I’m taking a brief break between major writing projects to pop in on the blog and let you all know that I’m still alive. It’s been a rather busy few weeks, and looks to continue to be that way until the end of the holidays. I suppose it’s quite telling that, in this day and age, when I need to take a break from writing about learning, literacy, and the Internet, I end up spending my recreational time, uh, still on the internet. The internet is pervasive and, it feels sometimes, impossible to pry myself away from.

In the work I’ve been engrossed in these last few weeks, I’ve been writing about the weird and woolly world of internet discussion forums — how to best study them, how they may support “new literacy” practices, etc. — all in support of my PhD dissertation research. It’s probably old hat by now that online discussion forums feature some of the most complex (and, yes, sometimes the most distasteful) of discourse out there, but I’m currently most curious how much Internet media are really beginning to supplant traditional forms of media in the lives of everyday folks.

Dennis Jerz recently linked to an IFC/Zogby poll on the role of the internet in the world of news, especially during this last election cycle:

Results indicate that the Internet is the most trusted news source among all age groups, and overall, more trusted than newspapers and television news combined. FOX News is the most trusted news source on television and The New York Times is the most trusted national newspaper outlet. Three out of four people feel that news coverage is biased, and that media coverage influenced the outcome of the Presidential election.

(Here’s a link to a PDF of the poll’s press release).

Breaking this down further according to party affiliation, they stated that “94.2% of Republicans surveyed and 55.6% of Democrats surveyed believe media coverage influenced the Presidential election,” and, interestingly, “[m]ore than 90% of Republicans and 55.6% of Democrats do not feel the media is giving a true representation of what is going on in Iraq.”

This a Zogby poll, and there have certainly been issues with some of their polling choices and methods in the recent past. However, taking these results at face value, we see an enormous skepticism toward traditional media, yet it seems to be coming from an overwhelmingly politically conservative skepticism. Is this simply an entrenching of the same “conservative blog effect” that was so predominant in 2004, or something new? Is it too early to tell?

Obama’s made improving the US’s broadband adoption (we’re currently 15th in the world) a part of his jobs plan, and now that the iPhone is the best-selling mobile phone/internet device in the US, we’ll be faced with new questions of how and why people engage with these media in all sorts of contexts.

Spending my days and nights on the internet is such a part of my life that I have a hard time knowing how one “goes back.” I’m not really complaining — pulling out the iPhone at dinner to see what movies are playing down the street is certainly a convenient, useful means of looking up information for the particular kind of privileged, middle class lifestyle that I lead. But, what about more important issues — for instance, how is knowledge shaped by use of the internet? How are political positions going to be shaped by a President who uses YouTube for his addresses? How will the conservative movement change if it begins to take seriously the tools of the internet? How will I ever get my work done if I’m constantly drawn back to reading about this stuff on blogs, message boards, and the like?

So, yeah, this is more work procrastination couched in the form of a speculative blog post. It’s just all of this feels particularly salient to me lately, and I felt like I had to jot it down — any of us hoping to further careers studying internet culture in any capacity have to be both excited and perhaps a little unmoored by the rapid changes that the next few years might bring.