Selnow, G. W. (2000). Internet Ethics. In R. E. Jr. Denton (Ed.), Political Communication Ethics: an Oxymoron? (pp. 203-241). CT:Westport: Praeger publishers.

The chapter titled "Internet Ethics" by Gary W. Selnow conducts an exploratory scrutiny into influences of the Internet on political communication within the United States. This article explains the social and media effects of the Internet-based political campaigns on democracy, and discusses some ethical issues caused by the participation of the Internet in political communication.

I preferred this chapter to review for the following reason. "Internet Ethics" is one essay in the anthology discussing specifically and comprehensively about the Internet-based political communication and related ethical issues. Eyeing the revolution brought by the Internet in the past decade, I am personally fascinated with researches on the Internet in communication field. Selnow’s essay is the first article I read systematically concerning the Internet-related issues in the field of political communication. Like many other counterparts in other communication areas, the essay is enlightening, perceptive and inevitably provocative and disagreement-arousing. By reviewing the essay, I examine the role of the Internet myself and make efforts to combine ethic theories with it.

In the first section of his article, Selnow presents a brief description of the progress of electronic media’s participation in political activities. By making a comparison between Internet audiences and television audiences, Selnow proclaims three major differences between the two groups. The claim later works as a statement of the internet’s characteristics and foundation for Selnow's major point that for political communication the Internet possesses positive and negative potentials. The vast differences by Selnow can be generalized into the following categories: audiences’ ways of obtaining information, audiences' interaction with media and audience’s roles in the communication process. According to Selnow, Web audiences deliberately seek for information from web sites, which is different from the way channel surfers often land on television programs "by accident"(p 204). Web users are relatively "active because the Internet demands their constant feedback" (p 204), thus they are "participants while television audiences are mere observers." (p 204) In this statement, Selnow concentrates on the relationship and interactive process between audiences and media, and yet he neglects the double characters of the Internet – it is a form of mass communication and a channel of interpersonal communication as well. One of the most powerful and fascinating functions inherent in the Internet is the capability of supplying the public with a virtually public environment in which Web users' freedom of speech are maximized with the aid of new technology. In online discussion settings, Web users’ hold the ability to deliberately circumvent the control of gatekeeping which prevails in the traditional media and thus they possess rights to make their opinions accessible to more people whether they hold the agreement or disagreement. So far Selnow seems to ignore the interpersonal communication function of the Internet and equate the consumptions of the Internet to those of the television, which are actually distinguished from each other as one-way and two-way communication. His preference on usage of the word “audiences” instead of “users” suggests his preposition that the interactions among the Internet users are slight or at least not as strong as their interaction with the media per se. This preposition sets the tone for his later proclamation about the relatively subordinate roles of the Internet users.

To set the interactive feature of the Internet into the political communication context, Selnow points out that the traditional one-way power relationship between the candidates and voters shifts to a nascent two-way one. In the Internet-based new power relationship voters are not only mere passive receivers of information from candidates who hold priorities and privileges of expression but also active message senders whose feedback might in turn influence the manipulation and decision-making of the candidates. Selnow concludes that “powers [that] grow from users’ capacity to send information up-line to the campaigns, to other voters, and to organization.”(p 204) However, it is pitiful to fail to find more support on the clarification of the significance in voter-to-voter communication in later parts. In his explanation on the power shift to voters, Selnow emphasizes on “the Internet’s low threshold of entry” which renders the “dirt-poor organizations” more accessibility to the voters. It is obvious that he pays more attention to the utilization of the Internet by different level interest groups than by grassroots class. In this case, those voters who seek for their own political rights obtain great benefits from the new media via low-cost grouping and propagandizing online. Regretfully, Selnow doesn't point out the effects on the other voters, or say, the majority of voters. Moreover, another question comes up: does the unbalanced power relationship disappear or it simply shifts from between candidates and voters to candidates and voters who have access to the Internet and those who don’t? Will the permeation of the Internet into everyday life arouse the similar problem as “knowledge gap” in average people’s political life? The digital divide phenomenon (Beers, 2004) in knowledge field seems be able to find its twin in political communication field – digital political inequality. The concepts of information haves and have-nots can be also expanded here as digital political rights haves and have-nots.

In Selnow’s position, the Internet is a decentralized media with “population wide appeal and global reach” (p 211). The feature is an exemplum of the “[in]ability to reach a critical mass” which is described by Selnow as “one of the big problems voters have faced in the past few decades” (p 205). The blessing voters obtain from this newly decentralized media setting is their new powers, which are described as “almost anyone can set up his or her own operation.”(p 212) Besides the platform, according to Selnow, decentralization makes individual’s “speech unfettered by the standards of truth and accuracy, unrestrained by principles of fairness and good taste.”

Selnow then makes some ethical judgments from two ethical perspectives-- rules/rights and results/effects. He builds up the ethic theoretical frameworks and explains them concretely in the example of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. In the endnote he made attributions of the Moral Rules and Moral Results, and identified the two ethical stances respectively with deontological ethics and situational ethics. The rules/rights perspective fits with the principles of Kant’s deontology who believed that moral duties stress the necessity or obligation to adhere to the moral law. Consequences (ends or purposes) are in fact inconsequential and should not be considered. Nevertheless, it seems more reasonable to classify the result/effects into utilitarianism which states rightness of an action entirely depends on the value of its consequences.

Selnow focuses on three ethically problematic Internet uses and effects for political communication: gathering personal information about the Internet user without their consent by technical means (cookie jar and site tracking); disseminating inaccurate and misleading information by taking advantage of anonymity of the Internet; and decentralizing media which leads to the atomization/fragmentation of electorate.

In terms of invasion of privacy, Selnow warns the abuse of gathered personal information is voter manipulation, which is “byproduct of political agenda setting” (p 219). In this statement, the role of the Internet in agenda setting might be exaggerated to some extent in that the media effects of the Internet are still under discussion in academia. Another concern is that in general, the Internet users are exposed in a complicated mixture of all forms of media, including print and electronic media. The relatively stronger agenda setting effects of other dominant media, say, television and newspaper, should be taken into account. Even in today’s information age, the Internet is regarded more as a complement to other media rather than a substitute of them. Moreover, the decision-making process of voters is the outcome of a series of personal and social factors which relate with an individual’s socioeconomic status, ethnicity, sex, education…etc. Thus the effectiveness of voter manipulation on the Internet might be greatly weakened by the involvements of different internal and external factors. However, despite the aforementioned flaws, the statement is an alarm bell for the upcoming challenges the Internet users and political organizations might confront with the development of the media.

In terms of dissemination of inaccurate and misleading information, Selnow posits that the solution for this problem is “not to regulate the posting of material on the Web but to school audiences on the uses of it.”(p 220) His reason of not employing legitimate methods to control the irresponsibly published content online is “attempts to reign in offenders would only inflame them” and “free speech and galloping technology would frustrate any attempts at controlling them.” In the time when the Internet was initially recognized as a mass media, the public cheered at the birth of it as a realization of real free speech. However, the absence of traditional gatekeeping arouses the problems of useless and even harmful information widely spread online which severely impaired the integrity of the Internet communication. It will be a challenge for audiences who are cultivated in a filtered environment but have to deal with false information and take the responsibility of gatekeepers themselves. Education aiming to enhance the Internet users’ perception of the validity of information is compulsory, and yet the self-protection should not be the only prevention means they can resort to. To seek the balance point between maintaining the citizens’ freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment and conducting legitimate surveillance over the online content to protect vulnerable groups like children, certain regulation on the posting of material on the Web should be set up to eliminate the negative effects of the Internet as much as possible. A well proposed regulation will not imperil the exiting civil rights of free speech but guarantee the maximization of the whole society’s interests. Anyhow, on today’s Internet and the one in the future, Selnow’s suggestion that everyone engage this medium with appropriate suspicion would be a guideline for the audiences to direct their behaviors online.

Selnow expresses his concerns with fragmentation brought by the Internet and negative consequences caused by the decentralized medium. His biggest concern is that the pluralism might be disintegrated by the intentional sub targeting of the Internet and thus the unity of the whole nation would collapse. In his account, the characteristic of incomprehensible abundance and focus of the Internet might appeal to audiences and categorize them into small units of interest groups. Traditional media like television and newspaper are regarded by him as positive forces that make efforts to maintain the pluralism and thus the unity is guaranteed. This point is quite the opposite of Denton (p 91-124) and Woodward (p 125-146) who are fearful of the negative impacts of television and print journalism on the ethics of political communication. In my point of view, the positive effects of traditional media seem to be overplayed in some degree. The dominance roles and unavoidable political tendency of television and print media have ever been regarded as representations of big company/organization/governments’ interests who are behind those media and support them. Selnow also attributes the content uniformity to the centralization of mass media (p 210). The fragmentation which subverts the centralization is sure to be taken as negative on the premise that centralization is good. However, the premise is situational—it depends on whom the media serve, that means, the media can not be truly neutral. It came no surprise that reports on the identical political events from different perspectives might buttress opposite standpoints. In this sense, the centralization of mass media is definitely the centralization of dominant interest groups’ wills.

Selnow worries that the fragmentation would lead to the breakdown of the common purpose and shared interests. His underlying assumption can be defined as the monotony of individual’s concentration. Put another way, individuals can only focus on a limited number of issues and he/she would deliberately ignore any information about issues he/she does not care about. However, any reasonable audience could obtain whatever information he/she wants—even those opposite to what he/she supports. Therefore for politicians, the wise way is to open to comments from audiences and cherry pick campaign ideas from those feedbacks. Selnow seems to neglect the fact that the Internet could serve as a platform for the communication within separate political groups and among them as well. Audiences’ roles as submissive receivers would be changed—no only they would take part in suggestive discussion in their own interest group but also participate in debates with opponents. Various grassroots groups’ voices would possess the capability to target global audiences; this is unimaginable in the pre-Internet era—space of a whole page and prime time were occupied by mainstream voices. In the process of virtual debates in cyberspace, different points of view would be compared and common purpose might be discovered and shared. According to Duncan (1973), the ability to form voluntary associations, and to decide issues through open and free public discussion, was a sign of political maturity.

Selnow’s essay was written a few years ago—a flash in human history but long enough for the Internet in politics. The Internet has become another battlefield for politicians and they did win a victory, at least financially, from it. On April 2, the Kerry campaign revealed that it raised over $26 million during the first quarter of 2004 through online donations. That figure accounts for slightly more than half the total amount of contributions received by the campaign over the same period. In one day, March 4, the website raked in $2.6 million (Hui, 2004). While campaign blogs have proven their ability to help raise funds and generate a buzz, their influence at the ballot box is debatable. Selnow’s essay did pave a path for the coming researcher to delve into the issue.

References

Beers, K. (2004). Equality and the Digital Divide. Voices From the Middle, 11(3), 4.

Denton, R. E. Jr. (2000). Dangers of "Telodemocracy": How the Medium of Television Undermines American Democracy. In R. E. J. Denton (Ed.), Political Communication Ethics: an Oxymoron? (pp. 125-146). CT:Westport: Praeger publishers.

Duncan, H. D. (1973). Communicative Bonds as Moral Bonds. In T. Lee (Ed.), Communication:Ethical and Moral Issues (pp. 73-96). New York: Lordon and Breacn, Science Publishers, Inc.

Hui, S. (2004). Blogging on the campaign trail: How blogs are changing electoral politics. Retrieved April 15, 2004, 2004 from http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/08_blogging.html

Woodward, G. C. (2000). Narrative Form and the Deceptions of Modern Journalism. In R. E. J. Denton (Ed.), Political Communication Ethics: an Oxymoron? (pp. 125-146). CT:Westport: Praeger publishers.