"Information surplus in the digital age" seems very important topic in that this phenomenon raise lots of intriguing questions just as raised by the author.
I am particularily interested in New Questions on Media Effects section in this chapter. In particular, what I am interested in is something like this question, whether and how information surplus influence fragmentation of our society.
With the advent of the Internet, communication scholars have shown interest in and concern about the social impact of this explosion in new media. Among various debates over the role of the Internet in contemporary democratic process, “fragmentation” thesis has been prominent. Because of information surplus or increased media channel and choice, people increasingly tend to give their attention to what they want and what they want to see.
Some are suspicious of this increased control over communication on the Web. They see such power as enhancing selective exposure, and leading to the fragmentation of public opinion and the polarization of politics, all of which may hurts democracy (fragmentation).
This argument is very similar to what has been mentioned in the chapter, "as media content diversifies, the concept of "agenda" could be expanded to incorporate heterogeneous items, such as news as well as non-news items" (p. 102).
Then, does information surplus lead to fragmentation? What do you think?
Here's one of the answers:
Lee, J. (2008). The effect of the internet on homogeneity of the media agenda: A test of the fragmentation thesis, Journalism & Mass communication Quarterly, 84, 745-760.
H1: The rank order of the overall blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda.
H2a: The rank order of the conservative blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda.
H2a: The rank order of the liberal blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda.
(This was what I was planning to talk about last class for my research critique. Sorry for late posting.)
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