Introduction: Tracing radical democracy and the internet

International Journal of Media &# 38; Cultural …, 2007

Deliberative democratic public sphere theory has become increasingly popular in Internet-democracy research and commentary. In terms of informal civic practices, advocates of this theory see the Internet as a means for the expansion of citizen deliberation leading to the formation of rational public opinion through which official decision makers can be held accountable. In this paper I question this public sphere conception as a democratic norm of Internet practice given that there have been sustained critiques of the deliberative conception for failing to account fully for power, and thus for supporting status quo social and political systems. I examine these claims and argue that while the deliberative conception actually pays more attention to power than some critics argue, it fails to adequately theorize the power relations involved in defining what counts as legitimate deliberation. Drawing upon post-Marxist discourse theory, I highlight two inter-related factors that are largely ignored in this boundary setting: discursive radicalism and inter-discursive conflict. I argue that to fully account for these two factors we can refer to an agonistic public sphere position that is also being drawn upon in Internet-democracy research and commentary. In particular, the concept 'counter-publics', which is deployed in such work, helps us take into account the democratic role of radical exclusion and associated counter-discursive struggles over the limits of legitimate deliberation. The result is the radicalization of the public sphere conception. 47 MCP 3 (1) 47-64

The 54th Annual Conference of the Political Studies …, 2004

The discussion on new media and democracy has traditionally taken place within two binary oppositions: between 'optimists' and 'pessimists', and between the paradigm of technological determinism as a whole and the model of 'reinforcement'. Despite their contributions, these paradigms make an artificial distinction between technology and human agency in an attempt to calculate the net effect of the Internet on democracy. In so doing, they either reduce reality to the means or they completely strip politics of the means' impact. Recent models of 'acceleration', 'amplification' and 'institution building' take into account both pre-existing tendencies and technological change and raise a different set of questions that can help us understand and manage change. Conflicting phenomena emerge across the board affecting access, nationality, control, identity and voice. The complexity and the scale of the 21 st century public sphere mean that political decisions need to be taken in order to realise the opportunities and face the challenges facilitated by the Internet.

Studies in Public Choice, 2014

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At least five billion people worldwide will own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day. Information is the central theme of several new sciences, which emerged in the 1940s, such as Information Theory and Cybernetics. We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. Academic research has consistently found that people who consume more news media have a greater probability of being engaged civically and politically. Many studies in this area take social media use as the starting point or independent variable, and therefore cannot rule out that some deeper cause — political interest. Further, social media use is a form of engagement in and of itself, helping to shape public narratives and understanding of public affairs. There is always an excess of potential possible in social media-led protest open transition processes. Ideologically fledgling, institutionally weak and economically distressed nations could not be expected to exhibit as wide a variety of elements and forms of articulation as does historically sedimented, robust democracies in highly developed nations. Nevertheless, there is still, within the limits imposed by history, potential for openness of political transition than any single participant’s strategy can actualise. Transition process openness can be analysed at two distinct but closely related levels: political agency and ideology. The lecture asks whether democracy enters protest nations as an external ideology, in sterile abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs and values, by parachuting democracy from the West. The West has ef-fectively disenfranchised Arab politics, tending to its vexation with oxygen that is fueling the inferno. It is ethically wrong, but ethics is an alien concept in these failed states and indeed, in any of the systems that claim the moral high ground to change it.

Information, Communication & Society, 2014

As democracy encounters increasing difficulties, many citizens are turning to the domain of alternative politics, and in so doing, making considerable use of the Web and other new communication technologies. We're seeing new modes of political participation and even political cultures are emerging, but it would be foolish to expect some simple 'techno-fix' for democracy argues Peter Dahlgren. This is a great and important book about changing media, writes Nick Anstead, and Dahlgren avoids offering us another one-sided new media polemic. The Polit ical Web: Media Part icipat ion and Alt ernat ive Democracy. Pet er Dahlgren. Palgrave Macmillan. August 2013. Discussion of the internet and political activism, especially in popular discourse, has frequently been based on very broad generalisations. Media coverage of a number of events and movements -for example the anti-globalisation and Occupy protests, the 2009 post-election uprising in Iran, and the Arab Spring -have focused heavily on the role played by social media as an enabler, lauding its contribution to radical protest. In contrast, commentators such as Malcolm Gladwell have dismissed online participation as a form of ersatz activism which is little more than a distraction from the real business of non-virtual politics.

Parliamentary Affairs, 2006

This paper explores the importance of radical political uses of Information Communication Tecnologies (ICTs) over the last decade in Britain. Using examples from peace, social justice, environmental and anti-capitalist movements the moments of experimentation, innovation and creativity are documented. From these it is possible to identify several emerging trends: the importance of democratic tendencies, representation and image construction, the threat of increased surveillance, and the vital role ICTs play in building transnational networks of solidarity. The central argument of the paper is that ICTs have been used to facilitate what Mouffe has called a politics of dissensus, a celebration of difference rather than a quest for consensus.

ABSTRACT This paper begins from the basic premise that in considering digital media and its multifarious relations with forms of protest and political mobilization, we are interested in social change. Yet, too often, the key ingredient of protest and political mobilization – the radical politics itself – is left out of our analyses. How can we begin to tackle the challenges posed to democratic politics if we do not talk about actual politics as part of our research? This problem is both conceptual and practical. A politics requires a practice. We cannot understand the nature of the practice without understanding its politics; we cannot understand the politics without appreciating its processes and organization. Yet, so many studies do just this. This paper argues that a fugitive politics limits our abilities to take progressive thought and action forward. By ignoring the actual politics, we end up depoliticizing counter politics because we offer precious few suggestions as to how we can do democratic politics better. Without an understanding of the conditions under which a Left progressive politics could develop then the politics itself threatens to remain ill defined. What might it mean then to put the development of a counter politics at the heart of our analyses? What are the conditions required (including the communicative conditions) for radical political organizations/collectives to endure, build capacity and effect social change? http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1109698

The internet has been seen as an accelerator for lots of trends since its beginning. One has been the spreading of information, education and democracy. While many scholars focus on how the internet can help developing countries to become (more) democratic, this essay will focus on developed countries already having a (somewhat) democratic system and the impact of the internet on their democracy. Remarkably, the worldwide voting participation has decreased significantly since the 1980s (IDEA, 2014). The majority of the world’s countries is (currently) not governed by a clear democracy, but all relevant democracies shadow this trend. Bearing in mind that the internet started to spread exponentially during the 1990s, the statement that the internet strengthens democracy in regard to active participation seems to be wrong. Whatever the reasons for the loss of participation might be, the internet apparently has not been able to reverse this trend so far. This essay will focus on the general trends of democracy in western governments, societies and enterprises first. It will discuss the correlation between decreasing voting turnout and the raise of the internet and present movements of innovative democracy. In the second part, this article will analyse on a more individualistic level where the way the internet is working may cause problems related to democratic thinking. Subsequently, in the conclusion, some predictions for the foreseeable future will be provided.