Web 2.0 = democracy. Or does it?

In the past year, two themes have permeated technology news coverage. The first is US president Barack Obama’s exemplary use of social media and the web to effectively blog his way into the Whitehouse. A quick google of “Obama” will bring up the most eligible president ever on facebook, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn, as well as Digg, Twitter, Eventful, Faithbase, Eons, BlackPlanet, Glee, and a whole host of other social networking sites. Well done, Barack.

The other theme centres around the use of the web to create a more democratic global society. This encompasses the citizen journalism myth that states that since we can now all blog, bookmark and podcast to our hearts’ content, we can all technically be journalists, pervading truth and righteousness across the web and making us all more informed citizens. This is in contrast to the traditional media model, in which we all simply read a newspaper and believe every word of it.

There doesn’t seem to have been much though about how these two stories fit together, however. A citizen journalist is only as effective as the content they can acquire to spread their message, using photos, videos, audio, and other facts and figures to back up their point and gain a respectful following. As pointed out before on smallpod’s blog, being a citizen journalist is all very well, but without decent content, you may as well be shouting into a black hole.

So, if you have a leader who has filled every possible online media outlet with positive coverage of himself, it becomes harder to find content that creates a more balanced image of him. Let’s imagine you are an American Republican, who feels that Obama is, say, too soft on foreign policy, and will not scoop the US out of the recession effectively. To voice your views, in a democratic fashion, you decide to start a blog critiquing on Obama’s presidency.

Yet, every time you google “Obama”, your search will turn up pages and pages of coverage of the president visiting hospitals, opening children’s homes, messing about with his kids, and so on. Finding statistics on Obama’s failings, and a nice picture of him looking confused, could be almost impossible. Even if you did find it, you would need top-quality SEO to make your content visible in amongst the sea of positive coverage, which the average blogger would not have access to.

There are restrictions on how much a political figure can feature in newspapers and on television, but those same restrictions do not apply to the web. Whilst the internet is carte blanche for political figures, the citizen journalism myth remains largely a myth; how can the internet represent free and fair dialogue if it's for propagandists to control?