Domestic Perspectives on Contemporary Democracy

8. The Internet and Political Fragmentation

8 The Internet and Political Fragmentation bruce bimber Democracy requires the successful management of divisions in society . Often, the divisions of greatest concern for the health of democracy involve large-scale, persistent cleavages along well-demarcated lines: divisions within a state between linguistic or ethnic groups, or between regions with divergent economic structures and interests. At the outset of the twenty-first century, such persistent divides are central to the future of nations as diverse as Iraq and Belgium. In addition, a number of observers have argued recently that another form of division threatens the quality of democracies. The putative cause is political fragmentation, which can be defined as the ramification of political collectivities into numerous, temporary, diffuse groups where attachments are thin and narrow, and whose presence has the potential to displace some of the functions of traditional mediating organizations, such as civic organizations, parties, interest groups, and labor unions. In one form or another, political fragmentation has been thematic in a wide range of scholarship, including work on postmodernism, political community , social capital, collective action, and the study of political communication . The thesis that polities are growing more fragmented is indeed congruent with many theories and findings about the contemporary state, yet this congruence makes fragmentation difficult to test empirically at most levels of analysis. The causes of fragmentation are generally held to be different from the sources of persistent societal cleavages along ethnic or linguistic lines, but they are variously attributed to an array of factors, ranging from the rise of post-material values to the spatial arrangements of community in advanced societies. Whether fragmentation is a distinct phenomenon, let alone whether it is an important one, is far from clear. i-xii_1-180_Nard.indd 155 2/6/08 4:27:26 PM 156 . bruce bimber In this chapter I review the thesis of fragmentation through a focus on technologies of political communication. By many accounts, rapidly changing media are a significant part of the fragmentation phenomenon, as well as a central player in broader phenomena at the outset of the twenty-first century, from globalization to the changing nature of international conflict . A number of mechanisms ostensibly implicate the Internet and related “new” media in political fragmentation: the division of the public’s political attention across more “channels” and consequent reduction in exposure to common political messages (Bagdikian 2000), reduced capacity of political elites and central institutions to shape coherent agendas for societies (Bennett 1999), the capacity of people to segregate themselves communicatively into myriad, homogenous in-groups (Sunstein 2001), and other effects. I review several such claims, with the aim of organizing them with respect to one another, as well as with respect to some historical developments relevant to the issue of fragmentation. I offer a simple, two-dimensional typology of political communication intended to illuminate what it is about media that may, and may not, contribute toward fragmentation. This brief sketch suggests that technological innovation is leading toward possibilities both for fragmentation and for its opposite. The United States provides the central case study in this discussion, for several reasons. Though the United States was not an early industrializer, it was early among democracies to adopt the mass newspaper as a political medium, early to incorporate broadcast television deeply into its campaign process, and early to employ the Internet for political advocacy and campaigning . Observers as far back as Tocqueville have noted the important connection between new media and political structure in the United States (Bimber 2003). This makes the United States an interesting case for examining media change as well as connections between innovation in media and innovation in political structures. Also, for better and often for worse, American media content and structure have exerted substantial influence well outside the nation. Despite its many distinctive features among democracies, the U.S. media experience, therefore, has some relevance to the dynamics of other states as well, both for similarities and for reasons of contrast. The Fragmentation Thesis Reviewed The thesis that media changes are leading to political fragmentation is described well by Bennett (1999, 741), who refers to “the challenge to coherent societies and effective governments presented by the breakdown of broadly i-xii_1-180_Nard.indd 156 2/6/08 4:27:26 PM the internet and political fragmentation · 157 shared social and political experience, and the rise of personalized realities.” The foundations of shared experience and common realities in any society...