Summary Lecture 8

Today's lecture was about democracy. From Athenian democracy in ancient Greece, to representative democracy in "democratic countries" like Australia, England and the United States.

Professor Stockwell took us though the ages of media demoracy before the internet, suggesting that despite a representative democracy, citizens were still able to directly influence political decision making.

I believe that this influence would have been reduced as the years went by (It seems that companies became greedier and greedier over time... you didnt see $8million CEO payouts in the 50's so I believe that media influence over content was less filtered). In other words I believe that, up until the internet matured, the publics ablity to influence political decision making in the 90's would have been less significant than in the 50's due to censorship.

However the internet is a magical thing. It has given us the ability to improve our capability to engage in debate and also dodge the evil that is media censorship. This is teledemocracy is dictated however by the number of people that are able to use computers (the digital divide).

Like the little old lady grabbing email addresses on Burleigh Heads, people can do something to change decision making that they couldn't do before. I just pray to the net gods every night that this wll not be ruined.