This is a class discussion post that needs to be approximately 2-5 paragraphs in length. 

***Discussion Post should be followed accordingly each question asked needs to be answered.

********I will post the students response below.  With the Student response it should be 1 paragraph in length reply to the students disccusion.

ALL QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED!!!!

ALL QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED!!!!

ALL QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED!!!!

ALL QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED!!!!

ALL QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED!!!!

ALL QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED!!!!

********************Discussion Post*****************

Are the recent advances in communication technology (blogs, Twitter, cable news, etc.) beneficial to democracy and policymaking, or harmful?  Why?

************************ Student Response #1 ***************************

The advances in communication technology, such as blogs Twitter, cable news, an others, are great tools for both democracy and policy making when used appropriately.  As with pretty much everything else though, there are drawbacks to them as well.  The advances in communication technology has allowed more people to get information than ever before.  Almost all public officials have some sort of social media platform, down to even including local elected officials.  This allows constituents another avenue for connecting with their representative.  It also allows elected officials to directly connect with their constituents without a middleman, which means they can do so unfiltered, allowing the consumer of the message to hear it directly from them.  This also brings more accountability and/or transparency which is a positive for the constituents but can potentially hinder policy making.  The increase in information means even the most mundane policies can turn into a polarized issue because elected officials know the public has such easy access to every vote they make.  

It also has allowed for everyone to have a voice and for countless journalists, pundits, and reporters to be heard to a large amount of people.  Information is which is great to educate and inform the public but also as a watchdog on the government.  Of course this comes with a negative as well, because allowing a voice to everyone, really does mean everyone.  Blogs, Twitter, and other social media platforms are full of what we now call “Fake News”.  Even if they aren’t fake they can be heavily biased and leave out important aspects of a story.  Many of the social media platforms have also had algorithms that essentially fed you the pages, news, stories, that you wanted to hear or that already agreed with your platform.  In the same aspect, many choose to follow/like only people and media outlets that share their platform.  I believe that this is one of the main reasons we have seen such polarization recently.  

Overall though I would say the advancements are a huge positive for democracy, if we as the people use them responsibly.  Checking for other sources is always a great idea when coming across a story.  As mentioned earlier, I do believe it has hindered policy making to a certain point but I am not so sure that is a negative or not.  

************************ Student Response #2 ***************************

Other than keeping the citizens and the world aware of developing news in the government 24 hours per day, I see no benefit at all to the increased coverage available through all the communication technology.  To think that we existed 30, 40, 50 years ago without Twitter or CNN or Rachel Maddow or any of the varying methods of media communication seems like the so distant past but it’s not.  The availability and reliability on social media, news networks and everything in between for access to what is happening in our world or government has become a stagnant crutch.  It exposes unnecessary information and sometimes misinformation to the general public.  It creates a state of divided loyalty (Fox News vs CNN) which does nothing to help with the pursuit of equal and fair democracy.  It is indeed harmful to our state of democracy because some people have a tendency to believe what they are told or what they hear without doing their own due diligence and researching for themselves.  The mere fact that we can associate a political party with a network shows how far we have fallen in the abyss of mediocrity with regards to politics.  Policy making is also affected by this because the affiliations with partisan networks extends to the very politicians that we elect to be fair and democratic representatives of the people.  I as a citizen am not going to place my trust in a politician who appears on any biased network and argues for or against what the network believes in.  We don’t elect to represent networks or branches of social media.  We elect to represent the people.  I also don’t believe any person elected for any office should have access to any form of social media as a political platform.  It undermines the duties of the job they were elected for and shows the hand that they are playing to the whole world.  Our enemies no longer need spies.  They just need to check our social media.