IP Democracy: Are Internet Users Cyber "Couch Potatoes"?

Two Reuters reports splash a lot of cold water on the idea that the web 2.0 era has revolutionized either Internet usage or politics. The first, by Eric Auchard, recaps a study by Hitwise that basically shows how little true interaction exists with web 2.0 sites and services.

According to the study, released at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo, only a very small fraction of Internet users actually participate in the interactions by actively contributing to the give-and-take inherent in web 2.0 sites. Only .16% of visitors to YouTube upload videos — everybody else is just watching.

Only two-tenths of a percent of visitors to Flickr upload photos. Oddly enough, Wikipedia draws more action, with 4.6% of all visits to that site resulting in edits to the online encyclopedia.

Still, most people are the cyber equivalent of couch potatoes.

The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation’s couch potatoes — voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer’s [Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer’s] statistics show.

Despite the low level of participation, web 2.0 sites are definitely booming. Visits to “web 2.0-style” sites has soared 688% over the past two years, according to the Hitwise data.

Politicians, it seems, are also facing an uphill battle in trying to spur two-way interactions through their web-based efforts, according to another Reuters article, penned by Peter Griffiths.

Although the article documents the tremendous rise in Internet-based politicking, the bottom-line seems to be the same: political conversations on the web are still monologues rather than the hoped-for dialogues.

But there is a sense it is mostly one-way traffic — from “them” to “us” and analysts say politicians need to expand their online ambitions towards interactivity and user-generated content.

When it comes to public officials, governments and candidates running for office, we’re mostly lurking, observing or passively viewing rather than discussing, providing feedback or signing up for things. Not much has fundamentally changed, or so it seems.

“User-generated content is driving the rhetoric of a new empowered citizenry but, in reality, you are left with the same choices you always had,” Australian academic Allison Orr wrote earlier this year.

Although these assessments seem on the mark — in reality most people are content to just passively cruise around the web — they do obscure one crucial reality. For those who do want to create content or interact with politicians via social networking, the basket of new web 2.0 applications make that possible for the first time.

That’s a huge leap forward in communications. And who knows? Once this era has morphed into whatever comes next, even the couch potatoes might be acclimated enough to pitch in now and again.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 18, 2007 12:30 PM to IP Democracy