1 .LEGITIMACY 2.0
E-DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC OPINION IN THE DIGITAL AGE
http://www.academia.edu/1469812/LEGITIM ... SIMO_CUONO
αποσπάσματα
“the advent and power of connection technologies (…) will make the 21st century all about surprises. Governments will be caught off-guard when large numbers of their citizens, armed with virtually nothing but cell phones, take part in mini-rebellions that challenge their authority”. The democratization of communications, the theory goes, will bring about the democratization of the world.
how we can possiblyaddress in problematically fertile terms the question of “what does e add to democracy?
Finland was the first country in the world toconstitutionalize access to broadband. How should such a right be understood against the backdrop of modern constitutionalism? The right to connect should also be viewed in relationto the battle over Net neutrality.
Recently, Brazil suggested a rather sophisticated “Wikislation” website,e-democracia, as amethod of creating web content that could be applied to the legislative process. The idea is tocreate more direct participation by citizens and more transparency in the work done bylegislators, by relying on the "wisdom of the crowd"
Yet the current emphasis on Internet politics that polarizes the apologists that hold the web to overcome the one-to-many architecture of opinion-building intraditional representative democracy, and the critics that warn cyber-optimism entails authoritarian technocracy has acted as a wake up call.
Preexisting bias
refers to “bias [which] has its roots in social institutions, practices, andattitudes”.
This is the “Winner-type” of bias, the classic case of all those societal injusticesor personal prejudices that get inscribed into technology, be it intentionally or unintentionally.
Technical bias
however is something different. This type of bias is not rooted in societalvalues, but rather arises within the process of technology design, when designers make
technical decisions in certain ways and not in others, when they opt for one algorithm asopposed to another.
“[f]or one person Democracy is all about E-Voting, for another it is all about on-line political debate”
The problem is, that there is aninherent tension between accuracy and secrecy in voting systems: tracking votes in order toensure accuracy often goes hand in hand with giving up secrecy, as is the case in raising one’shands. Disentangling the vote from the voter to ensure secrecy then involves
delegating
thecounting process to a counting agent with the effect that the voter herself cannot overlook the process of counting votes anymore, but has to
trust
the agent to correctly account for her votewhile keeping it secret at the same time. The result is a dilemma of trust: “On the one hand,reinforcing secrecy means delegating the implementation of accuracy. Trust in the secrecy of the system is accompanied in potential mistrust in its accuracy. On the other hand, trust inaccuracy can be improved, but then secrecy will have in the norm to be given up”.
The interobjective relation has, therefore, toaccomplish the following objective conditions:
1)the integration in the system of communication of a plurality of informational channels(as to the logic of production and selection of information);
2)the formation of the basis of accessible information;
3)the formation of public opinion on the basis of produced and selected information;
4)the critical confrontation between public opinions and arguments
Some scholars have remarked that democracy is both a word and a thing
. In a sense, the“word democracy” is, nowadays, irrefutable and uncontested: nobody would realistically andsuccessfully try to achieve the sovereign power or to legitimate their political action, whileasserting to do so in a non democratic way or that such action could be performed outside ademocratic framework. For anyone who wants to obtain sovereign power and to legitimate a political project, the reference to democracy seems to be obliged. Nevertheless, the “thingdemocracy” is still far from being pacifically and unquestionably envisaged and established.The word democracy is full of promises and always accompanied by principles, rights andvalues, whereas the thing democracy is still plenty of disillusions, shadows and troubles thatoblige us to constantly watch over its “healthiness”: i.e. its effectiveness or substance
A key difference between code and law, however, pertains to the kind of rules that belong to these two regulative tools. To take into account this difference may caution againstan enthusiastic embrace of this modality of regulation because while legal norms determine how people should behave, leaving them the possibility to chose whether to comply or not,code, particularly in its norm-establishing version, determines how people can behave.
The lack of proximity is one of the arguments used by governance theorist tocriticise classical representative democracy; in particular, the electoral procedures to chooserepresentatives and representative intermediation itself would build a gap between citizen andState institutions, placing the former too far from the decision-making centres of regulationsand provisions affecting their everyday life
e-participation is the trump card in arguing in favour of “electronicrevolution” in democratic countries.
They expressed the need to clarify what they were demanding, because in fact therewas no previous agenda, no ready-to-use design of what ‘real’ democracy should ‘really’ look like. Some considered these worries to be a sign of authenticity and meaningful commitment,while other regarded them as evidence of ingenuity and disinformation. There is something paradoxical in this situation.
Σε πολλά σημεία η βιβλιογραφία είναι ποιο ενδιαφέρον από τα ίδια τα άρθρα
2. DIGITAL PROCESSES AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY:
Dynamics, risks and opportunities that arise when democratic institutions meet digital information and communication technologies
http://www.martinhilbert.net/DigitalDemocracy-eBook.pdf
3. "The Maturing Concept of E-Democracy: From E-Voting and Online Consultations to Democratic Value Out of Jumbled Online Chatter"
http://www.clearether.com/721/Maturing% ... ocracy.pdf
Early literature on e-democracywas dominated by euphoric claims about the benefits
of e-voting (digital direct democracy) or continuous online citizen consultations (digital representative
democracy). High expectations havegradually been replaced with more genuine approaches that aim
to break with the dichotomy of traditional notions of direct and representative democracy.
The first resulting research question throws a new (digital) light on the oldest criticism of democracy: Are decisions of the many really superior to decisions of the few? That is, are they more stable, of higher quality, more sustainable,or more satisfactory for everybody? Since Athens’s mob killed Socrates and Plato, and
since Aristotle characterized Athens’s democ-racy as being full of disorder and instability, emphasizing that democracy was, at most, not the worst form of government—two millennia have passed with countless arguments in favor of the “madness of crowds” (Mackay, 1841) or “the wisdom of the crowds” (Surowiecki,2004).
4. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
http://tropicaline.files.wordpress.com/ ... lusion.pdf
“The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire?
και φυσικά όλο το http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy είναι καλό.
και το http://www.jitp.net/ Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP) είναι πάντα καλό...
