What really grabbed my interest here is the idea that today?s connectivity might indeed allow too many voices to be heard at once. Though we always seem to question the credibility of mass news sources such as The New York Times or CNN, at least they provide us all with what, for the most part, are balanced and thought-through accounts. With the advent of social media, however, singular events are likely to be hijacked by popular opinion rather than by well-reasoned analysis. Social media, in removing the delay previously required to share your thoughts on something, has created what to me seems closer to a mob mentality than a democratic polis.
For example, what 10 years ago may have spurred open conversation between family, friends, and co-workers now polarizes social media users?despite the best intentions of those initiating any sort of movement in the first place! Consider the recent national action around police use of deadly force. Posting a cell-phone video of what on first glance appears to be a murder in cold blood garners public outcry, but outcry that takes mere minutes to manifest. How can we really expect our outrage to rest on a firm foundation if all we have seen is a single video, and a thread of charged comments? Personally, I don?t think we can.
At the same time, those same structures that allow what I describe above to happen also bring many a benefit to the activist cause? Looking forward to hearing how we might balance this one!

我认为，就共识使人们对自己的判断放心而言，态度和反应的表达速度可以使我们感觉更合理。当然，除非我们不同意第一印象。但是，我经常感觉自己在进行图灵测试。在我看来，这是一个巨大的缺点，缺乏所有其他的人际互动，帮助我们从活生生的对话者的真实想法中，整理出围绕我们的态度的回响。
Another issue is a perennial question in all efforts to express ourselves or persuade one another: Why? Why do we feel that unanimity is the required test of reason? It is as if we feel others have a duty to agree. Perhaps we would get truer to reason, and to the emergence of language, semantic and syntactic, by exploring our differences? Is it possible, for instance, that the much celebrated "linguistic competence" is short of complete both semantic and syntactic? What if logic is as flawed as experience deems it impoverished of meaning? And experience (the episteme) as impoverished of sense as logic seems to portray it? If so, perhaps we have, not a duty to agree, but a duty to differ? Maybe this can show us a drama more completing than logic or experience alone? Maybe this can show us how to beat the Turing test?

Brooke Gladstone covers all the parameters of this issue on a regular basis, though not in every episode, of her weekly NPR program On The Media. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in all internet issues.
事实上，政客们可能会花一天的时间阅读数百封，在华盛顿特区可能是数千封(在工作人员的帮助下)来自选民和各种活动人士的电子邮件。但他们每天晚上都要花几个小时与富有的捐赠者通电话。哪个更有影响力?源源不断的不请自来的意见变成了一种模糊的陈词滥调，还是一只手提供支持，另一只手制定规则的鲜活声音?一位政治家出身的评论员指出，选举结果虽然不太可能与选民表达的观点相矛盾，但也小心翼翼地避免与富人的支持相矛盾。这就是为什么政客们在竞选活动中如此犹豫，尤其是在回答选民们毫无准备的问题时。他们正在努力思考如何在不冒犯资助者的情况下缓解提问者的担忧。自动化的请愿根本没有机会，除了帮助政治家制定支持者的利益。我所担心的是开发一种程序，将互联网上表达的观点减少到一个可管理的表达观点地图上，并通过那里的语言地雷完成一个明确的路径。我们现在只需要半机械人的共识。
The world is only in its numbers. Consensus is a conceit of rightness offered us a facile term of our knowing it. It is only where we are intimately particpated in the most rigorous sense of proving that facile term undiscerned us that we share fully in each other's views. That sharing is the strict opposite of consensus and the 'only-in-its-numbers' the world is. It is hard to see how the internet can be anything but a cyborg consensus in the face of this distinction. Can love be mass-produced? Can polity? Between the urge to "flame" and the reflex to enthuse there is little room for meaningful discussion. Where people do get down to brass tacks, they tend to be dismissive of those who try to throw a wet blanket on their enthusiam for unexamined presumptions.

在数字时代，发布和接收内容的障碍很低，每一个声音似乎都被放大了，那么怎么能听到任何声音呢?但是，所有的声音真的都有平等的机会被听到吗?这些初始位垒有多低呢?互联网已经存在了几十年，但全球仍有44亿人无法使用它!仅在美国这个世界上使用互联网最多的国家，就有5000万人没有互联网(包括那些自愿使用互联网的人)。随着数字技术越来越花哨、越来越昂贵，失去网络连接的人数惊人，最终可能会越来越多。数字工具无疑是不平等的标志，那么网络行动对于实现某些目标有多可靠呢?不仅如此，网络工具如此不稳定和不断进化的事实，自然导致了使用这些工具的代沟。以网络工具为媒介的社会和政治激进主义?美国的“沙发运动”确实正在发生，但我们面对的可能是一种只代表特定网络精英的精英式行动主义吗?

Perhaps as a confirmation of this view is the success of the campaign for 'net neutrality', very much an elitist issue concentrated in the hands of heavy users of the internet. We might not influence congress, but we're assured, for now, of getting our pirated downloads!

Your initial remark sums it up perfectly: there is the danger and reality of too many voices speaking at once degrading political discourse to popular opinion. This is because the vital essence of activist politics, and politics in general, remains the same regardless of the technological progress that at times affects the workings of politics. To be specific, the essence of good politics is competent voices speaking at the right time and in the right way. The uploading of a video that becomes viral and jumpstarts a political movement cannot be appropriately judged as political, I think. This confusion has led us to forget the importance of a politics that is based on widely public debate between serious representatives of their respective causes. For example, the television during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement showed gruesome footage that helped galvanize the movement, but that alone would not made anything political. The politics comes in with actual physical movement and organization led by a hierarchy of leadership, embodied by figures such as MLK, Malcolm X, and other lesser known figures. Until those organizations and leaders arise, and public discussion happens between these organizations, there is no true activist politics. Activist politics represents the oppressed mass, but it never has been and never will be the oppressed mass arguing all at once; there is a filter through competent leadership that steers the political ship in the right direction. For that reason, social media and the internet will not save us from our abysmal politics; only what has always worked will continue to work. Thus, the only reasonable question now is not if it'd be better without social media, but how do we adapt political organization to this new environment?

Online campaigns have shown us that it has a big influence in terms of voter. So, digital age is really helpful for political activism.
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PSWV