Media Access to the Public Sphere

Studies on media access would be incomplete without assessing it within the context of democratic participation, central to the notion of a democratic society. McCrery and Newhagen, 2003 raise this critical issue of access to the public sphere and the elasticity, which surrounds its definition. Their conceptualization of the public sphere as a combination of process and opinion spheres is a credible way of representing the differences and the interactions that occur between the political elites and the mass public, especially in the context of the policy making process. This model while capturing the broad essence of the phenomenon of public sphere may be too simplistic. Neither does it capture the gradations in the political efficacy of the mass public nor does it reflect the differences between the political elite. They have not delved into how the differential Internet access has mediated or changed the dynamics of the public sphere and with what implications. The focus appeared to be on historical background rather than on future ramifications of public sphere membership in the altered landscape of Internet access.
In addition, the article on the skills and motivations of interactive media audiences in the use of radio was a total throwback. This discussion would have been more appropriate in a journal or book devoted to the discussion of radio as a medium of accessing the public sphere. The term interactivity has come to be synonymous with Internet rather than radio. It appears a misnomer, to me, to equate radio as being an interactive medium and calls to question the definition of interactivity. A search for a good definition of interactivity revealed that there is no universally accepted definition of interactivity. Also, interactivity could mean different things for different media. Based on Hofstetter’s, 2003 description of radio as an interactive medium it follows that interactivity in this context means content that forces radio audiences to participate either passively (by exposing themselves to political content) or actively by calling in the radio political talk show hosts or participating in political activities. It is no surprise then with such a broad interpretations of interactivity, virtually any media would qualify as being interactive The next logical question/step would be to determine the degree of interactivity on the continuum of what constitutes as more or less interactive medium and identify its defining characteristics.
A similar predicament surrounds the issue of digital divide or unequal access to information technology that may be responsible for the gap that exists between different stratum of people and their disparate development. Dijk, 2003, contends that lack of universal availability of hardware dominates the discussion on digital divide. (p.238). which, may not be the only lens through which to examine the digital divide. His cumulative and recursive model of media access premised on—mental access, material access, skill access and usage access is similar to the model proposed by Newhagen and Bucy, 2003, except for the usage access and may fill the gap in explaining the digital divide. However, he also raises some valid points about digital divide that hits at the core For instance, there might not exist a digital divide because the distribution of Internet technology among the population approaches normality i.e. the averages of income, ethnicity, and gender rapidly parallel society as a whole (p.243). They are old inequalities that are reproduced rather than new inequalities. Conclusions of the SCP research team illustrates that differences of skill and use are smaller than differences of possession and once the threshold of possession of computer and network connection has passed, material and social resources plays a relatively minor role. To me these arguments seem convincing and muster at least a closer inspection. The debate on the causes and implication of digital divide is not new and is open to arguments, as most likely my detractors would like to conclude and weigh in.

Psycho-social and cultural dimensions to media access

In the article, “Avoiding computer: Does personality play a role?” Finn and Korukonda’s (2003), argue that investigations into understanding the reasons for Internet use should track back to antecedent conditions such as personality traits in evaluating the role of socio-psychological origins of needs within the Uses and Gratification perspective. Their findings, however, did not conclusively prove any association between personality traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, and psychoticism. (I personally feel that Digman, 1989, 1990, classification of five personality traits is a better reflection of personality traits than Eysenck, 1991, three personality traits. p. 77.) and Internet use. It is my view that diffusion of innovation might provide a better framework to understand the reasons why people do not use the Internet even though they might have technological access and content access. According to the Diffusion of Innovation theory, the characteristic of the innovation affects their rate of adoption. Rogers, 1995, has identified it as
Relative Advantage- the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes
Compatibility- the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters
Complexity-the degree to which an innovation is difficult to understand
Trialability-the degree to which an innovation might be experimented with on a limited basis.
Observability-the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others (p. 15-16.)
My contention is, instead of having an inward perspective into personality traits (of which there can be innumerable at any given point in time) an outward perception of the advantages of the innovation (Internet) would be a better route into gaining insights into the reasons for the use or disuse of Internet. This line of reasoning is also consistent with the information gathered from exploratory interviews as part of The LaGrange Public Internet Initiative discussed in the article “Reducing barriers to access via public information infrastructure: The LaGrange Public Internet Initiative. The African-American male in the interview used the LITV for searching information as opposed to sending e-mails (relative advantage), the Caucasian women in her late 60’s subscribed to LITV because it was less complex than using the computer (complexity), the father in a family of four used LITV because his past experiences with computer at work was positive (compatibility) (p.147-148).
In addition, the first of Carnegie Mellon University HomeNet studies that considered relationship between two personality dimensions and Internet use-social extraversion and innovativeness did not account for significant differences in Internet use even after controlling for demographic characteristic or socio-economic. Furthermore, in the second HomeNetToo project, relationships between the five personality factors and Internet use (John, 1990) did not conclusively predict any strong association between personality dimension and needs satisfied by the Internet. (p. 162). These results suggest that we should be looking in a different direction to account for Internet use and the Uses and Gratification theory and the theory of Diffusion of Innovation may prove to be more robust platforms for explaining Internet use when controlled for media access—both technological and content access. (Please note I am not arguing against Uses and Gratification theory earlier but just against the antecedent factor of the socio-psychological origin to the needs.).
On a final note, the article on Social and Psychological Influences on Computer User Frustration as a theory wasn’t to compelling since frustration is not uniquely related to Internet usage alone and could involve any number of other media usage for instance trying to figure out how to use the different remote controls for the DVD player, the TIVO, The satellite TV and the audio system all hooked together. Moreover, their schematic representation of the frustration model would have made better sense if represented thus:








Incident factors
Goal commitment
Self-Efficacy
Importance
Individual factors
Computer
Anxiety and Attitudes



Productive Progress

Severity of Interruption
Time Loss
Goal Interruption
Cultural Influence
Societal Influence
Learning
Mood
Psychological Factors
Strength of Desire
Anticipation
Expectation
Frustration


Frustration Model
References:
Rogers, E. (1995). Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed., New York: Free Press.

John, O. P. (1990). The Big Five factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires, In L.Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality theory and research. (p.261-275). New York: Guilford.

Critical approaches and methods to cyberculture studies

Baym, 2006 raises the question of quality in prevalent qualitative research on the Web and draws attention to the peculiarities of qualitative research methods as they apply to the Web. Her observations are valid particularly about the standards that characterize good qualitative research. I would also include the experience of the researcher as an important determinant of the quality. In addition, data triangulation may also serve as an indicator of good quality. It would have been helpful if Baym, 2006 had provided statistics giving an insight to what percentage of the research conducted on the Internet was qualitative. It would also be interesting to know what types of qualitative research methods were used. Were they interviews, focus groups, historical reviews, case studies, generic analysis (a method of rhetorical criticism), or experiments? Web research, one would assume is more amenable to quantitative research, for instance online surveys or content analysis.
The Web sphere analysis method articulated by Foot, 2006 appears to be promising although in most cases the Web site developer may not be the content developer too. In most corporate, government (federal, state, or local), institutional or commercial Web sites the Web site is designed by the IT department whereas the content is determined by another individual or set of individual. If the researcher is investigating the Web for socio-political content the Web sphere analysis might prove useful however, if one has to explore the structural dynamics Web sphere analysis would not be an appropriate choice.
Both Sandvig, 2006 and Elmer, 2006 individually seem to agree that the Internet may not be the boon for cyber culture development and proliferation. It is interesting to note how Elmer, 2006 views the hierarchical operationalization of content as being a barrier to the development of cyber culture and by implication the empowerment of individuals. “Web has become increasingly operationalized through hierarchical methods and subtly directs users towards preferred—and allied providers of — content goods and services.” (p.159). Sandvig, 2006 also draws attention to the fact that the inherent design of the Internet may be to blame or responsible for stifling the production of cyberculture. That may be so. I would however, argue that the sites that have become popular or boast of large number of site visitors also started as nameless or insignificant Web sites or blogs etc. This suggests that Elmer's, 2006 and Sandvig’s summarization may be fallacious and it would be probably more apt to state that Internet or the Web discriminates between content as any other media does between what is good, what is not so good, and therefore, what is popular and not so popular.
Another aspect that was puzzling was the framing of the digital divide in terms of “digital destitution.” Gordo, 2006 defines “digital destitution” as the negative consequences of digital divide that arises because of the technology-based alienation and deprivation to participate, compete, and prosper in today’s knowledge-based economics. At the outset, it appears as old wine in a new bottle. Her basic concern is how community-based organizations can use technology to support low-income populations if there are no policies mandating organizations to integrate information technology into work processes and social service delivery systems. She uses extensive schematic representation to represent the development of community technology and elements that measures the pace of development but how does Community Training Center (CTC) like Plugged In help at the practical level to reverse the digital destitution. What policies are currently in place? Her resolution of the digital destitution issue raises more questions than answers. Nevertheless, as long as the policy researchers ask questions and they attract attention and debate, it is a good sign.