The Internet and Democracy in America
By Stephen Earl Bennett
It is hardly surprising that the internet has generated controversy over its political impact. Matthew Kerbel describes it as “the most democratic medium in American history.” Pippa Norris worries, on the other hand, about “the digital divide,” which results when well-educated, well-heeled young men quickly adopt a new technology, while women, minorities, the elderly, and the poor lag behind. An American Political Science Association (APSA) task force on “Inequality and American Democracy” makes an especially pessimistic assessment of the ’net’s impact on American democracy, observing that “the Internet appears to be reinforcing inequalities because it is disproportionately accessible to—and used by—the affluent, non-Hispanic whites, and the highly educated.” Consequently, “the Internet may . . . widen the disparities between participants and the politically disengaged.”
There are three problems with this assessment. First, it depends on one’s conception of democracy. For some, anything that exacerbates inequality is deleterious to democracy. Others, however, do not equate democracy with equality. Joseph Schumpeter defines it as a polity in which elites compete freely for the public’s votes. Norris argues that this “perspective reflects one of the most widely accepted understandings of how representative institutions should function in a democracy, thereby providing important insights into the role of parties, legislatures, and civic society, as well as the individual role of citizens.” If democracy is characterized by competition for votes, anything that affects communication among elites, between elites and citizens, and among citizens is a proper subject for analysis.
Second, the task force seems not to appreciate that the internet has changed as its popularity has grown. Political parties, interest groups, candidates for public office, and even media outlets, have incorporated the ’net into their daily operations, thereby altering this new technology.
An even more serious problem with the task force’s assessment is that it rests on a dated conception of the internet’s audience. Any assessment of the internet’s impact has to come to grips with change in its audience. As Robert Klotz notes, “A research agenda that reflects the technology should be longitudinal, since the internet is always changing.” Brian Krueger points out, however, that “most current studies take a decidedly static approach to understanding the impact of Internet participation.”
So is the internet a boon for or a bane to democracy? Changes in the internet’s audience, as revealed by polls conducted for the Times Mirror and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press between 1995—the first time Pew asked about accessing the internet—and 2006 indicate that, contrary to the APSA task force’s dark murmurings, this new technology may be a welcome development.
The internet was initially adopted by young, well-educated, wealthy, white males. The Times Mirror Center’s 1995 “Technology in the American Household” poll found that persons in the highest income quintal were 4.6 times more likely to report accessing the internet than were those in the lowest quintal. Individuals with advanced college or university experience were 21.0 times more likely to report using the internet than those whose formal schooling ended before completing high school. Individuals eighteen to twenty-nine years of age were 6.3 times more likely than those sixty-five or over, men were almost three times as likely as women, and African Americans were just as likely as whites to say they used the internet.
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