In his book The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Joe Trippi, a former campaign manager for Dean for America, discusses how the Internet will revolutionize democracy. Americans, he says, have been stuck for years with television — a top-down medium — as their source of news, but the Internet has now empowered people to make changes.
Trippi identifies the democratic Internet revolution as the harbinger of bottom-up media, where the people who read the news actually get to contribute, such as with blog media, instead of idly being force-fed information from a talking box. The Dean campaign, the focus of his book, illustrated the phenomenon because its supporters ran it largely via the Internet.
The concept of an Internet democratic revolution is so hip that even our progressive university community is beginning to get into the idea, including on the website of this newspaper. Over the winter, The Diamondback established an interactive website where readers can post feedback for every article or column in the paper. Instead of crossing their fingers that their letter to the editor will be printed, readers can now have a voice in the news and give feedback for everyone to read.
Bottom-up media means everyone gets a voice, including half-wits and quacks. However, with the Internet, at least you know that “Bob’s Political Blog” may be a little more biased and a little less credible than what you read on Washingtonpost.com. Because the Internet is run by the people and for the people, it is a self-managed and self-maintained medium. With the Internet, if you don’t like what you read, you can move on to another site (sorry, Bob).
It’s not that easy with top-down media. FOX News and its misleading slogan, “We Report, You Decide,” exemplifies the top-down nature of television by essentially giving you a spoonful of news with its own brand of seasoning. The Associated Press reported the findings of Columbia University’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which said 73 percent of the FOX News stories covering the war in Iraq last year actually had the newscasters’ opinions interjected into the reporting. Making you shake your television in frustration is about as close to interactive media as FOX gets.
This university could come to understand that frustration with top-down media if it does not learn some of the lessons of Internet democracy, especially regarding the adoption of Cdigix’s downloading service. Many students believe the decision may be a bit misguided. Complaints stem from the lack of options the service provides, the lack of compatibility with iPods or iTunes, the requirement of Internet Explorer to use the program and the denial of access to graduate students.
Not to speak too soon, but though the university may have selected the program based on “the breadth of the program and competitive pricing,” Cdigix is already looking like it will meet the demands of a select group of university music listeners. If Cdigix is not the answer to the file sharing needs of our school, the university may have made the mistake of employing a top-down strategy, such as in the medium of television, with its students. You still have a choice with your music service. Choosing between Cdigix, Rhapsody, iTunes or Napster may make you feel like you’re just as limited as scrolling through FOX, ABC and CBS, but the wide-open spaces of the Internet create essentially limitless options for file sharing. If you don’t like what Cdigix has to offer, you don’t have to use it. Many people on the campus are shut out of using the service anyway, so just like clicking away from Bob’s website, you can get your music needs somewhere else if you want to — regardless of whether you choose to pay for it.
Patrick Reaves is a sophomore history and journalism major. He can be reached at jreaves@umd.edu.
