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New Report: Political Conventions

By Tom Price, August 8, 2008

Have they outlived their usefulness?

The Democrats and Republicans share a fundamental goal for their upcoming national conventions: to produce scripted television shows that will boost their candidates’ prospects in the general election without showcasing any intra-party squabbling. Under that scenario, convention delegates seem to have nothing to do but cheer Barack Obama and John McCain, whose nominations were virtually assured before the conventions began. If the important decisions are made before the conventions begin, ask some politicians, political scientists and critics in the media, why bother to hold them? Convention supporters argue that the gatherings are needed in case a nomination isn’t settled beforehand. The conventions also make decisions about party rules that can affect which candidates get nominated. And conventions are the one time every four years when the parties become truly national organizations, with delegates and activists from around the country mingling face-to-face.

  • Are national political conventions obsolete?
  • Should superdelegates be abolished?
  • Should an orderly primary election schedule be established?
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Socially Responsible Investing
Rising concern about health and the environment has led to the rapid growth of socially responsible investing (SRI) in recent years. In fact, SRI is no longer just about avoiding “sin” stocks like tobacco, gambling and liquor – or companies that profit from war. Today’s socially responsible investors want to find companies that have clear strategies for meeting environmental and social goals as well as favorable corporate-governance policies. Today, some 260 mutual funds – up from 55 in 1995 – have $202 billion invested in socially responsible companies. But can an investor make money in a socially responsible investment? Experts are divided on that question, but one thing is certain: Demand for investment vehicles that align money and ethics is growing in popularity and becoming more and more mainstream in investment circles.
By Thomas J. Billitteri


Future of U.S. Warfare
With fierce combat still under way in Iraq and Afghanistan, military strategists at home are waging another kind of fight. They’re debating whether tomorrow’s wars will resemble the conflicts we’re fighting now – and whether the counterinsurgency strategies being tested there are the wave of the future. Some fresh-from-the-battlefield warriors see Iraq and Afghanistan as models of future conflict. They applaud a recent emphasis by the Pentagon on “irregular” warfare, which can include tamping down conflict by promoting improved social conditions in unstable regions. Other battle-hardened veterans see danger in de-emphasizing traditional combat skills, such as tank maneuvering and artillery marksmanship. And yet, some in the counterinsurgency school counter, even that risk is worth running because no sane enemy would challenge the powerful U.S. military in a traditional, World War II-style conflict. But all sides acknowledge that certainties don’t exist in military forecasting, and that the biggest danger can be planning ahead – for the war you just fought.
By Peter Katel


Gay Marriage Showdowns
The California Supreme Court gave gay-rights advocates a major victory in May by ruling that the state’s constitution guarantees same-sex couples the same marriage rights as opposite-sex pairs. Thousands of same-sex couples from California and other states – since California does not have a residency requirement – have already taken advantage of the decision to obtain legal recognition for their unions. Opponents, however, have placed on the state’s Nov. 4 ballot a constitutional amendment that would deny marriage rights to same-sex couples by defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Similar proposals are on the ballot in Arizona and Florida. The ballot-box showdowns come as nationwide polls indicate growing support for some legal protection for same-sex couples, but not necessarily marriage equality. In California, early polls showed support for the ballot measure, but more recently it has been trailing. Meanwhile, marriage-equality cases are pending before state high courts in Connecticut and Iowa, with decisions expected soon. Massachusetts became the first state to legally permit gay marriage, in 2004.
By Kenneth Jost

In the News: Anthrax Case Declared Solved Seven Years Later

FBI and Justice Department officials have declared the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks solved. After seven years of a troubled investigation, the FBI outlined a pattern of deceptive conduct by Army microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins – who killed himself last week – that officials said made him the only suspect in the mailing attacks that killed five people. Prosecutors have suggested several motives, among them Ivins’ dislike for Catholic senators who favor abortion rights and concern over whether the vaccine program he was working on at the time would come to an end. Investigators admitted that for years they had focused on the wrong man, Army biodefense researcher Steven J. Hatfill, who received a $4.6 million settlement from the Justice Department in June. Some scientists and friends of Ivins remain skeptical, noting that more than 100 people besides Ivins had access to the anthrax that was mailed to several senators and prominent journalists.

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In the News: Bin Laden Driver Convicted of Supporting al Qaeda

The personal driver and bodyguard of Osama bin Laden was convicted of providing material support to al Qaeda. Salim Hamdan, who has been imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002, was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit terrorism. The defense argued that Hamdan was nothing more than a low-level driver who worked only for wages and knew little about the workings of the al Qaeda network. Prosecutors contended that Hamdan became a member of the terrorist network in 1996 and knew about the Sept. 11 attacks in advance. He was found guilty of receiving weapons training and transporting and delivering arms. Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 30 years to life.

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In the News: Venezuelans Protest New Chavez Plans

Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took to the streets this week over what they warn are Chavez’s plans to illegally increase his power. Demonstrators contended that a blacklist barring key opposition candidates from elections and a series of socialist decrees – many mirroring those rejected in a referendum last December – are destroying Venezuela’s democracy. The decrees came just before the expiration of legislative powers that allowed Chavez to make laws without approval from the National Assembly. Among other things, the decrees establish a civilian militia and provide the president with power to expropriate goods from private businesses. Chavez, however, said that anybody who wishes to challenge his decrees is welcome to do so in the Supreme Court.

To view the entire CQ Global Researcher Online report, "The New Latin America" click here. [subscription required]

Overview of the New Report on Political Conventions

In the days before today’s carefully scripted conventions, anything could – and did – happen, from fist-fights to a verbal attack on a candidate’s wife:

* In 1924, Democrats nominated West Virginia politician John W. Davis on the 103rd ballot, during a 16-day convention that featured a fist-fight and delegates whacking each other’s heads with placards. Famed newspaper curmudgeon H.L. Mencken called the gathering “as fascinating as a revival or a hanging . . . vulgar . . . ugly . . . stupid . . . hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus.

* At the 1980 Democratic Convention, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who had challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter, resisted shaking Carter’s hand after the president’s acceptance speech.

* At the 1992 Republican gathering, the last convention not successfully scripted from start to finish, conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan delivered what was described as “one of the most scathing convention speeches of the modern era, extraordinary for its attack on a nominee’s wife.” “There is a religious war going on for the soul of America,” Buchanan declared. Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary “are on the other side.”

Many analysts concluded that Buchanan’s speech contributed to incumbent President George H. W. Bush’s loss in the general election. Carter lost after the 1980 convention, as did Davis in 1924.

In fact, divisive conventions usually lead to losing general elections. As Ken Bickers, chair of the University of Colorado Political Science Department, put it, “The party that has trouble unifying itself has trouble winning elections in the fall.” Television’s capacity to carry convention chaos into voters’ living rooms heightened the impact. In response, leaders of both parties will move mountains to avoid convention controversy.

This year, Democratic Party leaders grew terrified as the marathon battle for their presidential nomination slashed and burned its way through the spring primaries and caucuses.

As early as March, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was preaching the necessity of unifying behind a single candidate “a long time before the Democratic National Convention” in late August. As the race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton continued into late May, Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean pressed uncommitted delegates to pick a candidate so a winner would emerge.

If the race were undecided when the primaries ended, Tennessee Gov. Philip Bredesen suggested, party leaders and activists – the ex-officio “superdelegates” – should meet in early June to pick the nominee. Tom De Luca, a Fordham University political science professor, even proposed moving the convention itself to June – a logistical impossibility – to avoid a summer of post-primary campaigning.

Clinton , of New York, finally conceded on June 7, after Obama, of Illinois, collected enough delegates to clinch the nomination in the final primaries on June 3. Many candidates with fewer votes than Clinton had carried campaigns into the convention, but party leaders successfully pressured her to drop out.

“The big obstacle was her wanting to keep her standing with fellow Democrats,” says Mark Rubinfeld, chair of the sociology program at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. “Their message was very clear: We’ll let you go to the end of the primaries, but for the good for the party we don’t want you to take it any further.”

Democratic leaders rejoiced at Clinton’s acquiescence, particularly since Sen. John McCain of Arizona had wrapped up the Republican nomination in February and was busy wooing GOP voters who had supported other candidates. The end of both races, however, left both conventions with few real decisions to make.

As many as 50,000 people – including 15,000 connected with the news media – are expected to descend on Denver for the Democratic Convention Aug. 25-28 and on Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republican confab Sept. 1-4. Yet the world already knows – barring the completely unexpected – that Obama and McCain will be the presidential nominees. They are expected to name their running mates before the conventions begin. Party leaders are working doggedly to avoid divisive fights over platform planks or party rules.

Telecommunications technology contributed greatly to the conventions’ demise as decision-making bodies.

When Democrats gathered for their first national convention in 1832, the give-and-take of political negotiations could occur efficiently only in face-to-face meetings. That remained true until direct-dial long-distance telephone service became widely available and affordable in the 1960s, according to political analyst Michael Barone.

Previously, politicians “could start communicating with each other only when they got off the train at the convention city,” Barone pointed out. That changed when politicians “could negotiate and convey information confidentially over the phone.” Now, he said, “the communication that once could take place only in the convention city during convention week is going on all the time, all around us.”

Until radio broadcast the first convention in 1924, the general public learned about the proceedings only by reading accounts in newspapers or magazines. Few Americans actually saw the proceedings until television began covering the conventions in 1948. By the 1960s, conflict at conventions was seen by voters across the country.

To avoid unwanted convention activities, Republicans actually wrote a script for each session of their 1972 gathering. They delivered copies to the television networks each night to facilitate planning of the next day’s coverage. Both parties have tried to do the same every year since.

The spread of primaries, particularly beginning in 1972, further reduced the importance of conventions. Candidates discovered they could jump-start their campaigns by doing well in the first contests of each presidential year – the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Other states, resenting those small states’ out-sized influence, pushed their contests ever-earlier in the year.

By the 1990s, candidates were clinching both parties’ nominations before the end of March. In 2008, 34 states voted by Feb. 5, and McCain clinched the GOP nomination when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s withdrew on Feb. 7.

With the nominations sewed up months beforehand, both parties turned their conventions into four-day-long television advertisements for their candidates. The networks rebelled against being used as unpaid advertising conduits and chafed at having little real news to cover.

By 1980, ABC, NBC and CBS had reduced their convention coverage to a few hours each night. In 1984, Jeff Gralnick, ABC’s executive producer for convention coverage, termed the meetings “dinosaurs.” Four years later, ABC News President Roone Arledge called the 1988 Republican Convention “as scripted as any prime-time program,” which left journalists “nothing to cover.”

In 2004, the three networks broadcast from each convention for just about three hours each week. Similar coverage is expected in 2008. Although PBS and cable news channels continue to cover the conventions “gavel to gavel,” fewer voters watch those outlets, so the conventions’ value as free advertising declined.

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CQ Researcher Blog has created a blidget for the CQ Researcher Blog This combination of a blog and widget is an application that you can add to your website, facebook page, or libary homepage that provides entry titles and links to the CQ Researcher blog.

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New Report: Internet Accuracy

By Marcia Clemmitt, August 1, 2008

Is information on the Web reliable?

The Internet has been a huge boon for information-seekers. In addition to sites maintained by newspapers and other traditional news sources, there are untraditional sources ranging from videos, personal Web pages and blogs to postings by interest groups of all kinds – from government agencies to hate groups. But experts caution that determining the credibility of online data can be tricky, and that critical-reading skills are not being taught in most schools. In the new online age, readers no longer have the luxury of depending on a reference librarian’s expertise in finding reliable sources. Anyone can post an article, book or opinion online with no second pair of eyes checking it for accuracy, as in traditional publishing and journalism. Now many readers are turning to user-created sources like Wikipedia, or powerful search engines like Google, which tally how many people previously have accessed online documents and sources – a process that is open to manipulation.

  • Is information on the Internet reliable?
  • Is enough being done to teach people how to use the Web intelligently?
  • Can collaborative media like wikis be made reliable?

To read the Overview of this week's report, click here.

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Coming Up in CQ Researcher

Political Conventions
When the Democrats and Republicans hold their quadrennial national conventions later this summer, their primary goal is to produce a scripted television show that will boost their candidates’ prospects in the general election. The last thing they want is intra-party squabbling. According to that scenario, convention delegates will have nothing to do but cheer Barack Obama and John McCain, whose nominations were virtually assured before the conventions began, along with the party platforms. Politicians, political scientists and critics in the media are questioning whether the conventions have outlived their usefulness. If the important decisions are made before the conventions begin, they ask, why bother to hold them? It would be more democratic to select presidential nominees in direct primaries, which is how almost all other nominations are made, they say. Convention supporters argue that the gatherings are needed in case a nomination isn’t settled beforehand. The conventions are the parties’ final authorities, and they make decisions about party rules that can affect which candidates get nominated. The convention is also the one time every four years during which the party becomes a truly national organization, with delegates and other activists from around the country mingling face-to-face.
By Tom Price


Socially Responsible Investing
Rising concern about health and the environment has led to the rapid growth of socially responsible investing (SRI) in recent years. In fact, SRI is no longer just about avoiding “sin” stocks like tobacco, gambling and liquor – or companies that profit from war. Today’s socially responsible investors want to find companies that have clear strategies for meeting environmental and social goals as well as favorable corporate-governance policies. Today, some 260 mutual funds – up from 55 in 1995 – have $202 billion invested in socially responsible companies. But can an investor make money in a socially responsible investment? Experts are divided on that question, but one thing is certain: Demand for investment vehicles that align money and ethics is growing in popularity and becoming more and more mainstream in investment circles.
By Thomas J. Billitteri


Future of Warfare
With fierce combat still under way in Iraq and Afghanistan, military strategists at home are waging another kind of fight. They’re debating whether tomorrow’s wars will resemble the conflicts we’re fighting now – and whether the counterinsurgency strategies being tested there are the wave of the future. Some fresh-from-the-battlefield warriors see Iraq and Afghanistan as models of future conflict. They applaud a recent emphasis by the Pentagon on “irregular” warfare, which can include tamping down conflict by promoting improved social conditions in unstable regions. Other battle-hardened veterans see danger in de-emphasizing traditional combat skills, such as tank maneuvering and artillery marksmanship. And yet, some in the counterinsurgency school counter, even that risk is worth running because no sane enemy would challenge the powerful U.S. military in a traditional, World War II-style conflict. But all sides acknowledge that certainties don’t exist in military forecasting, and that the biggest danger can be planning ahead – for the war you just fought.
By Peter Katel

In the News: Turkey’s Leaders Survive Court Verdict

A constitutional court narrowly rejected calls for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul to be banned from politics. After a four-and-a-half month trial, judges voted 6 to 5 against an indictment accusing the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of pursuing an Islamist agenda and seeking to undermine the nation’s secular constitution. The court did, however, strip the party of half of its public funding for 2009. Earlier this year the AKP’s efforts to lift a ban on wearing headscarves at universities were overturned by the court. Devlet Bahceli, leader of the rival Nationalist Party, said the new verdict should show the AKP that its problems with the constitutional order could end up jeopardizing the democratic regime. Turkey’s parliamentary speaker, Koksal Toptan, said the ruling had “raised the democracy bar to a higher level.”

To view the entire CQ Global Researcher Online report, "Future of Turkey," click here. [subscription required]

In the News: China to Censor Some Web Sites During Olympics

International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials have admitted to allowing China to block sensitive Web sites despite previous promises of unrestricted access during the Olympics. All blocked sites, however, were deemed not to be related to the Games, according to IOC press chief Kevan Gosper. Many of the inaccessible sites include those of human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, as well as banned spiritual and separatist groups. Beijing organizers have promised that the limited censorship will not impede journalists from doing their jobs during the Games. The press-advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has encouraged journalists to conduct phone calls and write e-mails with the assumption that they are being monitored. The group has also provided tips on how to beat the censorship by skirting firewalls and finding independent translators.

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In the News: U.S. ‘Wastes’ $560 Million on Iraq Repairs

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction says the United States has had to spend $560 million in “wasted” money to repair facilities that were damaged by vandals due to poor security immediately after the United States entered Baghdad. The report by Stuart Bowen arrived at the price tag after tallying the results of more than 100 audits conducted by his office. Billions had to be diverted from actual reconstruction to security because the Bush administration did not fully anticipate how volatile the situation would be upon entering the country, the report says. Bowen also criticized the U.S. government for poor coordination between agencies, saying it contributed to delays, higher costs and unfinished projects, as well as completed projects that did not meet program goals. The report praised Iraq’s increased production in oil – nearly 2.5 million barrels per day over the past quarter – the highest quarterly average since the invasion began in 2003.

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Overview of the New Report on Internet Accuracy

Is Barack Obama a Muslim? The answer, unequivocally, is no, he’s a Christian who goes to church regularly. But according to some Internet sites – especially white-supremacist Web sites – the man who could be the next president of the United States not only practices Islam but is practically a terrorist.

Obama’s campaign has fought back, launching a Web site – “fightthesmears.com” – to correct the misinformation about the candidate, including false claims that his campaign contributions largely have come from wealthy supporters in the Middle East.

Obama isn’t alone, of course, when it comes to inaccurate information on the Internet.

As millions of people and organizations around the world post information on the Internet, factual mistakes are alarmingly easy to find, and they don’t just come from hate groups or “from shady, anonymous, Internet authors posing as reliable art historians,” according to two historians at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Indeed, they say, misinformation often comes from highly reputable institutions.

In a study of Web sites highly ranked in Google searches, they found an incorrect date in a biography of the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet – the date he moved to Giverny, the small village west of Paris where he painted his famous images of water lilies. No less an authority than the Art Institute of Chicago posted an erroneous date (the correct date is 1883) while “the democratic (and some would say preposterously anarchical)” Web site Wikitravel got it right, according to the study.

In the past, a countable number of sources produced most of the world’s information, and most readers and viewers took the names of top newspapers, magazines and television networks as a modest guarantee that they would be accurate.

But as information migrates onto the Internet and newspapers and network TV news outlets see their audiences declining, all that is changing. Today the World Wide Web is a user-driven medium, where teenage videographers and political activists of all stripes can post their messages, often in formats as sophisticated-looking as the sites mounted by television networks and major newspapers. The tidal wave of citizen-generated content has made it much harder to ferret out the most credible sources, which has many people alarmed, including some policy makers.

For example, in May, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., asked Google to remove online YouTube videos that he says al Qaeda and other terrorist groups post to spread false and slanted anti-Western information. The company removed some videos but refused to block all videos from certain groups, as Lieberman requested.

Terrorist propaganda aside, “there are fewer signposts” online to signal reliability, such as newspaper brand names, says Larry Pryor, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications.

Wikis – user-generated online publications – like Wikipedia are edited by staff and other users only after they’ve been published online, unlike in traditional media, where editing comes before publication, notes Pryor. Furthermore, while some wiki entries are written by experts, others are contributed by people with no expertise in the subject matter, and it’s difficult or impossible for unwary readers to tell the difference.

In a critique of Wikipedia’s 2005 entry on “haute couture” – high fashion – Vogue magazine Editor Alexandra Shulman wrote that, “broadly speaking, it’s inaccurate and unclear. . . . There are a few correct facts included, but every value judgment it makes is wrong.”

Nevertheless, not all so-called new media is inaccurate, says David Perlmutter, a professor at the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism. Take blogs, for example. “While some are merely sock puppets” spouting Republican or Democratic party talking points, “those are not very well-respected,” while the most popular political blogs are the less biased ones, he says.

In fact, online media frequently act as credibility watchdogs for traditional media, says Perlmutter. Many bloggers are experts, such as military officers and technology specialists, who are “big fact-checkers,” using their specialized knowledge to spot false information in areas such as war reporting, he says.

For example, “it was . . . Russ Kick’s Memory Hole, not The New York Times, that first broke pictures of military personnel brought home in [caskets] from Iraq,” said Yochai Benkler, a professor at Yale Law School.

Much online information also contains good clues with which to judge its credibility, says R. David Lankes, an associate professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. For example, blogs usually contain biographies of their authors, and wikis have a history of the editing changes to posted articles.

Google News and Yahoo! News – sites that aggregate what are supposedly the days’ top news stories – “are more scary” because they don’t share the rules on which their rankings are based, says Lankes. But the online world is huge, and there’s usually an alternate voice to consult on any issue, he says, “and that allays my fears a bit” about being misinformed.

The vast store of information available online has a major benefit: “We no longer have to rely on single authorities,” says Lankes. The downside is that “we have to work harder to determine credibility.”

But are Internet users prepared to be critical consumers of information? “The flaws in Wikipedia and other kinds of media are real” and “demonstrate how much we need to update our media literacy in a digital . . . era,” said Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to support grassroots journalism jointly supported by Harvard and Arizona State universities.

For example, when Wikipedia’s article on Pope Benedict XVI initially appeared – only a few hours after his election on April 19, 2005 – the page “suffered vandalism,” with false statements and accusations popping up that very same day, said Gillmor. “Over time,” the entry “will settle down to something all sides can agree on,” Gillmor blogged later that day, but for the moment, “the vandals are having a good time mucking with the page, I’m sorry to report. What jerks they are.”

“Our internal b.s. meters . . . work, but they’ve fallen into a low and sad level of use in the Big Media world,” Gillmor continued. “Many people tend to believe what they read. Others tend to disbelieve everything. Too few apply appropriate skepticism.”

In fact, some online material can mislead readers into thinking it’s from a more reliable source than it is. For example, “a hospital Web site may not look any different from the herbal remedy store’s Web site – or from an accomplished teenager’s hobby page,” said Frances Jacobson Harris, a professor of library administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Even “relevancy ranking” – as in Google search results – can mislead, she said. For example, at one time a Google search for “Martin Luther King” pulled up a disguised anti-King hate site as its top result, partly because librarians had linked to the page as an example of untrustworthy information, said Harris.

And despite young people’s reputations as digital natives and Internet gurus, their “skills in effective navigation of today’s information landscape are actually somewhat limited,” Harris wrote. “They always find something when searching for information, just not always the best thing.”

For example, young researchers often “make credibility judgments that rely heavily on design and presentation features rather than content,” he continued.

Others argue that growing up online naturally makes one a savvier Internet user.

“Information overload” can overwhelm older generations, but the younger generation “doesn’t know the phrase,” says Penelope Trunk, a veteran blogger in Madison, Wis., who writes about careers in the Internet Age. Immersed in the online world practically from birth, “they’re just smarter about information.”

But “it’s not how old you are but how long you’ve been online” that improves research skills, says Lankes. While some expect young people to be Internet experts, Lankes says, “I don’t buy it. If we create this monolithic view of kids as technologically literate, we’ll do a great disservice to kids who aren’t.”

Some fear that the double burden of teaching old-fashioned literacy, still vital online, plus the critical thinking required to sort through the vast amount of online information will increase the so-called digital divide, leaving low-income students – those who don’t have computers or have limited computer literacy – further and further behind.

“The industry argues that the digital divide is gone, but that’s not true,” says Erik Bucy, an associate professor of telecommunications at Indiana University. “We have to think of access to digital technology as a cognitive problem and a social problem,” not just an issue of handing out computers, he says.

The Web was born in 1992, and “16 years in the evolution of man is not a long time,” says Lankes. Nevertheless, “already we’re seeing people learning to read it intelligently. Kids understand very well what they’re seeing in Wikipedia,” he says, knowing they must judge credibility “article by article,” rather than trusting the site as a whole, as one might do with the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he says.

The rules of collaborative, user-generated media like wikis have been developing for less than a decade, so it’s unrealistic to expect perfection, says Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. One promising approach is typified by Slashdot – a Web site that posts technology news based on how many site users rate it as valuable, he says. Contributors get “reputation scores” based on votes from other site users, and it becomes clear over time that some “are more credible than others,” he says.

Google’s page-rank algorithm, which ranks pages based on how many other Web pages link to them, amounts to a public “vote on credibility,” says Lankes. It has turned out to be another kind of reliability test that is fairly accurate and “very powerful.”

But some analysts call the idea that accurate information can arise from “collective intelligence” – the philosophy behind the Web’s user-generated media and user-based ranking systems – a pipe dream.

“One need only look at the composition of the Internet to understand why the ‘wisdom of crowds’ will never apply,” wrote Andrew Orlowski, a technology columnist for The Register in the United Kingdom. The Internet doesn’t represent society because “only a self-selecting few” have any interest in information projects, which “amplifies groupthink,” Orlowski charged. “Facts that don’t fit beliefs are discarded.”

To view the entire report on CQ Researcher Online, click here. [subscription required]