14 - The Impact of the New Media

Summary

Everybody has a hypothesis about the impact of the new media. According to recent reports the new media have variously initiated or reinforced trends that have

• Weakened political party systems

• Offered a new platform for hate speech

• Stimulated a new capacity for grassroots democracy

• Permitted the third world to leapfrog painful stages of industrialization into an information economy

• Robbed children of their childhood and everybody of their sense of place

• Sped up the process of government responses to international crises precluding appropriate deliberation

• Isolated family members from each other

• Permanently stabilized the business cycle

• Exacerbated gaps between information haves and have-nots

• Limited the capacity of authoritarian regimes to control the flow of information within and outside of their realm

Readers will recognize many of these as preowned hypotheses, most not particularly low mileage at that. Much of the evidence of such effects is derived from the selective accumulation of anecdotes. Systematic empirical research struggles for methodologies capable of distinguishing the causal impact of new technologies from other historical trends and cycles. Further, the most radical new technologies such as the Internet are still at early stages of diffusion, challenging the analyst to distinguish the characteristics of early adopters and of early implementations from the underlying character of the technology.

I would argue that the academic community should acknowledge and encourage the journalistic battle of anecdotes. Although the question of whether the Internet will turn us into a nation of porno addicts or political know-nothings might seem less than optimally framed for designing research, it reflects the characteristic style of popular journalism and general public concern.