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Din Avis eller Vores Avis
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Folk bruger nettets medier til at producere snæversyn
i stedet for udsyn, advarer amerikansk professor
Af Helle Nissen Kruuse, hnk@djh.dk
Efter generationers kamp for at udvide folks ytringsfrihed
er tiden måske kommet til, at folk nu skal mere eller mindre
tvinges til at bruge den. Og at bruge den vil ikke blot sige,
at man kan sidde i en net-naziborg og bekræfte hinanden
i sine ekstreme synspunkter, men at man også skal om ad
netsteder med lodret modsatte synspunkter. Skyklapperne skal rives
af. For ellers falder demokratiet fra hinanden, og vi mister den
fælles offentligheds-sfære, der er en grundsten i
et demokratisk samfund.
Så faretruende perspektiver ser en amerikansk juraprofessor
Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago, i disse års udvikling
på internettet. På nettet vokser dag for dag mulighederne
for, at brugerne kan personalisere deres nyhedsdækning og
filtrere alt det fra, som de finder uinteressant. Brugerne skræddersyr
'The Daily Me' og fravælger dermed 'The Daily We', der er
den fælles referenceramme og det offentlige rum, Sunstein
ser som en forudsætning for dialogen i et demokrati.
Hvad betyder det for demokratiet, hvis folk på nettet
kun klikvælger sig til sporten, computerspil og chatrooms
med ligesindede, men fravælger mediernes dækning af
fx landspolitik og Mellemøsten?
The Daily Me
Cass Sunstein har i sommer lagt et essay på nettet »The Daily
We: Is the Internet Bad News for Democracy?« hos magasinet
Boston Review, hvorfra eJour har fået tilladelse til gengivelsen.
Essayet, der har rod i hans nylige bog »republic.com«,
har samtidig været afsæt for et debatforum
på nettet, hvor syv skribenter har diskuteret med Sunstein.
I essayet oplister Sunstein en stribe eksempler på, hvordan
amerikanske brugere kan til- og fravælge interessemner;
fx tilbyder Zatso.net, at brugerne kan lave 'a personal newscast'.
Her kan brugerne selv 'decide what's news' med personligt udvalgte
tv-nyhedshistorier, med nyhedshistorier hvori indgår særlige
søgeord og fraser og med særlige emneområder
blandt en stribe valgmuligheder. Og meget mere.
Eksemplerne minder i øvrigt om de muligheder for personalisering,
som Berlingskes onlineavis tilbyder. Her kan man også tilpasse
'Din Avis' ved at vælge ud af en stribe emnekategorier,
og man kan få stof fra fritekstsøgning, der indeholder
ens ønskede søgeord, lagt i ind i Din Avis.
Sådanne muligheder får Sunstein til at advare:
»Of course, these developments make life much more convenient
and in some ways much better: we all seek to reduce our exposure
to uninvited noise.
But from the standpoint of democracy, filtering is a mixed
blessing. An understanding of the mix will permit us to obtain
a better sense of what makes for a well-functioning system of
free expression. In a heterogeneous society, such a system requires
something other than free, or publicly unrestricted, individual
choices. On the contrary, it imposes two distinctive requirements.
First, people should be exposed to materials that they would not
have chosen in advance.
Unanticipated encounters, involving topics and points of view
that people have not sought out and perhaps find irritating, are
central to democracy and even to freedom itself. Second, many
or most citizens should have a range of common experiences. Without
shared experiences, a heterogeneous society will have a more difficult
time addressing social problems and understanding one another.«
Sunstein tegner billedet af et fremtidssamfund, hvis indbyggere
totalt personaliserer ('customize') deres kommunikations-univers,
og han peger på, at mange online-aviser allerede nu tilbyder
brugerne adgang til at lave filtrerede versioner indeholdende
præcist dét, brugerne ønsker og intet mere:
»To be sure, the Internet greatly increases people's
ability to expand their horizons, as millions of people are now
doing; but many people are using it to produce narrowness, not
breadth.«
The Daily We
De store aviser og nationale tv-nyhedsudsendelser er dem, der
hidtil har tilbudt befolkningen den brede, almene nyhedsdækning.
Hvad vi på dansk kalder public service-stof. Her finder
vi nyhedernes The Daily We, som danner basis for borgernes fælles
referenceramme og videnbaggrund, der igen er forudsætningen
for fælles samhørighed i et samfund.
Med The Daily Me-udviklingen bliver borgernes nyhedsdækning
og kommunikations univers radikalt ændret:
»With a dramatic increase in options, and a greater power
to customize, comes an increase in the range of actual choices.
Those choices are likely, in many cases, to mean that people will
try to find material that makes them feel comfortable, or that
is created by and for people like themselves. This is what the
Daily Me is all about.«
Sunstein mener at have registreret, at folk på nettet
er tilbøjelige til at finde sammen i holdningsmæssigt
enige grupper; her sker der en gruppe-polarisering, som skærper
medlemmernes holdninger mod det ekstreme, fordi de ikke får
modspil fra uenigheden.
Et så fragmenteret kommunikations marked er en trussel
mod demokratiet, mener Sunstein, og det er farligt for samfundet
som helhed, fordi folk bliver mindre egnede til at samarbejde
om fælles problemer. Vi har behov for en offentligheds-sfære.
»The basic issue here is whether something like a 'public
sphere', with a wide range of voices, might not have significant
advantages over a system in which isolated consumer choices produce
a highly fragmented speech market. The most reasonable conclusion
is that it is extremely important to ensure that people are exposed
to views other than those with which they currently agree, that
doing so protects against the harmful effects of group polarization
on individual thinking and on social cohesion.«
Sunstein forudser, at ellers velfungerende rammer for ytringsfriheden
kan blive undermineret af et bruger-herredømme i en verden
af ubegrænsede muligheder.
»The point is that a well-functioning system includes
a kind of 'public sphere', one that fosters common experiences,
in which people hear messages that challenge their prior convictions,
and in which citizens can present their views to a broad audience.«
Statstilskud?
Når Sunstein skal prøve at være konkret
om, hvordan et 'The Daily We' kan sikres, får hans løsningsmuligheder
mere uforpligtende katalogpræg. Men de rummer stikord med
forslag til, at medier jævnligt offentliggør omfanget
af deres public service-stof, en appel om selvregulering, og tanker
om statstilskud fx til netsteder med links til varierede synspunkter.
Og Sunstein slutter:
»My principal claim here has been that a well-functioning
democracy depends on far more than restraints on official censorship
of controversial ideas and opinions. It also depends on some kind
of public sphere, in which a wide range of speakers have access
to a diverse public -- and also to particular institutions, and
practices, against which they seek to launch objections.
Emerging technologies, including the Internet, are hardly an
enemy here. They hold out far more promise than risk, especially
because they allow people to widen their horizons. But to the
extent that they weaken the power of general interest intermediaries
and increase people's ability to wall themselves off from topics
and opinions that they would prefer to avoid, they create serious
dangers. And if we believe that a system of free expression calls
for unrestricted choices by individual consumers, we will not
even understand the dangers as such.
Whether such dangers will materialize will ultimately depend
on the aspirations, for freedom and democracy alike, by whose
light we evaluate our practices.
What I have sought to establish here is that in a free republic,
citizens aspire to a system that provides a wide range of experiences
-- with people, topics, and ideas -- that would not have been
selected in advance.«
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