Hindman’s skepticism about narrowcasting and the statement “thats it’s not the biggest sites that matter online but rather the smallest” (Hindman, 509) may be accurate when comparing page ranking of smaller sites to larger sites but in relation to Google’s page ranking system “where a small set of hypersuccessful sites receives most of the links” (Hindman, 536) makes smaller sites (and their external links) very important, almost essential for the larger sites’ popularity and page ranking.
The power of popularity through external linkage may be limiting our initial exposure to smaller web sites but Google’s Power models seem to provide a higher level of quality in content, popularity and relevence. Considering politics and page ranking the popular sites typically contain a larger amount of original professional content like the Huffington post and therefor more incoming links. Smaller and less popular sites where content relies on external information rather than original content appears least of all and to the web searchers’ advantage. Domains like mispelled popular sites that only host links and popular search terms to other sites in order to attract visitors for advertising click throughs doesn’t appear high in search results. Other small sites that appear last in search results seem to be updated and managed infrequently as with personal web sites that don’t have a signifigant amount of income generated to make it more than a hobby.
As I was reading I did a search using Yahoo! for abortion and found the first page of results gave the popular listings found on Wikipedia, Answers.com, and PlannedParenthood.org. The second page of results came up with some official and Wiki based web sites that supports Hindman’s assertion of the power of subcommunities and their page ranking. It also listed a few semi-related results like an article about an abortion billboard in South Dakota. What may explain its higher page ranking is the extensive content and it’s multiple internal page links to other articles within the same site (an interesting trick). At the same time The Washington Post came up on the 3rd page of search results with regards to an abortion article.
I disagree with Hindman’s assertion that the web will be dominated by the larger more popular sites when it comes to politics. Although his statistics clearly point to larger sites receiving most, if not all of the exposure in politics (as small as the percentage is) this is consistent with opinion leaders models where a few will pay attention to political matters the diversity of their message will also increase because of the broader implication of internet politics. As more people become familiar with searching they will be more inclined to click on page two of the search results, especially for a wider breadth of information. We typically know what to expect in the larger sites and that will drive people to look a little further to get more unique original content. At least in this stage of the internet the smaller sites still have a chance to be seen by a wider audience and search tools still have room to evolve and take into consideration critiques like Hindman’s.
References to Hindman's "The Myth of Digital Democracy" based on Kindle ebook page count of 2303.
Ian Jensen
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