This time I took my notes by hand, which really helped me think more in depth about what I was reading. Although this article was short, it gave me some good background information about representative democracy. It discussed our modern democracy in terms of mass media, but I plan to look at social media, specifically Twitter. Despite not discussing Twitter, the article was helpful and served as a good starting point for my research. It did not, however, address my question of how social media has impacted representative democracy.
This exercise was helpful because it forced me to think about my question in terms of history. It made me think beyond my research question, and ask in what ways technology has changed democracy and in what ways will it continue to change democracy. Is there any way to check the increased power of media? This new style of note taking challenges me to stop and think, rather than simply copy.