stodden 155 top political blogs Structured observation Link analysis to select high- impact sites Complemented by structured observation =>still small scale increasing capacity using online recruitment and management tools Left/Right divergent practices

101. “ Stolen Honor” ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Kerry campaign DNC FCC FEC

102. “ Stolen Honor” ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Kerry campaign DNC FCC FEC

103. “ Stolen Honor” ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Kerry campaign DNC FCC FEC

104. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ 19 18 15 13 12 20 11/3 First report of “stolen honor” LA Times=>Talkingpointsmemo Boycott organized Democratic establishment vows action Ad cancellations begin; first media reports Lehman warning Sinclair declares will not air “stolen honor” Intense debate on multiple blogs; actions proposed and debated First attempts; Tactical discussions feedback; lots

105. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ More democratic, after all Not “everyone a pamphleteer”; but we are also not all intellectual lemmings Structured web offers more visibility, to more people, in accreditation and filtration clusters Relatively free of financing constraints on speech Emphasizing what is intensely interesting to active users who link and read; not what is moderately interested passive consumers Fostering investigation and irreverence

106. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ More democratic, after all Not “everyone a pamphleteer”; but we are also not all intellectual lemmings Structured web offers more visibility, to more people Strong “see for yourself” ethic and peer accreditation Reading as skeptical investigation, rather than a search for authority Greater practical capacity to organize to act on politically salient issues Not always through established, not even necessarily legal, pathways

109. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ More democratic, after all Not “everyone a pamphleteer”; but we are also not all intellectual lemmings Structured web offers more visibility, to more people Strong “see for yourself” ethic Greater practical capacity to organize Critical culture; emerging folk cultures At a minimum, an expanded elite Is a shift from several thousand to a few million out of 300 million significant?