Introduction
Intuitively, many people presume the internet to have a lot of impact in each and every aspect of life, that is, politics included. Nothing could be less than the truth. Since the invention of the internet, the human beings welfare has under gone a lot of drastic improvements socially, economically and even politically. Since it took a lot of time for scholars to accept finally the internet's impact on the latter it finally dawned on them, more so the numerous impacts it has in Partisan politics.
Through the following paper, I am going to review different research sources and their findings on how the internet has been able to affect Partisan politics. The different questions my research is going to answer include; what is the effect of the internet on partisan politics? Does the internet bring people together or does it spread them apart politically? Finally, since the internet is a good platform where people can air their views, is it an outlet only to like-minded individuals or does it include everybody’s views?
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From the understanding of the different research findings done on the above three factors, we will be able to appreciate how the internet affects partisan politics thereby embracing it more.
Methodology
Since the popularization of the internet, different studies in the political spectrum have been undertaken to help discuss the effects the internet has on the democracy. For my research, I will refer to the data and findings from this research to draw my data and conclusions. My research findings will draw its empirical data from publications that only focus on the different internet communication Medias. Information’s sources that will be deemed fit for this study include; sources that have their findings centered on the different social medias such as Facebook, twitter, youtube and political websites.
Debates about the Internet and Politics
Political debates about the internet and politics began surfacing among law professors, activists and politicians in the 1990s when the Internet shifted from merely a connecting platform, and it was embroiled in most political controversies. After this happened, since the politicians were not sure whether or not to take credit for his integration one thing was for sure. The internet needed to be regulated.
The internet regulation led to a myriad of discussions and argument. However through this discussions, a lot of crucial factors were exposed. For instance, some writers such as Nicholas Negroponte began to explore broader questions about the Internet's social consequences. Nicholas Negroponte predicted that the Internet would lead to the world with much less social cohesion, as individuals stopped consuming mass-produced information from newspapers and televisions, instead reading personalized information sources (what he called the \Daily Me.") Discounting for Negroponte's somewhat naive techno-utopianism, this claim had clear political implications. In particular, it suggested that the Internet might lead to greater political polarization and extremism (DiMaggio and Paul 320).
Since political scientists contributed less in this arguments, the two that were interested greatly helped shape this study. Bruce Bimber in his articles, Bimber, 1998, argued against the claims that the internet was to facilitate a rapid political transformation, and rather he suggested that the internet would help ease the formation of political groups as opposed to how it was in the past (Bimber 145).
With the contribution of political scientists in the equation, the groups for testing the various effects the internet has on political issues was drawn. Of most interest was the effect the internet had on Partisanism. The following are some of the empirical evidence found on this issue from the different researches conducted.
Empirical Evidences
Effects of the Internet on Partisan Politics
Partisan politics according to political science refers to the act of sharing a strong opinion in a political party and being ready to defend its policies to the opponents at all costs. Research has it that individuals who share a similar party tend to approach their issues in a much similar fashion.
Research published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2013 titled “Birds of a Feather Tweet Together: Integrating Network and Content Analyses to Examine Cross-Ideology Exposure on Twitter” observed the following about the effect of the internet on politics;
• On Twitter, political talk is highly partisan, and users’ clusters are characterized by homogeneous views and are linked to information sources
• “Politically active voices, particularly younger voters, who use the Internet to express their opinions are moving away from neutral news sites for those that match their political views.”
• “The different dynamics always reinforce in-groups and out-group affiliations as users form separate political groups on Twitter “
Another research that will help us understand the relationship between the internet and the partisan approach is the “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization” Nature, 2012. These research findings were that there has been a direct relationship between Facebook social message service and voter turnout. The report suggests that 60,000 voters increased directly with the messaging service whereas 280,000 voters increased indirectly. It goes further and puts the results in context and explains that there has been a steady increase of the voting age population from 36.3% in 2002 to 37.2% in 2006 to 37.8% in 2010. All this increase has in one way or another been attributable to the single messaging service on Facebook.
From the two research findings above, it is no doubt clear that the internet has a high influence on the way people approach partisan politics. One of the attributable factors to this is through consequences for the costs of collective actions the internet platform provides. For instance from the first research it can be inferred that like-minded people were able to converge and share in the same ideologies of a particular political party owing to the convenience and affordability the internet provide. Shirky provides this argument in a much simpler way. He argues that the Internet has lowered the costs of collective action. The result is that collective activities that used to require central coordination and hierarchy can now be carried out through much looser forms of coordination (Shirky 78). On the other hand, Benkler supports this argument when he also states that this kind of collective coordination as a generalizable form of production, which does not fit in the traditional dichotomy between market and state (Benkler 78) .
With all factors held constant, the benefits of-of lower transaction costs are clear to all, easy entry to a political party of your choice, easy access are just but a few.
Despite this scholars too have come clear and cautioned on the negative political benefits of the lowered transaction cost of the internet on an individual’s political well being. Schmitt infers from Benkler's work to provide a surprisingly early overlooked significances of lowered political costs the internet has. He, therefore, suggests that the lowered costs will lead to transactional politics, in which “low barriers to entry mean low barriers to exit," and it will be difficult to maintain long term loyalty (Jonuleit and Schmitt).
The second observation from the research findings is that the internet is linked to politics through the outcome of homophily. Homophily is a principle that helps describe the propensity of individuals of similar mind and behavior gathering around clusters to share similar perceptions of life. It can be clearly stated that the continuous increment in the number of over the years is as a result of the social ties and bounds of the internet. After sharing on a given ideology, one will be convinced in shifting allegiance hence forming stronger bonds thereby positively influencing to the partisanism effect.
Does the Internet Bring People Together or Does it Spread them Apart Politically?
Democracy has it the majority will have their say whereas the minority have their say. The question as to whether or not the internet can hold people together politically has been tested over time. One such study is “Social Media and Political Engagement” published by Pew Internet & American Life Project, October 2012.
The research found out that the use of social media is increasingly gaining its status as a basic feature of civil and political engagements for most Americans. The following are some statistics observed from the research. Some 60% of American adults use either social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, and a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that 66% of those social media users—or 39% of all American adults—have done at least one of eight civic or political activities with social media. 66% of social media users have employed the platforms to post their thoughts about civic and political issues, react to others’ postings, press friends to act on issues and vote, follow candidates, ‘like’ and link to others’ content, and belong to groups formed on social networking sites”
The high percentage rates indicate that that the internet is very key when it comes to increasing political freedom and diffusion of democracy. Since this claims have no strong literature to support their argument we cannot overrule any truth in them. Recently, scholars have delved into the issue of the internet has helped bring democracy by bringing people more together as opposed to separating them.
Howard has deployed a different set of evidence to argue out his claims on how the internet has helped shaped democracy. He claims that with the conjunction of several causal factors in a particular country, including most particularly the growth of an Internet-based civil society, is conducive to democratic transition.
Howard's arguments have however helped stir debate about the ways in which the Internet does, or does not, provide tools that empower social movements. A recent discussion in Journal of Democracy, Diamond argues that even despite censorship, the Internet can allow citizens to “report news, scrutinize government, express opinions, mobilize protest, monitor elections, expose wrongdoing, deepen participation, and expand the horizons of freedom." This may allow rebels to bring governments down. However, it may also help promote the liberalization of society, and the creation of a pluralistic public sphere, even before democratization occurs (Diamond 70).
Finally, mobilization events are one of the vivid points that will help us understand the partisanism effect the internet has on people. If the interpretation of recent events is anything to go by then, this discussion will surely be relevant even in the years to come. A perfect example for our discussion is the “color revolutions” and the uprisings of the so-called Arab spring. It is popularly known that the internet has been a major precipitating factor in all of this issues. Despite there being very little data in this events, studies shows that his internet played a more complicated role than what it might be suggested.
The Internet as an Outlet for Airing Views, but Is Their Outlet Only to the Like-Minded Individual?
When testing the hypothesis of the above statement it the research we will be able to infer from the research done by Pew Research Center in March 2012 and titled “Social Networking Sites and Politics.” The findings of this research were that the posting on internet social networking sites reveal a lot of surprises for the users when it comes to the political views of their pals. Four out of ten users revealed that they had discovered that the political beliefs of their friends were different that they had thought. A percentage of users also revealed that they had unfriended, hid or blocked others user because their comments were too frequent or much contradicted with theirs. Finally, three-quarters of users form the social networking site said that their friends posted at least a politics-related content on the from time to time. This majorly constituted about 40% of the entire population.
From the findings above, we can conclude that the internet has both a positive and a negative impact on how individuals relate to each other. When explaining the negative effect the internet poses to the citizen of a given country, Negroponte claimed that the internet will allow people to replace broad interest newspapers with a “Daily Me” precisely tailored to their needs (Negroponte 45). With this, therefore, democracy will be under much jeopardy as there will be less contact between individuals with similar or contrasting points of views to discuss and iron out their issues.
The findings of the above research also help justify Negroponte’s ideas. The majority of the individuals who would block his or unfriend their internet friend will be as a result of not wanting to accommodate other people’s views. Through this thereby we see the internet acting as a tool of spreading individuals apart as opposed to bringing them together.
No the other side of the divide the internet can help bring people together. However it should be noted, this is only to like-minded individuals. Apart from bringing people together the Internet also tends to make them more like-minded than they previously were. This argument is helped and supported by the arguments about homophily. This is made possible and easier through the different internet social technologies such as Facebook, blogging, Twitter and a myriad of other sites. The characteristic feature of this sites being hard to research makes it very difficult for the data to be patented.
With the convenience that comes with the internet, it is good to note that one can easily air his or her views freely and openly without being confined by certain parameters as would otherwise have been in the case of a newspaper. However, when airing your views, it is important to note that you should not infringe on the rights of other individuals.
Against the Study
Apart from the internet being a major source of information, it is the most widely used media form of communication. This latter role is what has made it a very important tool in the development of most things as they are today, even in the field of politics. The above facts have pointed us on how the internet has been used to shape the partisan politics we have today in the different governments. It is, however, important to note that not all studies agree with the views presented by the different scholars above. The following section will, therefore, will try to showcase the various studies that contradict the one’s above.
To start us off is Nickerson. Nickerson in his research examined whether email solicitations can help improve a political turnout. He found out that there are no evidence to support the hypothesis. This is every right is conflicting with the results found from the 61-million-people experiment above. Despite this know, we cannot dispute these findings without conducting further analysis on the said matter (Nickerson 79).
This, therefore, calls in for more political scientist scholars to embrace the discipline this important discipline. In so doing it is important that one adopts Henry Teune and Adam Przeworski three-decade-old prescriptions. It states that we should stop thinking about the `Internet' as a proper name, and instead start thinking of it as a bundle of mechanisms that we can in principle disentangle from each other (Przeworski and Teune 105). Through this we will be able to compare the internet to other communication Medias while systematically thinking on how politics is likely to be affected when the internet is assimilated in the everyday political activities.
Through the expansion of such alternative studies, we will be able to justify and prove more the claim that the internet has a strong effect on the partisan approach of politics.
Conclusion
As time goes by, the relationship between politics and the Internet will increasingly become a very important question in the discipline of political science. Ironically, it is forecasted that there will be fewer scholars delving into the field of internet and politics. However, this is not because of lack of interest by scholars, rather, because the integration of the internet would be so deep thereby making it very hard to study. This said scholars should start developing more thesis in the different field of politics concerning on the internet. For instance; testing the suitability of the internet in sourcing for political funding, the possibilities of integrating internet systems to form coherent political campaigning ground among other topics.
That aside from my study above it is evident that the internet plays a major role in partisan politics. The internet helps people air their varied political views thereby forming like-minded ties and fostering their parties’ agendas. The internet also helps in the enhancement of democracy as there is the free will of the people to be heard and known without fear of infringement. This is just some of the many benefits that the internet promises to impact on its people. Therefore with this at the back of our minds, we should be encouraged to contribute more to the development of this field of study and also on the use of this vital communication tool.
References
Benkler. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom . Yale University Press, 2006.
Bimber, Bruce. "”The Internet and political transformation: Populism, community, and accelerated pluralism." Polity ." (1998): 133-160.
Diamond. Liberation technology. Journal of Democracy (2010): 67-80.
DiMaggio and Paul. ""Social implications of the Internet." Annual review of sociology ." (2001): 307-336. DiMaggio, Paul, et al. .
Jonuleit and Schmitt. " "The regulatory T cell family: distinct subsets and their interrelations." ." The Journal of Immunology (2003).
Negroponte. Being Digital . 1995.
Nickerson. "Does email boost turnout? Quarterly Journal of Political Science." (2007): 67-90.
Przeworski and Teune. " "The logic of comparative social inquiry." ." (1970).
Shirky. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations . 2009.
Social Media and Political Engagement By Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady and Sidney Verba October 19, 2012 from: http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/
Birds of a feather tweet together: Examining cross-ideology exposure on Twitter – adapted from: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/internet/network-content-analyses-ideology-exposure-twitter
Social networking sites and politics By Lee Rainie and Aaron Smith March 12, 2012 adapted from: http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/12/social-networking-sites-and-politics/
Facebook experiment in social influence and political mobilization adapted from: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/elections/facebook-61-million-person-experiment-social-influence-political-mobilization
