Recently in Public Persuasion-David Fredlund Category

After reading James Cerbie's draft of his research paper, it has become apparent that his is nearly my antithesis. His paper swoons over the benefits of Blogs, even going so far as to say that Blogs are a good source of Investigative Journalism. I'm sorry, but where did this come from? When was the last time any of us saw a blog that UNCOVERED a huge news story?

The excerpt from Al Gore's The Assault on Reason seemed to correlate EXACTLY with my thesis, only that it took a completely opposite stance on the subject. Gore voiced his opinion that the Internet is a savior for democracy, allowing people to get their news from a much more varied source, and presumably one that is unflinching in its neutrality and allowance of multiple points of view.

The problem with this, of course, was well paraphrased by David Brooks in his Editorial about the book, saying: "Has Gore ever actually looked at the Internet? He spends much of this book praising cold, dispassionate logic, but is that really waht he finds on most political blogs or in his e-mail folder?"

Leo Marx, and his theory that improved technology does not necessarily improve society, would probably believe that my thesis that blogs have changed the way that Americans receive news, and allow the populace to distribute news based on what they think is important.

                Marx argued that improved technology sometimes may be detrimental to civilization and technology may be used to repress, not necessarily helping society. I think that he would believe that the distribution of news by more decentralized sources may lead to a less political influence on the news, and blogging has done just that. While some blogs are still greatly influenced by political views, the spectrum is no longer as specialized, such as liberal newspapers or conservative radio.

                Marx would think that such a diverse group of sources for news will help to bring to the forefront of news what regular Americans think is important, instead of what biased news sources want us to believe.

Causing controversy has never been so difficult for me. As I pored over topics trying to think of how technology affects the United States, it never seemed so difficult for me to find something that would incite a reaction other than "Well, Duh."