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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute?
When the internet first got kicking, some scholars of democracy and civil society thought that online discussions could create what they called a "conversational1 democracy": an ongoing2 town hall without bricks and mortar3. But the internet may not be as democratic as they'd imagined, according to a study in the journal Communication Research.
Researcher Itai Himelboim gathered eight million messages posted to 35 political and philosophical4 newsgroups—like alt.politics.usa—over a six-year period. And he analyzed5 the connections among the messages. Turns out that 50 percent of all replies were directed at just 2 percent of people who started threads, and who thus came to control the discussion. And the larger the newsgroup, the more polarized this effect became.
But these newsgroup dominators weren't posting much original content. Sixty percent of their posts were just content lifted from traditional news sources like the New York Times. Which is good news for the news business, the author says. Because it means people still want someone else to search out information and deliver it. After all, isn't that one reason why you listen to this podcast?
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
1 conversational | |
adj.对话的,会话的 | |
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2 ongoing | |
adj.进行中的,前进的 | |
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3 mortar | |
n.灰浆,灰泥;迫击炮;v.把…用灰浆涂接合 | |
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4 philosophical | |
adj.哲学家的,哲学上的,达观的 | |
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5 analyzed | |
v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 );分解;解释;对…进行心理分析 | |
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