From the Heritage Policy Weblog:
Tapscott is director of the Center for Media and Public Policy at Heritage, a longtime journalist and media critic, and an expert on FOIA and government information.Tapscott asks in his first post, can the Blogosphere do for government what it has done for the mainstream media?
We think this is the most important bit. The Internet is sparking an explosion of publicly available data from government at all levels and putting it in the hands of millions of citizens, journalists, political and community activists, academics and think-tank experts with the skills to make sense of the numbers. Government officials can no longer control the means of measuring the success or failure of public policies.How long before vast networks of Internet-savvy citizen analysts apply the same immense fact-checking power to pork-laden government programs as the emerging Blogosphere is now doing with Big Media? Then the Freedom of Information Act will have real muscle.
There is a major role for the Blogosphere in reforming the way Washington does business, but it may be as part of a larger movement.
The larger movement is what we will begin to explore here at DFC.
Posted by Diana at November 19, 2004 08:10 AM