Democracy in the digital world E-Book

Wilson Gomes

• Herausgeber: Edições Sesc SP
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Coleção Democracia Digital
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 176

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In times of crisis of representation the question of what kind of democracy can be achieved through the expansion of new technologies emerges with renewed vigor. Is it direct democracy or yet another appendage of representative democracy? Is it democracy as understood by classical liberals, libertarians or communitarians? Is it deliberative or participatory electronic democracy? In the first book of the Digital Democracy series, Professor Wilson Gomes draws on ten years of research on the subject to present a historical cross section of the idea of electronic and digital democracy, addressing themes such as transparency, public sphere, participation and political deliberation. PhD in Philosophy and coordinator of the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy of the Federal University of Bahia (Ufba), Gomes divides his book into three periods: "1970-1995 - The origins of the idea of electronic democracy – Teledemocracy"; "1996-2005 - The consolidation of the idea of digital democracy"; and "2006-2015 - The state of digital democracy". As Gomes summarizes: "The history of the idea that it was possible to improve democratic processes through information technology can naturally go a long way back, as the invention and, above all, the massification of new communication media have always been accompanied by renewed hopes for improvement in democracy and public life." Published exclusively in digital format, the Digital Democracy series is edited by the professor and sociologist Sergio Amadeu da Silveira.

Leseprobe

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The manuscripts that originated this book were generously discussed by researchers at the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy and Electronic Government of the Federal University of Bahia. I am very grateful to Dilvan Azevedo, Rodrigo Carreiro, Maria Paula Almada, Lucas Reis, Tatiana Dourado, Eurico Matos, Pedro Mesquita, Maria Dominguez, Robson Carneiro, Isabele Mitozo and Samuel Barros for the criticisms, corrections and suggestions offered.

CONTENTS

Presentation

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

1970-1995: The origins of the idea of electronic democracy – teledemocracy

To democracy via technology

Teledemocracy as a project

The dimensions of digital democracy

Registering public opinion

Information, data

Debate, discussion, horizontal communication

Decision making

Chapter 2

1996-2005: the consolidation of the idea of digital democracy

Digital democracy takes off

The impact of technology on democracy: the controversy on the effects

The phase of models of democracy

Facing the last resistances

Chapter 3

2006-2015: the state of digital democracy

A new internet

Themes and trends in recent years

New trends in digital democracy

To conclude

References

About the author

Credits

SINCE THE LATE 1990s, with the spread of the internet, words such as interaction, collaboration, exchange, recombination and sharing have come not only to organize the grammar of digital networks but also to influence the social dynamic itself. It is a set of expressions related to forms of production and distribution of information and knowledge that uncover new scenarios, demanding reflexive efforts to understand its effects on communication and culture, as well as on education, economy and politics.

Today, the reach of the digital connection networks in a country of continental dimensions such as Brazil is evident. If, on the one hand, internet promotes an unprecedented enhancement in remote interactions and an exponential increase in access and production of content, on the other hand, there is a fierce dispute over attentions (and accessions) in its environment, which are increasingly narrowed to a limited range of platforms, sites and applications.

With the growing use of networks in the country, issues such as freedom, human rights, social equality, censorship, gender and race populate the daily life of virtual forums, often providing alternatives to the type of approach developed in traditional media such as radio, the TV and the written press. This is due, among other factors, to the relativization of the division between those who dictate and those who consume information, as this boundary is currently being erased.

Since the expansion of the network leverages the multiplication of data volume and its corresponding dissemination in the public sphere, and it also stimulates the participation of an increasing number of people in the discussions on subject matters of common interest, we should ask ourselves about the real impact, in the public eye, of this way of circulating information and voices.

In this sense, it is promising to create a collection that aims to bring together Brazilian authors dedicated to thinking about the dynamics of digital connection networks, investigating their influence on the direction of democracy. Edited by the sociologist and PhD in Political Sciences Sergio Amadeu da Silveira, the Digital Democracy series invites researchers from the field of digital culture to scrutinize, from different approaches, the recent history of this ambivalent relation.

Within this series, the book Democracy in the Digital World: History, Issues and Themes, by Wilson Gomes, guides us more securely through the history of this democracy so distinctively designed by the contemporary world. An itinerary, in the author’s own words, to follow the formation of a new, transformative idea, whether regarding its meandering uniqueness or the historical meaning of many terms used for comprehension on broader scale.

With a clear and direct language, the Digital Democracy series also seeks to awaken the interest of researchers in the area of technology and communication, as well as that of a more comprehensive readership, who are surrounded in their daily life by permanently connected technological devices. This publication in digital format makes use of a support capable to expand the possibilities of accessing studies about central aspects of contemporary life. In this way, it reinforces the role of reading as a key feature in education conceived on an emancipatory basis, using digital technology as a tool propitious for a critical, inventive and renewing social space.

Danilo Santos de Miranda

Regional Director of Sesc São Paulo

LIVES CONNECTED IN HIGH-SPEED data flows through georeferenced devices. In the past it would have sounded like fiction. Today it sounds like a trite description, a commonplace. Our everyday life is teeming with information technologies that have come to mediate much of our social interaction. Technological hopes thrive and become marketing ploys, creating loyalty to and passion for the brands of big corporations that sell state-of-the-art gadgets. But the technology leaps unveil scenarios of risks and dystopias. The fear of automation, algorithmic prediction, artificial intelligence or corporate control over human beings has produced research and fiction.

In order to discuss the complex relationship between technology and democratic societies, from the human and social sciences point of view, we now launch the Digital Democracy series, featuring works that address topics closely linked to the expansion of technologies, such as hacker culture, intellectual property, algorithms and democracy. The series includes reflections on the implications of digital technologies – especially cybernetic (Wiener) – in societies that can be called of control (Deleuze), in an informational (Castells), surveillance (Zuboff) and platform-based (Srnicek) capitalism, delimited by a neoliberal order (Laval, Dardot).

In this volume, one of the most important of the series, the professor and researcher Wilson Gomes has successfully gathered, both critically and creatively, theoretical approaches to digital democracy, from the origins of the concept in the 20th century to our days, analyzing notions of the disputes and solutions envisioned for the obstacles and possibilities stemming from the appearance of newer, more agile and more pervasive technologies. It is, therefore, an indispensable reading for anyone who researches, studies or takes an interest in the subject, since, despite the theoretical rigor, it was written to be read and understood by non-specialists.

The journey narrated by Gomes is one worth following. I find it particularly striking how people once believed and placed their hopes in television as a means to organize the participation of the society. Today, teledemocracy may seem far-fetched, but it shows that over time technologies have kindled the hopes of people who seek to overcome or solve issues of social power relations through technique. One of the main legacies of modernity.

Scrutinizing the theories of digital democracy, the author discusses political participation in digital networks, the so-called e-deliberation, the structuring of the public sphere vis-à-vis the internet, the obstacles to and advances of e-transparency and the digital divide as one of the limits of the democratic process. While attempting to stick to the main theme, Gomes could hardly fulfill his mission without addressing or mentioning online political participation and the issues of digital governments and parliaments.

This book thus fills a gap in the scientific literature on digital democracy. In somber times, of serious crisis and doubts about the democratic conditions of our country, it makes us reflect beyond the possibilities of digital technologies to improve the quality of democracy, political representation and processes of deliberation and participation.

It is opportune to remember that digital technologies are a product of cybernetics, the science of communication and control. The internet is a network in which the digital traces left by its users are aggregated and analyzed by data brokers that identify them and sell them to marketing companies. Online social networking had focused the attention of connected citizens of both genders and hosted major clashes of electoral disputes in Western democracies in the second decade of the 21st century. Intriguingly, heated debates have emerged on the corrosion of democracies in technologically mediated environments due to the opacity of the algorithms and codes that control them, the speed of the so-called fake news, adherence to post-truth rituals, in short, the huge concentration of traffic in few technological platforms. In this sense, the issues raised by Wilson Gomes may help us understand the ambivalent role played by technologies in democracies.

Sergio Amadeu da Silveira

THIS BOOK INTENDS TO PROVIDE AN ITINERARY to help readers understand the development of the idea of digital democracy, which is the conception according to which technological resources, projects based on communication technologies and even personal and social experiences in the use of communication and information technologies can be employed to produce more democracy and better democracies. The history of the idea of digital democracy is the history of the implementation of e-democracy in projects and experiments, but also, unintentionally, of the social uses of technology. Moreover, it is also the history of the public talk, in political environments or in the media, in the form of discourses, publications and debates, about what technology could or should do for – or against – democracy. Finally, it is the history of academic or scientific attention to e-democracy, of the bibliography on the subject from the first formulations to contemporary developments, of the formation and consolidation of lines and trends of research, of the constitution of the scientific field of digital democracy.

The three elements are fairly well documented and, owing to the very brevity of this history, the memory of the entire journey is still largely available. But the study of academic attention provides the most promising path for two reasons. Firstly, materials such as articles, chapters, books, works in conference proceedings and papers are more reliable, more abundant and more available in their complete format. Scientific discourse is obliged to be systematic, careful and comprehensive, which cannot be said of the other two types of materials. Secondly, scientific publications reflect, address and often have as subject, throughout the entire history, the projects and public debate on digital democracy. The opposite is not true, since experiments and debates in the public sphere, for example, do not necessarily reflect the state of the art of research and, as they are focused on responding to specific functions, they hardly keep in view the current e-democratic issues as a whole.

Therefore, the reconstruction of the history of the idea of digital democracy in its broader lines is directly based on the academic attention given to the theme in the last 45 years. And, indirectly, on the public debate and experiments carried out over those years, since they are reflected in scientific attention. The material used consists of a collection of little over two thousand titles gathered and classified by me in the last ten years, mainly in English and Portuguese1, and which comprises, under any metric used, the main literature of the area of digital democracy. When necessary I partly drew on another collection, gathered in the same way, with around 2,500 titles, from the areas of digital government and online politics2. This enabled the design of a graphic representation of the area (its themes, its trends), which, presented in a timeline, reveals the course of the conception of digital democracy from its origins to our days.

Thus it was possible to provide readers desiring an overview of this subject with a fairly reliable map and chronology about the origins, trajectory and future directions of digital democracy, as well as the history of its main issues, debates and questions. The chronological approach, in the format of a history of the issue, is actually an innovation in the case of digital democracy, a theme often subjected to systematic discussions on general problems or particular questions, and, to the best of my knowledge, no other book adopts such an approach.

Do readers therefore deserve an explanation as to why I did not simply address the main themes and most decisive discussions of digital democracy, drawing mainly on the current state of affairs? A lot of uncertainty has prevailed in the area, which still produces considerable damage when adequate links are not established between concepts, problematizations and viewpoints adopted at a given moment and the state of affairs at that precise moment.

A proper understanding of the state of affairs, which means one that considers changes over time, involves understanding:

•the technology standard adopted at a given moment;

•the stage of development, innovation and social use of technology at that precise moment;

•the specificities of the discussion developed in that context, the “parties” and interests involved;

•the intellectual benchmarks considered by the authors of a given moment.

That is why it is different understanding, for example, a proposition of electronic democracy when somebody has cable television in mind; or of cyberdemocracy in a society that is discovering home computers; or of digital democracy in a society of the internet of things, big data and social media. In the same tone, a discussion of technology-based democracy in a context in which democratic theory is most concerned with participatory democracy cannot be similar to one in which deliberative democracy exerts considerable attraction on the imagination of democratic minds. I start out from the hypothesis that in order to make more refined distinctions, fairer and more adequate analyses or appropriate reconstructions of problems it is important to at least once link the issues, themes and discussions to the historical contexts in which they are inserted.

Being a short book, its course is also naturally brief. But it tried to be faithful to the topography of the area and the trajectories therein contained. In addition, it was conceived as an introduction to e-democracy, to present the subject to a non-specialist reader, but who is interested in acquiring a practical grasp of digital democracy. I hope I have succeeded in that purpose. I must say that even for me, who have been working since 2001 in a field that only actually started in 1996, it was important to try to formulate a reconstruction of the history and produce a reliable map of what, after all, happened in this brief, extremely fast and definitely intense twenty-year span of digital democracy − which, not accidently, was the one that swept us up in the 20th century and launched us into the whirlwind of innovations of the new century. Digital democracy is the offspring of the turn of the millennium and naturally reflects the dizzying speed it inherited from that moment. In this sense, a pause to locate ourselves on the map, understand where we came from and decide where we want to go seems to be not only important but necessary. I sincerely hope readers will appreciate the map provided by this small book.

This volume is divided into three parts, each corresponding to one of the periods in the history of digital democracy.

• The first is the formative period of the idea of democracy via technology, from the first formulations of the 1970s to the period of the great debate on teledemocracy between the late 1980s and the middle of the following decade. The second and third parts address digital democracy in its strictest sense, over the period that extends until the present, when hopes for e-democracy are based on internet technologies.

• The second part is longer and features the debates, the themes, the typical issues of the 1996-2005 decade, the turn of the millennium when the idea of digital democracy was consolidated. Debates, themes and issues that will definitely mark the field, so far.

• The third part is shorter and addresses the problems, changes and trends typical of the last eleven years up to our times. It examines the behavior of the themes of the previous decade, discusses the new themes and points out future trends and gaps to be filled in digital democracy studies and projects. This section will be shorter, mainly because it is largely an unfolding of the trends, conceptions, and premises established in the great debates at the turn of the millennium.

Lastly, an important conceptual explanation to properly introduce readers to the universe of interactions between democracy and technology. An attempt is made in this book to restrict the subject matter to the field of digital democracy and its new and traditional themes. In an earlier publication (Gomes, 2016a), I believe I have shown that e-democracy has become, especially from the turn of the century onwards, part of the broader field dealing with the impact of technology on public life.

TABLE 1

The field of digital politics, democracy and state

Online politics

Digital democracy

Digital state

• Campaign and elections

• Theory of digital democracy

• Digital government

• Political participation

• E-Participation

• Governance

• Participation and cooperation

• News and politics

• E-Deliberation and the public sphere

• Delivery of public services

• Politicians, parties and institutions

• E-Transparency

• Open government and open data

• Internet and society

• Digital divide

• Smart cities

• Political discussions

• Digital parliament

In Table 1, digital democracy lies precisely in the middle, between the subfields of online politics and digital government (or state). The interfaces between digital democracy and the other two fields are quite significant, above all because e-democracy was born first and provides most of the social legitimacy on which the entire larger area is grounded. In other words, digital governments must be efficient, economical and modern, but they also have to be democratic; politics happens almost entirely online, but remains committed to the normative horizon of liberal democracy, at least in our societies. These are intersections, not confusions or indifferences: each area has its particularities, aspects, dimensions, purposes. And its own themes. I resorted to such interactions here whenever relevant, but it should be clear that I did not presume the themes and problems related to digital government or online politics to be automatically part of the digital democracy repertoire.

1 Nevertheless, there is also literature available in Spanish, Italian, French, and German.

2 This is a collection of metadata, treated on the Mendel platform, resulting from a permanent project of the Center for Advanced Studies in Digital Democracy and Electronic Government (CEADD) of the Federal University of Bahia, the main laboratory of the National Institute of Science & Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT.DD).

It is widely believed that it would be impossible for millions of people to have the kind of participatory democracy available to the members of small communities such as the Greek polis, New England towns, and Israeli Kibbutzim. In contemporary modern societies, there are no effective means by which large groups of citizens, whether dispersed across the country or clustered in a single community, can regularly interact among themselves or with their leaders. […] At last there is a basic conception of the attributes needed to create a technological system that will allow a large number of citizens, dispersed throughout their communities and throughout the nation, to dialogue with each other regularly and to form their positions on public issues as a group.

Amitai Etzioni

To democracy via technology

T HE NOTION OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACY1 did not emerge all at once, but it was developed step by step. The idea that technology could be useful to build more democratic societies was gradually constructed over at least 45 years. Much changed during this span of time, starting with the designation of the phenomenon, called successively electronic town meetings (Etzioni, 1972), teledemocracy (Arterton, 1987), electronic democracy (Varley, 1991), virtual democracy (Hacker; Todino, 1996), cyberdemocracy (Ogden, 1994), computer democracy (Buchstein, 1997), and digital democracy (Hale; Musso; Weare, 1999). Not to mention a large number of adjectives and nouns whose mere association with the word “democracy” sufficed to express the same idea: online, technology, new technologies, information and communications technologies (ICTs), web, etc. Obviously, the choice of the word associated with “democracy” bestows on it a specific meaning (Porebski, 2002): the “distance” (as in “distance education”), the cybernetics, the electronic technologies, the online connection, the means of transmission.

Moreover, it took some time to reach a solid consensus on the elements addressed and hence referred to by the idea of digital democracy and, consequently, by its experiments, applications, tools, devices, institutions and functions. In different historical phases, for example, different means of communication prevailed, but between the telegraph and the permanently connected smartphone lies a huge difference of scope and meaning. It is one thing to think of mechanisms of televoting; it is quite another to consider big data and open government data.

Thirdly, the very idea of democracy is a complex notion; it can be polysemous and admits a considerable dose of legitimate pluralism, even at the most rigorous and sophisticated conceptual level. Thus the main issues of digital democracy were long treated as if all that mattered was the kind of democracy to be delivered through technology. Is it direct democracy or yet another appendage of representative democracy? Is it another version of majoritarianism (in the sense of a society in which the majority can oppress and assert its dominance on the minority by sheer force of numbers) or is the emphasis now placed on consensus building? Is it the democracy as understood by classic liberals, libertarians and communitarians, or is it deliberative or participatory electronic democracy?