Here is an article I wrote late 2006  about the issue:

A Neutral Network of Minds
- Parimal Satyal, December 2006

Pick up that recipe for Fluffy Omlette, check out what a friend’s been busy with in the weekend and, while you’re at it, find out how exactly a Blended Wing Body aircraft flies – your typical, everyday helping of the internet. You love how you can find about almost anything, take comfort in knowing that there’s somebody out there who can answer your very specific questions, fascinate at the wonderful things people are doing, connecting from all over the world. The internet is, no doubt, one of the most important creations of humanity. And it’s being threatened.

Huge telecommunications powerhouses like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon have a new vision for the internet, one that is very different from those most of us take for granted. What they want to do is get rid of network neutrality. ‘Net neutrality’ is a principle that lets users decide what they want to view and do over the internet, with the network not discriminating in any way based on what is important and what is not. This is the principle guiding the internet right now, the reason why you can go to either my small homepage or Time Warner’s official website as and when you want, regardless of which service provider you subscribe to the internet through. The “free internet” we know today, where you are as important as anyone else, is what has made great things possible. The open nature of this global network has allowed multitudes of small startups grow from a little man’s dream to something that changed the world, like Google, created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and one of the many of supporters of net neutrality. A quick glance at the collaborations section on iCompositions – a website dedicated to “empowering the independant musician” – should be enough to see how the internet has helped bring people from all over the world together to do wonderful things. The internet is not only changing the the way humans communicate and collaborate, but challenging the measure of time and space itself. And it is able to do this, because it is free and open, and a yak-herder in the mountains of Nepal has equal access to resources available online as does a CEO of a huge firm in Spain, and these individuals can communicate at the same level.

But America’s biggest telecommunications firms don’t like this, and want an end to net-neutrality. They want to take control of what you view and what you get to do over the internet, and tax service providers so the ones who pay more will get to serve better the millions of people already online. Their vision? Regulate the internet so that the user is presented with just the good and the relevant, and so she won’t have to wade through pages of irrelevant, even incorrect, information to get what she wants. The concern is not an entirely unfounded; in fact, it is a real problem for some. Doctors complain of patients undermining their prescription and diagnosis based on what they read in some blog. Thousands are misled by the many who present themselves as authorities on subjects they have no proper understanding of. The internet is not without its flaws. But the solution is not to throw powers into the hands of a powerful few and hope that they know what is good for you and me. The problem won’t go away because content providers are taxed and made to pay more money for a better online presence. Destroying one of the best things that happened to humanity cannot be the solution.

The threat it real, and very urgent. Already the threats of not having net neutrality are cropping up. Just this year in April, AOL – one of the US’ largest internet service providers, blocked all email messages that included a link to DearAOL, a campaign against one of their schemes. Last year, during a labour dispute, Canada’s top telephone company Telus blocked a website supporting the Telecommunications Works Union. Censorship will be an everyday reality unless we act now. The effects of a “managed” internet is clear, and it doesn’t look pretty. The creator of the internet, Sir Tim Berners Lee thinks that “the neutral communications medium is essential to our society… it is the basis of a fair competitive market economy”. Without network neutrality, there won’t be any more eBays and Googles cropping up to improve the way the world works, because a small startup with big ideas will have to face a very high price of entry. No one to follow on Wikipedia, YouTube and MySpace. Where do we go from there?

A price-competitive, “pay for the pipe” model of the internet, where service providers agressively compete to maintain their customer base and gain better internet presence may not be an altogether bad idea, just a poor replacement for something as open as the Internet. A capitalist approach has, no question, shown to bring out the best of competing entities and allow for consumers to benefit the most when only the best is able to rule the pack, but we have antitrust laws and legislation against the operation of cartels too. Legislation to regulate that the Internet remains free and open, too, is now an urgent need. And you have the power to act on it.

The U.S House of Representatives, in May, passed a telecommunications bill that furthers the interest of giants who want to take control of the Internet. The issue is now being discussed in U.S. Senate, and despite previous failed attempts to amend the act to safeguard neutrality, support for the new Net Neutrality bill is building up. You can save the Internet. Go online, read about where the issue stands, sign petitions and and call your state’s senators and tell them you support net neutrality. You can find more information about what you can do at http://www.savetheinternet.com/. The future of the greatest inventions of mankind is in your hands. Decide.

A Day (of Eating) in China

Breakfast: walk down the street to a corner food stall to buy fresh steam buns (包子, bāozi) for breakfast, half-complaining about how expensive the meat is (even though the total comes to less than ¥6, or $1). Lunch: watch one of the laobans (老板, shopkeeper) at a noodle store knead and stretch dough as another one stir-fries meat and vegetables, glancing at and asks you what you want, accustomed by now to my foreign-sounding Chinese. Dinner: walk around the area scouring for a Sichuan place to have hot, spicy (麻辣, mǎlà) food knowing very well that you’ll have to fight for the bill and explain that it’s your turn to qing ke (请客) this time.

Post-food America

Imagine my disappointment landing at Liberty International in Newark, NJ to the sight of packaged salads, people lining up at Starbucks ordering Vanilla Chai Tea Latte for $3 in 20.4 seconds. Even the amusing linguistic redundancy of chai tea (chai is tea in Hindi) couldn’t cheer me up. There was but one thing that could.

As soon as I made my way to my cousin’s apartment in an upscale Virginia suburb, where seeing one other person not on a car puts a smile to my face, I bought some noodles, some vegetables, soy sauce and got cooking. Let street-side Chinese food be my savior, I thought, in a country where what the common man eats is two steps removed from food.

Pork Noodle Soup: The Recipe

Here’s what you need to make my version of Zhūroù Miàntíao (猪肉面条), or Pork Noodle Soup. You can replace pork with chicken, duck, beef, lamb, squid, egg, whatever. It’s very straightforward, and I encourage you to use simple, fresh ingredients and modify the recipe to your liking. (Although there are some things that don’t go; black pepper or basil would perfectly ruin it).

Ingredients (serves 2)

1. Pork meat, cut into small pieces
2. Noodles, ideally long and flat (wheat, egg, whatever)
3. Chicken broth, 2 cups (can replace with vegetable broth)
4. Soy sauce
5. Baby Bok Choy (小白菜, xiaobaicai), a bunch
6. Scallions (spring onions), 2 stalks
7. Garlic, 3 cloves
8. Chili power, salt (to taste)

The Process

There are four parts to making this. If you get the timing right, they can all be done simultaneously and the noodle soup can be ready in 20 minutes.

Here’s how I do it:

1. In a saucepan, boil water (for the noodles). Set this aside.
2. Prepare the meat by cutting it into small pieces (or cubes, but I don’t like the uniformity).
3. Clean and chop the garlic, scallions and coriander. The white bit of the scallion should be cut into small slices, and the leaves should be cut diagonally into longer half- to one-inch pieces. You don’t have to use a knife for the coriander, just rip it.
4. Clean the baby bok choy and separate individual leaves. Cut the stalks into smaller pieces, but rip larger leaves into halves or thirds with your hands.
5. Now go back to the boiling water and add the noodles, with a little bit of salt, into the water.
6. In a saucepan, heat oil on medium-high.
7. Put the meat into the hot oil with a bit of salt. Give it about five minutes to cook.
8. After you feel the meat has cooked (and even burnt a little), add the chopped garlic, the white bits of the scallion and bok choy stalks.
9. The noodles should be nice and firm by now, so add those in. In whatever you boiled the water for the noodles, heat the broth.
10. Back to the saucepan with the noodles, add a bit more soy sauce and chili powder. You’ll get nice red-ish tints. Since the stir-fry is just about done, add in the bok choy and scallion leaves and chopped coriander. (This is so the greens don’t overcook and retain their freshness)
11. Take a moment to stop and smell the noodles. And don’t forget to look, it should look beautiful.
12. Turn everything off and get two bowls ready.
13. Add the stir-fried noodles to each bowl, and fill it up with hot broth. Garnish on top with some fresh coriander, chili flakes and a dollop of soy sauce.

The Result

Home-made, China’s street-food-inspired Pork Noodle Soup:

So I went to see for myself. And I started with the Nepal pavilion.

(It would’ve been the China pavilion, being as it is the centerpiece, were it not for the additional ticket and the endless flood of people in line. ‘Line’ here being, of course, a loose description).

The Nepal pavilion is in the Asian section, right opposite the India pavilion. The project is organized by Implementing Experts Group (IEG), a consortium of Nepalese companies with experience, it seems, handling  expositions. Which is great, because honestly, the Nepal pavilion is rather unique and, in many ways, beautiful.

At the center is a Budhhist stone stupa that looks a lot like the one in Bouddha, Kathmandu. Around it spiraling all the way to the top are bronze decals that give it a somewhat sci-fi look. The rest of the pavilion is made with bricks in traditional Newari architecture you’ll find in Patan and Bhaktapur. It had a Dwarika hotel ring to it. Not just in how it looked, but also because of what it offered.

You can do these things at the Nepal pavilion:

1. Climb the spiral pathway that leads to upper level to reach a small room where you’ll find people throwing money (or trying to, at least) into an earthen pot there. A guy from Germany next to me was laughing, “Let’s invent a religion that says ‘give us your money!’”.
2. Follow this path downward and be taken to a large-ish room where you’ll find stuff to buy. Souvenirs, small statues, masks – that sort of thing. Funny thing was you could find some things that are very common in Nepal but not in the very least Nepalese, like the African long face masks.
3. You can drink tea and buy chicken wing, the latter written in the singular because they were ¥10 a piece! At the restaurant, you get to hear Nepali folk and fusion music, interspersed every so often with weird jazz Nepali-wedding-reception music.

The people working at the pavilion, like almost everywhere else in China, were approachable and friendly. A Nepalese staff Prakeet agreed to let me point a camera in his general direction and interview him. He told me that there were about 20 people who had come from Nepal for the pavilion, and that “about ten of them are able to converse in Chinese.”

- “And are people here learning a lot about Nepal, do you think?” I asked him in Nepali.

- “Yeah, I think they’re learning. We’ve trying to inform our visitors, for example about Gautam Buddha and how he was born in Nepal.” Given the syncretic nature of Buddhism in China, especially in the east, knowledge of Lumbini or even Nepal in that context is not common.

I’m certain that quite a few people who came to the pavilion went back having learnt a little more about Nepal, but the running theme here at the Expo seems to be to walk around, take pictures and go. So did Nepal do a good job of presenting itself at the Expo? I don’t know, but I certainly think Nepal’s effort was commendable. (This MyRepublica article has more background on the project).

The pavilion looked better than I expected. It had great architecture, was clean and well-lit and offered a place to sit down, take a breath and buy cheap snacks (relatively, for the Expo).  And although I was surprised at the lack of information on Nepal’s history, ethnic diversity and relation to China, it was still a satisfying experience. I enjoyed getting to have Nepali-ish food, speaking in Nepali (mixed in, oddly, with Chinese and English) and finding Nepali architecture in Shanghai.

If you’re in Shanghai already got tickets to the Expo, I’d recommend dropping by the Nepal pavilion.  If you’re in Shanghai and don’t have tickets to the Expo, I’d recommend buying the discounted evening tickets (fewer people) and checking out the Nepalese, Latvian, Australian and the North Korean pavilions. And if you’re in the Iran pavilion, drop by the VIP section and say hi to Aubrey for me (tell her you know Xiè Bōruì).

And if you do drop by the Nepal pavilion, let me know what you think in the comments.

This is less the ‘I don’t see why you’d bother’ sort of question than it is the ‘I’m genuinely curious’ type. I’m quite sure of this because I found myself asking a Chinese student at the university a similar question today about French. But before we get to it, some background.

Being a Foreigner

In a place where seeing 外国人 (waiguoren, a foreigner) is odd all by itself, finding one that speaks Chinese is quite decidedly bizarre. Just this morning I had a bit of a celebrity moment when I talked to some students, recent graduates of the university, who looked a bit lost outside our apartment building. They were taking photos and wondering, it seemed, if anybody was home and if, perhaps, they could come in for a bit to continue the photo.

— “你们拍照片吗？你可以进来”, I told them they could come in. And in what turned out to be an odd interpretation of the offer, one of the students said something about me, and their photos. “You want me,” I asked, trying to form as coherent a sentence as my level of Chinese would allow me, “to take your photos?”

– “不”, they replied, explaining that they wanted instead to take photos with me. It didn’t matter much that I was perfectly unknown to them. Here was a 外国人 with long hair (uncommon, it turns out, for males here) who spoke Chinese, and they were going to document the chance encounter. Should their discovery ever be called into question and evidence be required.

It didn’t matter if I didn’t speak it right, or spoke with funky (generally incorrect) tones. That I spoke any bit of the language at all was surprise enough.

Finding French

And that’s exactly how I felt when, a couple of days ago playing ping-pong at the student sports building at the university, I chanced upon some Chinese students who spoke French. And one of the first things I asked them was, “Pourquoi est-ce que vous avez choisi d’apprendre le français?” Why French? Maybe what I meant was, Why not English?

I had to run to class that day, but spoke with them enough to gather that they were French concentrators, that they’d studied the language for less than a year (for which they spoke very well!), that they had a French professor who taught them and that it would be a very wise idea indeed to meet up with them when we all had some time to chat. So we exchanged numbers, I said “au revoir, à bientôt”, and ran to class. (And, you’ll be glad to know, got lost for a bit and ended up taking a perfectly long route to class).

L’échange Culturel

So today I texted Mars and Zola and set un rendevouz at the sports building. Once we got ourselves set up at a table and, throwing the ball up to make the first serve, began the conversation “Pourquoi le français alors?”

Mars told me that they picked French because, frankly, English — which they also spoke a little of — was rather common and they wanted to do something more exciting. To distinguish themselves in the job market, perhaps? I got the sense that might also be a reason. I asked them if there were many students learning French at the university, and was told that there were 43 students in their first-year class, a modest figure for a university of thousands.

— “There are fewer still,” Mars explained in French, “in the higher levels, second-year and on.”

— “So you don’t have very many people to practice the language with?” I asked, inquiring also about the French professor at the university someone had spoken to me about last year I was here.

— “No, we don’t,” Zola explained, with a half-smile that concealed a sigh. “There’s the one French professor, and she’s really busy.” No one else from France? “Apart from some of her friends who visit sometimes, she’s the only fluent French speaker.” So practicing the language is a problem.

— “We practice amongst ourselves”, Mars added, “but you can only do so much”. He seemed very enthusiastic about learning the language, and spoke in French as much as he could. The problem, it seemed.

It turns out that both Zola and Mars really like their French classes and the way that it’s taught, using songs, films and role-playing. Not unlike the way I learnt the language at Smith and, previously, at l’Alliance française du Kathmandou. But they are still more comfortable with written French than they are at the speaking bit, “which is what’s important”, Zola agreed.

It was a while before it really hit me that I was conversing in French and Chinese, with a spattering of English, with two really nice people that I’d just only gotten to know in some odd city in China. The French I was speaking was itself affected at times by Chinese, the “active second language” in my mind. Words like “mais”, “donc” and “non” got replaced with their Chinese counterparts every once in while, and I had to actively resist using Chinese “aah” and “oohs” while speaking. Mars and Zola too would slip in and out of English and Chinese too, quickly jumping back to French. Which gives you a pretty good idea of how hard it is to get yourself in a particularly French mode of thinking.

French! In a small city in Hefei where foreigners hardly come. Why, really?

The French Connection

My afternoon Chinese tutor Chen laoshi told me in one of our first few classes that she studies French too. I say studies because she insisted that although she likes the sound of French, and likens it to a flowing river, she is comfortable with the language only in the written form.

French and Russian, she told me, were the de facto foreign languages in the past in China. French because France was amongst the first countries to establish a relationship with China after its opening up in the 60s, and Russia because of ties to the Soviet Union. English, at the time, was hardly in the picture. It was, instead, seeping in from the sides like blotched ink on canvas.

— “At that time, you’d see signs in my university in Chinese and in Russian the way you do now in English“, Chen laoshi explained. “And universities had a French department and not an English one”. You’d have done better if you spoke French as a traveler back then, than if you spoke English. “Slowly, over time, as relations with America developed, interest in English rose” and French departments were replaced by English ones.

Employers now look for skills in English, the government has stipulated that kids learn the language at primary school and you can get away with an “O.K 了” even with fruit vendors who hardly speak standard Mandarin.

Quoi encore?

Zola’s parents worry about her choice of major. French, what’s one to do with that?

— “They think I might not be able to take care of myself”, she said. “I want to continue learning French at graduate school, and eventually become a professor”. That’s one possible path with French, as it is with Latin in the US.

— “I’m not into that,” Mars’ reasons were different. When I asked him if he wanted to go to France at some point, he nodded yes. “Maybe work for an international company,” he smiled, “it’ll be useful.”

French, once lingua franca of European diplomacy and the European Union, is losing learners to bigger, more “useful” languages like Spanish, Arabic and, ironically, Chinese. But as a second-language learner of French myself, it was great to meet others working on making French an important part of their lives.

Next, I’d like to meet someone learning Nepali here in China. Or in France. If I do, you’ll read about it.

And so we started with a Hui restaurant not too far from campus.

Although China is predominantly Han, its 55 other officially-recognized ethnicities bring important variety to the already vast landscape of Chinese cuisine. The Hui people — muslim Chinese — are the third largest ethnic minority here with a population of around 10 million all over China (but concentrated mostly in Northwestern China). Hui food distinguishes itself from regular Chinese cuisine with the absence of pork, the most common meat in China. The way food is prepared is also different and rather specific. I won’t go into it (mostly because I haven’t a clue), but if you’re interested, this guide to Huangshan has more.

The first requirement to enjoying excellent food at the this  small street-side restaurant is not dying whilst crossing the road. At the other end of campus, where we need to cross the main expressway of Changjiang Xi road to Jialefu (Carrefour), there’s an overhead walkway. Crossing the road poses no danger whatsoever, and is a whole lot safer than walking on the pavement where cars honk at your for not giving them way. Here, though, you need to find a break in the stream of cars, lorries and motorcycles and make a run for it.

I look to my left and see a crosswalk. “So why,” I turn to Han Shu, “are we not using the crosswalk, exactly?”

— “Nobody uses it,” he says, grinning. He looks first to his left and then to his right, adding, “it’s all the same for the cars”.

When in Rome, right?

The restaurant, with a familiar board announcing its name in red Chinese characters as well as in Arabic, brought another wave of déjà-vu. It was around the same time in the evening that we last went there, and I wondered if we were talking to the same people.

One of them reached for the lid of one of the two big pots on boil at the restaurant entrance, and the other threw strings of freshly-knead dough in.

While Han Shu talked to the laobanya to select but a few dishes from the list of what seemed a gazillion (admittedly because a lot of the characters were ones unfamiliar to me), I perused the huge menu plastered all over the other wall.

— “I’ll have that,” I said in Chinese, pointing to a photo of rather appetizing noodle, and Han Shu added it to the order.

Although I much prefer ordering meals by reading the menu and talking to the fuwuyuan, which is great for language practice, there are times your limited vocabulary starts limiting the dishes you can eat. This is when photos come in really useful. If it looks good, all I have to do is ask, “Zhèlǐ yǒu shénme?” (What’s in it?) or “Zhège yǒu shénme ròu?” (What meat is it?) and I’m good to go. Especially at a unique place whose offerings one may not be familiar with, it helps having a way to try new dishes without worrying about what you mind end up eating.

We ordered a whole lot of things involving noodles, beef, tofu and vegetables. Standard-fare, you’d think, until, voilà, the food arrives:

The entire thing was made rather interesting thanks to an eleventh-hour injury to my finger which made negotiating chopsticks that much more of a challenge:

When we were done catching up, Han Shu and Shenxiao Ting insisted the meal be on them this time. “Because you’re guests here”, Han Shu reminded me. The unspoken understanding is that I reciprocate sometime later (which I eventually did at a rather impressive tea place we had also been to last year).

As we were walking out of the restaurant, headed back to the campus as the low sun put a golden tint on the busy world outside, the laobanya spoke to Han Shu. “你是好的外国人，我认识” she says too fast for me to understand, waving at us.

– “What did she say?” I ask Han Shu as we walk on.

– “You’re a good foreigner,” he grins, “she remembers you from last year.”

I’m looking forward to meeting friends and teachers from last summer. Returning to a familiar place in a foreign country is an odd thing, like coming home to a hotel with full knowledge that you’ll be checking out on a fixed date.

I’ll also be spending four days in Shanghai before flying back, to see what the World Expo is all about, and see if I can learn a thing or two about it.

There will be more photos, more videos, and even more articles about the Chinese language, food culture, Hefei street food, travel experiences. And anything else I should find interesting whilst in foreign, exotic lands. (And exotic culinary terrains)

It’s good to be back on the run.

Existing research shows that the news media—primarily broadcast and print—are not very powerful in affecting the general public’s level of political participation and knowledge. While only a smaller subset, those who are already politically motivated, actively seek out information about policies and legislation and follow political news closely, the majority either consumes news that is increasingly tabloid in nature or has no interest in becoming informed, leaving other forces to help shape their political opinions. I argue that these ‘other forces’ are primarily other people in their social networks: colleagues, neighbors, classmates, coworkers. The more informed and active members act as sources of information and opinion in their networks, and, through a process of social interaction, contribute to creating an active and developing social capital and social reality. Political ideas then spread to others in the social network, through daily-life activities and conversation, through even those who might otherwise be disengaged or uninterested in politics.

I explain, through this model, how the cost of acquiring political information decreases to the general masses when they do not have to devote time or energy specifically for it, and their propensity to agree with the opinions of those around them increases not only because they most lack compelling reasons to disagree, but also because conformity to dominant ideas of the network gives people a sense of unity and reaffirms membership to their networks.

Underwhelming Media

The media, defined here broadly as newspapers and cable television shows, might be thought of as a powerful force, a “fourth estate”¹ that is able to shape the minds of the masses and sway their political ideas. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the media are, in fact, “a comparatively weak force whose effects can be diluted and diffused by stronger forces”². Newton explained ex-President Bill Clinton’s relatively high presidential rating during widespread press coverage of the Monika Lewinsky scandal as the media’s portrayal of Clinton not effectively offsetting the effects of other forces such as party affiliation and the perception of a better economy. Clinton held an approval rating of around 68% at that time even though, according to Milewicz & Milewizs³, Gallup presidential-approval polling data from that time showed that 37.3% of 853 stories related to Clinton were about the scandal. In identifying the relatively weak nature of the media, Newton suggested that “while mass media carry messages, it is personal networks and discussions that exercise a strong influence” along with other forces such as a person’s social class, religion, age, gender and education.

The idea that masses are less affected by the media is also supported by the fact that only a select subset of the general mass actively seeks and consumes political news. Popkins⁴ argues that this is the case because the cost of acquiring information to be politically informed —the time and energy it takes to read through newspapers, follow legislation and stay updated with the political scenario—is very high compared to the returns, especially in comparison to the much higher returns in spending that time doing other activities such as finding work, buying food and supplies, commuting). Most people have other more practical problems, and they would much rather “acquire information that [they] require to negotiate daily life”. As a result, they simply don’t bother turning to the media for political news, limiting the scope and the ability of the media to affect their opinions.

The changing nature of news media, too, contribute a decreasing propensity to being informed through direct information consumption. Prior⁵ found that mean levels of political knowledge had remained mostly the same even “despite the spectacular rise in political information” with the proliferation of new media such as the Internet websites. He argues that this is because of a divide in the audience: those who actively seek news now have more ways to get serious information, and those who do not and are disengaged have a choice instead of simply tuning off. Unlike in the past, “access to the medium no longer implies exposure to news”. Using Harrington’s examples¹² of popular news binaries, one might argue that while such “quality”, “value”, “intellectual” media channels as the New York Times, PBS and The Economist are now easier to access online or by email, they don’t reach most people because the masses, instead, favor the “popular”, “tabloid”, “celebrity” channels that provide greater instant gratification. Increasing availability of news with a goal of entertaining and titillating the audience—tabloid news—as an alternative to articles and shows that discuss issues in a more serious manner has also lead to a disparity between those who are informed and those who are not. This divide also diminishes the media’s effect on the masses.

Political Participation Persists

While research suggests that the majority of the population are not politically motivated, and only a small percentage is highly informed, there is also evidence that most people still have political ideas and participate in the democratic process. A recent Pew Research Survey⁷ on political knowledge revealed that out of 23 questions about political developments and legislation, only 35% of all respondents could respond correctly to more than 15 questions. Furthermore, fully 56% of the youth (of ages between 18 to 29) fall in the “low” knowledge category, being able to answer fewer than nine questions correctly. But regardless of lower levels of knowledge, there is still political interest, according to another Pew

Research Survey¹¹ conducted in July 2008 in regards to the presidential elections. Of the 200,4-odd people who made up the sample, 72% claimed to have “given quite a lot of thought to the election” and 63% were “more interested than four years ago”. However, this is in contrast to only 46% who “followed election news closely”. This disparity suggests that news- seeking was not necessarily a criteria in becoming involved, and that far more people participated in the elections—either by talking, campaigning, discussing or actually voting— than those who actively sought to inform themselves of relevant issues.

One explanation of the disparity lies in the concepts of “incidental exposure” or “incidental learning”. Popkins⁴ argues that “a good deal of information is obtained in daily life about the economy and the community in which people live”. He explains that “two-thirds of the country… own homes and 55% have a mortgage; 84% have checking accounts and 81% have savings accounts; 30% own stock”. More people “go grocery shopping”, “95% file income taxes” and “most of the electorate buys gasoline”. These activities serve their personal interest, but also end up becoming ways in which people might become informed about certain issues like price rises (inflation), lack of available jobs (unemployment) and bank interest rates. In this way, people might be disengaged in that they are not actively seeking news, but might still be generally informed about the economy. This concept, however, does not adequately explain people’s political inclinations and their likelihood of having having one opinion as opposed to another. It does not explain how certain people may have a distinct preference for one presidential candidate over another, or how they make up their minds on certain value issues such as abortion and the morality of the death penalty.

I propose that understanding how these opinions are formed requires a consideration of social capital and social reality created and perpetuated in social networks.

Thought Community

In recent years, the US has witnessed more and more gays come out of the closet, and changing social attitudes in regards to tolerance. A study⁷ conducted by the Pew Research Center found that of late, “4 in to 10 Americans now report that some of their close friends and family are gays or lesbians”, and importantly, that “familiarity is closely linked to tolerance”. The survey revealed that that those who say they know a family member or a friend who is gay are “more than twice as likely to support gay marriage as those who don’t – 55% to 25%”. The difference is significant, and it would appear that being around people who support the idea increases the propensity of someone without a pre-exiting strong opinion to support it. The survey also asked respondents if they thought that “schools should be able to fire teachers who are gay” and the results show a similar disparity. Fully 88% of those who were very familiar with gays—in effect, were in social networks in which gays were a part, or in networks where gay rights are valued—disagreed with the idea, as opposed to just 55% among those not personally familiar. While the number does indicate a high level of acceptance of gays, it also indicates that the ideas in one’s social surrounding has an effect on personal opinion. In other words, “social capital” has the the potential of shaping political ideas.

Political scientist Robert Putnam, defines social capital as “features of social organizations such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit”. Integral to this definition is the idea that norms and social trust emerge when groups of people organize themselves in any way. A workers’ union will possess social capital—members of this network are linked by a common, mutual interest—and thus, occurrences of political discussion between workers is more likely because of shared values and, in many cases, physical proximity. Incidental learning might happen, in the sense that while most of their discussions might not be directly political in nature—this would not yield much benefit—political values and ideas creep up in every day discussions. The source ofthese ideas are usually those members of the network who are more informed than others, certain members who do indeed see some benefit in political motivation.

Some Follow the News

Popkins refers to the subset of the public that actively follows the news and seeks information as “the issue public”. Even though most people might not yield very much benefit from actively keeping up with political news and information about legislation and governance, doing so is personally relevant and beneficial to this minority, who “care a great deal” and thus motivate themselves to be very informed about certain issues. Pew Center Surveys⁷ show a correlation between political knowledge and news-seeking, with 69% of those with “high knowledge” saying that they “enjoy keeping up with the news ‘a lot’”. Additionally, education is also an important variable in determining how involved one is in news-seeking. Those with postgraduate degrees answered “on average 17 out of 23 questions correctly” versus those who did not finish high school, who got, on average, eight correct. The same survey breaks down in terms of education the number of people who got four out of five questions correct, a sharp contrast between the 80% of college students and just 30% of those with high school education or less. The survey report mentions that the disparity between the 63% of college students falling in the “high knowledge” group versus the 20% of those with high school education or less was “among the largest disparities observed”. Moreover, the pattern is true not only for knowledge operationalized as being able to recall facts, but also for news- seeking behaviors. Another study¹³ found that while 61% of college graduates enjoyed news “a lot”, the same was true only for 47% of high school students. Similar disparities were discovered in audience segments paying attention to “hard news”, operationalized as following international, local and business news very or somewhat closely: 39% of college graduates against 16% less than high school. Straits⁶ explains this type of correlation by arguing that “schooling imparts the knowledge, motivation, and cognitive skills necessary to understand and appreciate current political matters… and promotes a lifelong openness to learning and information seeking”.

The significance of the issue public in understanding how general masses are influenced in their political ideas is immense. Straits⁷ posits that “newspaper readership should be positively related to political discussion frequency” and that “those who follow politics in newspapers should be motivated to share, exchange and compare this information with others”. He confirms this by demonstrated a positive correlation between interest in politics and a “political discussion index”. Thus, the issue public—also called “opinion leaders” by Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz in their theory of two-step flow of information—is likely to impart their knowledge to those around them. Straits shows that the frequency of political discussion is likely to be greater when there is “status similarity and political compatibility”. In a sense, they share this information with their network, with those with whom “contact is frequent (spatial proximity)”6, and when “similar social characteristics and beliefs” are shared.

Thus, the opinion leaders in each social networks become the dominant source of political opinion, and their views and ideas seep in and influence other members of the network who are much less politically motivated. Gladwell⁹ likened the spread of social ideas to viral epidemics, and mentioned how the “law of the few” explains how a tiny percentage of the population might do the “majority of the work” to build momentum and spirit. Much like the opinion leaders discussed in this paper, the success of certain ideas in any social situation “is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts”. These “social gifts” include paying “close attention to information” and “skills to persuade” those who are “unconvinced” of their ideas. The process of imparting these ideas and values does not happen directly, however, through structured, informed political discussions.

Daily life discussions and activities of members in the network provide enough space for values to be imparted and, later, perpetuated in the network by its members.

Social Networks and Social Capital: A Model

Opinion leaders are a source of political information and influence on the network, but they can also serve as bridges between more serious political media channels and the disengaged public that would otherwise not have access to that type of information. When this is taken into consideration, we see that several factors are involved in shaping the political tendencies of a network. Given what we know media use, knowledge and involvement of certain types of members of social networks, I will now construct a model detailing one possible way in which information may flow through a network.

The general public is disengaged and uninterested in politics, and has other, more personally relevant things to worry about. Most don’t consume the news and, even when they do, consume the more “popular” type of news for entertainment. They are not politically motivated and do not hold very strong political ideas, although they are aware of conditions and facts about the economy that are visibly of benefit to them, such as the price of gasses. As demonstrated earlier, their ability to recall facts relating to politics is low. Based on Putnam’s definition of social capital and social organization based on mutual benefit, we can assume that members of society will organize themselves into groups and communities – their networks. This might be based on several things: employees might form a network with others who work on the same floor, college students with others in their hall in college dormitory residences, workers in a trade union who relate to each other on the basis of income and lifestyle. It could even simply be one’s family. Thus, networks can be plural—one might be in a family of four, and also be college student at the same time. Certain relations than others are more likely to involve discussions that are political in some way, which suggests that different networks affect a person differently. Lake and Huckfedlt¹⁴ show, in explaining how certain variables are more likely in influential political discussion, a strong positive coefficient determining level of political discussion with income, but not as strong with age. McClurg¹⁰ demonstrated, using South Bend data, in his study of the level of political discussion in the context of certain dyads, that one is more likely to have such discussions “fairly often” with a spouse (31%) or a friend (22%), but not quite as often with family (14%).

In each of these categories, it is likely there there will be those who are more involved in politics than others, and a smaller number of people who are even very motivated and serve as “opinion leaders”. Such leaders in a group such as a labour union—people who, perhaps, read New York Times articles about labour rights and minimum wage laws, since these serve a personal interest—will introduce ideas to the group through daily life conversation. They might, for example, discuss how hard life is with their low pay, which might bring information about the issue of minimum wage and current legislation that deals with it into the discussion. Those who are otherwise less engaged will pick up this information, especially because the opinion leader has made the information less costlier and personally relevant to them. They might not understand completely the reasoning behind these ideas, or know any concrete details, but they will posses and share these values and opinions as a way to reinforce their membership to the social network. Lake and Huckfeldt¹⁴ suggest that “politically relevant social capital… is generated in personal networks, that it is a by-product of the social interactions with a citizen’s discussants, and that increasing levels of politically relevant social capital enhance the likelihood that a citizen will be engaged in politics”. Thomas H. Sander argued that “more people get their jobs from who they know, rather than from what they know”, but the same concept could also be applied to understand the way in which people receive ideas and information about politics.

Social Reality

In the context of a social network, “social reality” may be created, partly as a result of dominant opinions that are perpetuated through conversation. Social reality can be understood as a set of accepted “facts” that are established within a social group as a result of general acceptance to these ideas. Festinger et al.¹⁵ mentioned, in the context of peer pressure, that social reality “upon which an opinion or an attitude rests for its justification is the degree to which the individual perceives that this opinion or attitude is shared by others….” Disagreeing or not conforming with this “reality” would require that one actively seek information otherwise, thereby requiring the investment of time and energy, which we have discussed increases the cost and discourages the disengaged person from doing so, because it does not directly benefit him. Thus, the reality of these facts is dependent not on factual reality, but simply the “degree to which others with whom one is in communication are believed to share these opinions and attitudes”. In this way, members of the public are influenced politically to hold certain opinions and participate in politics even if they are personally disengaged and disinterested, without directly seeking information from the media to inform their beliefs.

Discussion

While the social network approach to explaining political knowledge and participation explains how a person’s political ideas may be shaped by people around him or her, it also raises several other questions. Although several studies have looked into how one’s level of political participation might differ in the context of networks based on certain variables such as income, age, political affiliation, family type, one might next explore if certain types of networks are more influential in affecting individual opinions than others. In this paper, and several others before it, the influence of social reality on members of a network has been primarily based on agreement and conformity to dominant ideas. The reverse might also be possible, in which case social capital and social reality contribute to people being engaged in politics by challenging them. Could the presence strong inclinations to a certain belief or view also cause members to disagree, invoking a sense of wanting to distinguish oneself? How might this affect the unity or even the existence of certain networks that are based on shared beliefs? These are some questions not explored in this paper that future studies on the subject might explore.

References

1. Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History: Six Lectures, Reported, with Emendations and Additions. 1841.
2. Newton, Kenneth. “May the weak force be with you: The power of mass media in modern politics.” European Journal of Political Research 45:2 (2006)
3. Mark C. Milewicz, Chad M. Milewicz. The Media and Presidential Scandal: The Impact of News Coverage on Presidential Approval Ratings, 2007 Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.(2007)
4. Popkin, Samuel L. “Acquiring data: The process of becoming informed” in The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994.
5. Prior, Markus. “News vs. entertainment: How increasing media choice widens gaps in political knowledge and turnout,” American Journal of Political Science, 49:3, July 2005.
6. Straits, Bruce C.. “Bringing Strong Ties Back in Interpersonal Gateways to Political Information and Influence.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 55, no. 3 (1991): 432-448.
7. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions.” April 15, 2007.
8. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Four-in-Ten Americans Have Close Friends or Relatives Who are Gay.” May 23, 2007.
9. Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Back Bay, 2002.
10. Scott D. McClurg, “Social Networks and Political Participation: The Role of Social Interaction in Explaining Political Participation”, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Dec., 2003)
11. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Likely Rise In Voter Turnout Bodes Well For Democrats.” July 10, 2008.
12. Harrington, Stephen. “Popular news in the 21st century: Time for a new critical approach?” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 9:3, June, 2008.
13. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership.” July 30, 2006.
14. Ronald La Due Lake and Robert Huckfeldt, “Social Capital, Social Networks, and Political Participation,” Political Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 3, Special Issue: Psychological Approaches to Social Capital (Sep., 1998), pp. 567-584
15. Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. Social pressures in informal groups. New York: Harper & Brothers. (1950).

What am I saying really when I say, “Happy New Year”. Am I saying that I want the new year to be happy? That’s great, but really, I want you to be happy. In… the new year (but not in the middle of the year, gosh no). Or does it mean that I want you to be happy because it’s a new year. Because, you know, it’s new and shiny.

Nevermind, it makes sense now.

What doesn’t make sense, though, is to say, “Have a safe flight”. I mean, “fine, if you say so”. Maybe it’s just me, but I think you really ought to tell the pilot that. Or, more to the point, “fly well”.

See what I did there?

Happy New Year everyone!