Grasping at Straws is Matthew Hindman's Forte

         Matthew Scott Hindman, in his book "The Myth of Digital Democracy," argues that while many think that the freedom and ability to access limitless content on the internet has made the nation more democratic, in reality it has not, and may even be delegating more power to the top media companies. Although his arguments are valid, as a modern internet user I have to disagree. The internet has made the United States more democratic when it comes to political sites or others. It has done so in a few ways:
1) The limitless political opinions available on the internet allows people to find anything if they look efficiently/hard enough.
2) The websites that are most popular have gotten that way in the most democratic way possible. Search engines rank pages by their popularity (among other criteria as well) and therefore it is the people essentially voting on that sites make it to the top of the search engine lists. And what is more democratic than a vote?
3) The internet allows for more people with similar views on political topics to congregate, share ideas, rant, discuss and debate. Before, if people wanted to express or discuss their political ideas they would have to do so either shouting at their television, chatting with their friends, writing letters, or getting paper and pen petitions etc. Now millions of people can talk in one place, read the latest opinions of their favorite blogger, or sign an online petition and get a lot more support for their cause.

         The most important aspect of the internet's democracy is that you can find blogs/websites that agree with your own personal opinions or challenge them in an infinite number of ways with an infinite number of perspectives because the internet is a gateway for anyone to express their opinion. And while an up and coming or unknown blog may be harder to find in a search engine, if you type in the keywords of what you think about the topic you are almost sure to find some of the little guys. For instance, if you believe that abortion is an abomination of human life and will do nothing but cause destruction to the human race if kept legal, you should type in "abortion, abomination" To prove my point, having done no research whatsoever I typed in those words. This is what I got as the very first site. His opening paragraph, in plain black, size 10 Ariel font (I checked) says this: "Abortion is an abomination at the very least. In the United States alone, in a country with Christian roots and where almost 80 percent of the population identify with Christianity there were over fifty million children trashed. In other countries, like China, hundreds of millions of kids have been trashed and even eaten in the name of birth control. How can the world not be judged in our time??"
WIth the heading banner:

So naturally, I think:

          All joking aside, the website is clearly a one man job made by a Christianity fanatic who has very strong opinions about the political topic of abortion. The site looks like it gets maybe 100 hits a day and probably by people who type in similar words into a search engine. Things like this make the internet more democratic. Or, republican in this case (:P) because I found something through utilizing a search engine that was not one of the top 100 or maybe even 1,000 or so sites! Hindman does bring up a great point that many people do not know how to adequately search for things and may therefore be subject to only seeing the top websites. However, as time moves forward and people learn more about the internet, that number will decrease. If the children are our future, people will just continue to know more and more about the internet every generation, and that includes knowing how to properly search for things.