Blindspot!
From Issue: 632 [Read full issue]
Private Realities
Today's consumer can wake up to a personalized selection of news waiting on her or his computer screen, click on a saved Web address in a browser, and get the latest stock reports or sports story, complete with integrated video and animated graphics. This is the age of information when we want it, how we want it, all automatically updated to suit our tastes, as smart search engines learn our preferences. We are approaching a time when each individual lives in a personalized information and media cocoon, protecting and promoting each lifestyle, while making common issues and concerns more distant and harder to fathom.
Perhaps individuals balancing the dilemmas of a fragmented, personalized media system against the potential of a digitally networked society will make their information choices in sensible ways. Perhaps people will not turn away from the tough problems in society and the world. Given the choice to construct increasingly private realities, people may choose to link to information sources that keep them informed about the problems of those who cannot help themselves (or who cannot afford the communication technologies required to be in the political loop). However, it is also possible that people will avoid issues that (they think) do not affect them, that seem hopeless, or that require more thought and human concern than they care to give. Research on news habits and political participation patterns is not encouraging. Studies of news consumption from the late 1980s through the turn of the millennium reveal steady declines in attention to national, international, and local politics. These declines are associated with decreasing likelihood of voting. At the same time, rapidly expanding networks of digital communication offer the potential for people to stay in touch with large amounts of distant information at relatively low cost.
A prime concern is that, left to their own choices in this information environment, people may seek out only the points of view they already agree with and form virtual communities with only those people who share their religious, economic, social, or entertainment preferences. One aspect of this closing circle of information around the individual is that social reality itself becomes an increasingly personal production.
Compiled From:
"News: The Politics of Illusion" - W. Lance Bennett, pp. 252-262