The flavorful online launch raises a worry about the landscape of media democracy:

Is this brand of “Americone Dream”—described as “the sweet taste of liberty in your mouth”--a sign of reinvigorated popular of democracy in the US? Or is it a sign of democracy packaged for consumption—politics branded as tasty flavor of the day?

In the course of 40 interviews with political bloggers, online video producers, and members of The Daily Show online community, a research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, we see two significantly different models of democracy envisioned by new media participants.

In short: Democracy as mega-mart, vs. democracy as town hall.

In the mega-mart model of democracy, an increasing number of voices and broad range of opinions are displayed. Bloggers, journalists, and casual readers browse and consume the one(s) they like. Most read only 1% of 57 million blogs Technorati tracks, and most blogs comment primarily on existing mainstream media, rather than producing investigative journalism that might shape domestic and foreign policy.

In the megamart vision, the wide range of choice and freedom of expression are most significant—a vision of democracy modeled on American consumer choice. “You have a lot of people wagging their tongues and spouting off. It might be totally down a rabbit hole, making no sense at all or be very poorly expressed or be incredibly well expressed but a complete line of BS,” said one of our interviewees. “But it’s what you get with a democracy. It’s messy, it’s not always fun, but frankly it is fairly entertaining.”

The mega-mart model arguably produces an echochamber—a packaging of the handful of corporate (news) flavors into 57 million variations, most of which are not adding any new “facts” to the conversation. “Let’s not forget that the blogosphere is also one big echo chamber… of he-said, she-said exchanges. No one seems to be coming up with original content these days,” writes “jack of all blogs” on February 8.

Another “echochamber” problem is the fear that readers merely gravitate to blogs that suit their pre-conceived political views, and filter everything else out. One of the bloggers we interviewed describes “the kind of blogging where people are just reinforcing their prejudices and their ideologies and echoing each other, attacking the enemy.” Still others disagree with this dismissal--some research shows that readers are more likely to encounter views from diverse political perspectives in the blogosphere than in the traditional print news.

But many bloggers we interviewed dispute the megagmart model of democracy and see instead the emergence of a renewed “town hall”: a public forum in which judgments and opinions are rigorously debated. As one Left blogger we interviewed states of his attempts to educate and mobilize his readers, “I’m not just attempting to influence them while they’re online, I’m attempting to influence them for their entire lives.”

Our research evidences that bloggers who view media democracy on the town hall model are also more likely to be engaged in offline political activism. Contrary to the myth that online activism is supplanting offline political action – propagated by mainstream media headlines like that of Jennifer Earl’s recent Washington Post op-ed, “Where Have All the Protests Gone? Online” (February 4, 2007, p. B01) – our survey shows online activity may be increasing offline political engagement. Our survey of 157 bloggers and independent viral video producers evidences that 52% agree that, “My online political activity has caused me to take action in my local community (e.g., protest, boycott, etc.).” Since becoming active online, 29.3% of those we surveyed say they are “more active in ‘offline’ political activities,” and 63.1% “spend about the same amount of time in ‘offline’ political activities.” 59.5% say that, “My online participation in political forums has led me to join at least one political gathering or protest.”

Bloggers do contribute eyewitness reporting, specialized research, and rigorous investigation. For example, bloggers’ attention to reports that the US military had used illegal phosphorus weapons during the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, and on-the-ground reporting by blogger/journalist Dahr Jamail of Iraq Dispatches, pushed the story to prominence in the UK Independent. The reports forced the Pentagon to admit that white phosphorus had in fact been used in Fallujah. “All the information came from bloggers, came from people doing thins like finding government documents, finding instances where soldiers admitted in filed manuals that they used it and what it looked like, and that the call sign was Whiskey P,” said a blogger who helped investigate the story.

Even blogs that “merely” comment may impact perception and policy through fact checking and reframing. Bloggers show little deference for traditional media, who “used to be priests on high dispensing their knowledge to the unwashed masses.” But now “we fact check the crap out of them. And if they’re lying, it’s going to come out,” stated one blogger. Mainstream media, in the words of another blogger, are “watching their back a little more because they know they’re going to get caught out if they do anything egregious.”

Bloggers describe their work as participation in a conversation: “I think the main value is it brings more voices to the table. Like by comparison to corporate media where they pretend that there’s maybe two sides to every argument, which is ridiculous.”

A contributor to a prominent US military blog explains, “I like to argue because it helps form my opinion. I’m not bound to any opinion, and arguing with smart people who disagree is the best way to find holes in your own argument.”

This model of democracy has little in common with shopping; rather, it involves engaged dialogue and collective search for “truth.” As one interviewee said, blogging “allow[s] a level of citizen participation. You have a voice as well as a vote instead of just going and pulling a lever and being an anonymous number, you actually contribute something to the debate.”

We currently face a good test case for these debates. In 2003 when the Bush administration fabricated claims about stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, the political blogosophere was only nascent. As the war drums roll again, this time with contested claims about Iranian intervention in Iraq, will the robust blogosophere “fact-check the crap out” out of Bush administration claims about Iranian weapons supplies? And if so, will media democracy mobilize enough public protest to be heard much less shift foreign policy?

If that is the goal, now is the time to for bloggers to hone their arguments and demonstrate their fact-checking skills. So far, no U.S. mainstream media have yet disputed the factual distortions of the President’s State of the Union—such as that “Shia and Sunni extremists” all “want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East, and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.”

Will debates in the blogosphere be able to challenge Western pre-conceptions about the relationships and goals of the different Islamic movements operating in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and around the world? Or will we all just logon to our computers for another taste of Americone Dream?

Megan Boler is an Associate Professor at OISE/University of Toronto and is currently conducting a three-year funded research project on uses of digital media for political dissent. Andrea Schmidt is an independent journalist and researcher based in Toronto.

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