midaddic-blog

[midaddic-blog]

Information and Democracy : Does more information helps Democracy?

[Data Set of Choice] I would like to work with Gapminder data for my project.

I find social issues attract my attention and keep me interested because there are many factors working behind every single social phenomenon and there can’t be a simple explanaiton to it. It is interesting that every factors are so interrelated, you end up in a place where you’d never expect after following clues across all dimensions of the society.

Gapminder provides a vast set of data that fulfills my interest in society. It covers so many aspects of our world today, so I can find correlations of factors by comparing them between countries.

[Main] My main question is : Does more access to information make better democracy? Or to explore the association between information access and the level of democracy.

I am interested in democracy today where people are given access to abundant information.

Today, the citizens are informed much better than ever in the history of democracy. General public has about the same amount of information as their leaderships do on most of the issues, thanks to all kinds of the media.

[Main] Hypothesis : More access to information does not necessarily leads to better democracy (Negative correlation).

Democracy is based on voting, and information helps better judgement at it.

But at the same time, better democracy provides equal opportunity for all kinds of media regardless of their quality. So there can be more information including both good(truthful) and bad(fake).

Bad information amongst all information accessible for the public affects public opinion by distracting people from an issue or distorting the facts.

[Second] My second question is : What affects media to have better quality of information?

There should be a factor that positively correlated with the quality of media / information that is being provided to the public. So I would like to find the factors based on the pool of countries having good (meets certain criteria) democracy.

[Second] Hypothesis : Better judgement of the public which is being maintained by good education, not the amount of information given can attain control on the quality of information.

Better education makes better judgement.

[Personal Code Book] I will include all the variables under related section as below;

Communication : Accessibility to Information

Society : Democracy

More Data : WDI related

• [Literature Review]

○ Search term : “information and democracy”

○ 1st reading

§ Literature : Frank Webster, 2011, Information and democracy : the weakening of social democracy in Media Perspectives for the 21st century, Rutledge, 2011, Pages 21-39

§ https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=adSsAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA20&ots=yayuELcXoR&dq=information%20and%20democracy&lr&hl=ko&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false

§ Takeaway :

□ “Social democracy” has a penchant of imposing state intervention in order to ensure information integrity. Mature democracies have deficits in terms of information integrity, mainly caused by dedication to profit maximization of commercial media. It makes social democrates distrust information created in democracies.

□ There is negative correlation between maturity of democracy and information integrity.

○ 2nd reading

§ Literature : Bruce Bimber, 2003, Information and American Democracy : Technology in the Evolution of Political Power, Cambridge University Press, 2003

§ https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=5fpneXcFVBwC&lpg=PR11&ots=ZYNLrf_ghm&dq=information%20and%20democracy&lr&hl=ko&pg=PR11#v=onepage&q=information%20and%20democracy&f=false

§ Takeaway :

□ Studies on uses of information technology by political actors support one or more of three findings : 1. Information technology does not affect political engagement, learning at the individual level or public opinion. 2. Digital devide in public between who’s online and offline. 3. Political entrepreneurs using information technology as cheap and effective way to overcome resource barriers. The book inquires after these three findings, looking for the interrelationships amongst them.

□ There is negative correlation between information level and political engagement.

After reading the literature above, I am more sure that my hypothesis should be right. And I realized that it’s more than just media issue, but there also are some factors as the will and motives maneuver behind information.