Does A Lack of Broadband Internet Affect Your Ability to Take Part in the Democratic Process

The New York Times article "Digital Age Is Slow to Arrive in Rural America" leads to some interesting questions and opens up my eyes to something I never thought about. As the (proud) owner of a smartphone, I assumed that dial-up internet was a thing of the past along with VHS players and audio cassettes. Apparently that is not the case, even in America. I believe this lack of broadband internet is not simply an issue of people not being able to watch youtube videos with no buffering time but something larger. 

In an age where so many pieces of the democratic process are on the internet, it is possible to posit that these people are left out of the democratic process. If you do not want to go to that extreme, it is possible to say that they are less involved in our great democracy than someone who follows the White House or President Obama on twitter while streaming C-SPAN. In previous years it was possible to say that there were different venues by which people were able to get involved in the democratic process: they can read the newspaper, watch something on TV or listen to the radio. However, nowadays when newspaper readership is down, TV ratings are also down and most content was moved online, people with dial-up internet or no internet at all, are at a serious disadvantage. 

On the flip side, it is possible to say that because rural America does not have alternative ways to learn about what is going on in politics, rural Americans are more likely to attend town meetings about local politics because it is one of the few ways for them to get involved. 


Here is the link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us/18broadband.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.jsonp