ARTICLE
Democracy via
cyberspace
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Mapping the rhetorics and practices of
three prominent camps
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
LINCOLN DAHLBERG
Massey University, New Zealand
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Abstract
Electronic democracy rhetoric has proliferated with the
growth of the internet as a popular communications
medium. This rhetoric is largely dominated by liberal
individualist assumptions. Communitarianism has provided
a resource for an alternative vision of electronic
democracy. A third model, deliberative democracy, has
recently been employed by electronic democrats who want
to move beyond the individualism/communitarianism
opposition. In this article, I outline each of these visions,
describing the democratic assumptions and electronic
democracy practices that each embraces. In particular, I
explore the ways in which each vision sees the internet as
aiding its cause. I conclude by pointing to the relative lack
of research into the possibility of the deliberative position
being realized through cyberspace. I suggest that a more
rigorous analysis of the intersection between the internet
and deliberative democracy would not only be
sociologically fruitful but may provide interesting
possibilities for enhancing contemporary democratic forms.
Key words
communitarianism • deliberative democracy • electronic
democracy • internet • liberal individualism
new media & society
Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
Vol3(2):157–177 [1461–4448(200106)3:2;157–177;017352]
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INTRODUCTION
Each new communications technology, from the telegraph to cable
television, seems to spark a wave of enthusiasm regarding the potential of
communications technology to transform democracy. Now the internet is
being celebrated as a means by which democracy can be strengthened and
extended. Like earlier incarnations of electronic democracy, a wide variety
of claims are being made about the internet’s democratic potential. In this
article I aim to explore some of these rhetorics and the practices they
embrace.1
In particular, I want to show how internet-democracy rhetorics
and practices fall within three broad ‘camps’: liberal individualist,
communitarian and deliberative.2
These three electronic democracy camps are distinguished by their
respective understandings of democratic legitimacy. For liberal individualism,
a democratic model gains legitimacy when it provides for the expression of
individual interests. For communitarianism, a democratic model is
legitimated by enhancement of communal spirit and values. For deliberative
democracy, a democratic model is legitimated by its facilitation of rational
discourse in the public sphere. All three positions can be identified within
internet-democracy rhetoric and practice. While liberal individualist
assumptions dominate, they do not go uncontested. Communitarian ideas
are strongly embraced by a number of internet-democracy advocates,
particularly by those opposed to liberal individualism. The third position,
deliberative democracy, is increasingly being drawn upon as an alternative to
both liberal individualist and communitarian models.
I will examine each of these internet-democracy camps in turn. My aim
is not to provide either a critical evaluation or exhaustive survey of the three
camps. Instead, I intend to provide a sketch of internet-democracy rhetorics
and practices that highlights the main political assumptions being drawn
upon. This sketch sets the basis for further research. In particular, I hope it
will stimulate more extensive analysis of the third camp, and in particular, of
the possibility of deliberative democracy being facilitated though the
internet.
THE LIBERAL INDIVIDUALIST CAMP
With the development of cable television in the 1970s, a breed of
(predominantly North American) electronic democrats emerged promoting
the idea of teledemocracy: individuals governing directly from their arm
chairs via the use of telecommunications media. One of the most famous
early examples that these teledemocrats draw upon in order to show the
viability of their vision is the Qube experiment. Qube was a commercial,
interactive cablecasting system that operated in Columbus Ohio between the
early 1970s and the mid-1980s. Households subscribing to Qube could
respond to questions raised in cable programmes, including public affairs
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shows, via a small black box with five buttons connected to the television
set (Becker, 1981: 6). Futurologist guru Alvin Toffler (1981: 439) celebrated
this system as a sign of things to come:
. . . this is only the first, most primitive indication of tomorrow’s potential for
direct democracy. Using advanced computers, satellites, telephones, cable,
polling techniques and other tools, an educated citizenry can, for the first time
in history, begin making many of its own political decisions.
Qube provided the basic technology for one of teledemocracy’s main
ideas, the ‘electronic town meeting’. These meetings generally combine
cable television coverage of public meetings with televoting (normally via
telephone). A central criticism of this model is that people are not able to
make informed decisions simply by viewing a telecast meeting. To overcome
this problem, Becker (1981) and Slaton (1992) have promoted a model of
the electronic town meeting that they call ‘Televote’, or ‘scientific random
informed public opinion polling’.3
Rather than instant voting on issues
raised via cable television, this model supplies information on the topic
concerned to a ‘scientifically’ produced sample of the population well before
the televote. In this way, it is argued, voters are provided with the necessary
time and resources to make ‘informed’ decisions.
Computer networks have only been used to a limited extent in
teledemocracy projects. These networks offer the two-way, instantaneous
communications that teledemocrats desire but they have yet to match cable
television and other mass media in audience numbers. As a result, they have
generally been used in tandem with other teledemocracy tools. Becker, for
instance, is involved in the Electronic Town Meeting Company, which
incorporates computer conferencing into the Televote model, alongside
television, radio, newspaper, telephone and face-to-face interaction (see
TAN+N).
The rapid expansion of internet access may mean that computer
networking takes a more central role in future teledemocratic projects.
Internet-based teleconferencing and choice aggregation software have already
been successfully tested in teledemocratic decision-making experiments (see,
for example, Bullinga, 1996; Koen, 1996). ‘The same intelligent agents that
steer airplanes’, Bullinga declares, ‘can be built to steer government’ (quoted
in Lehmann-Haupt, 1997: 57).
Teledemocracy emphasizes the potential of new technologies for
individual empowerment. Keskinen (1999), for instance, argues that
individuals can
. . . gain more and more information on various social and democratic issues
by having access to the ICT. . . . [L]arge segments of the population are now,
and more so in the future, able to form personal educated opinions on common
issues. . . . In modern societies, many people want to shift from being ‘the
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governed’ into having ‘self government.’ . . . They want to have more power
and control to conduct their own life as they want. The ubiquitous information
networks and ICT of the future will be a readily available tool by which people
can easily empower themselves. (emphasis added)
Teledemocracy, as defined here, draws directly upon liberal individualism.
I am using the term liberal individualism to embrace all those democratic
traditions which posit the individual as a rational, autonomous subject who
knows and can express their own best interests. This knowing subject is
assumed by a diversity of liberal democratic theories, from classic liberalism
to libertarianism.4
Even moderate liberals like Rawls (1971: 560) see the self
as prior to its social roles and relationships and ‘to the ends which are
affirmed by it’. The liberal individualist subject parallels the classic economic
agent. It is, as Schumpeter (1976: 269) argues, a self-seeking utility
maximizer. In line with the liberal sense of self, ‘citizenship becomes less a
collective, political activity than an individual, economic activity – the right
to pursue one’s interests, without hindrance, in the marketplace’ (Dietz,
1992: 67). Democratic interaction is encouraged in order to foster a vibrant
‘market place of ideas’ (London, 1995: 45). Discourse helps ensure that
maximum information is available for private individuals to make their best
possible strategic choices between competing positions.
This liberal individualist conception stands behind many seemingly
divergent electronic democracy projects. This can be illustrated by
comparing teledemocracy and liberal pluralist projects.5
Liberal pluralist
projects encourage negotiation and bargaining among interest groups
through a representative system of government. Teledemocratic efforts, on
the other hand, aim for direct input into decision making by individuals.
Despite these major differences, both teledemocracy and liberal pluralist
projects draw upon a similar conception of political legitimacy. They accept
a competitive political world in which democracy is ensured when
individual freedom of expression (whether directly or through interest
groups) is maximized. As such, they can both be classified as liberal
individualist.
The liberal individualism behind teledemocracy may help explain why it
has been so readily embraced by many mainstream and even conservative
liberal individualists, persons who would normally be expected to reject
models of direct democracy. Teledemocracy was widely popularized in the
early 1980s by the information society theories of futurologist gurus such as
Naisbett (1982), Masuda (1981) and Toffler (1981). It was subsequently
taken up in the United States by technophile politicians including Ross
Perot and Newt Gingrich (Friedland, 1996: 187). These politicians have run
electronic town halls and utilized ‘interactive satellite hook-ups, radio and
television call-in programs, and live computer conferencing’ (London, 1995:
36). More recently, the Clinton Administration has applied teledemocracy
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models to the internet, holding the first online ‘presidential town hall
meeting’ in November 1999.6
These politicians promote teledemocracy as a
system in which representatives can go directly to the people without the
‘distortion’ of the media. Other advocates of teledemocracy have protested
that these uses undermine direct expression and put the technology in the
service of elitist politics (see TAN+N). Such ‘events’ do indeed pervert
classic teledemocracy. The participatory model is turned into a publicity
stunt. We are left with electronically mediated political staging and selective
interaction. Yet, behind all these ‘distortions’ lies the liberal individualist
ethos that enables the teledemocratic model to be adopted by, and adapted
to, liberal representative politics.
The internet has now become a central component in liberal individualist
visions of electronic democracy. The net offers the most powerful
communications medium yet for maximizing information flows and thereby
the competition of interests. It enables the efficient promotion of political
options and provides individuals with access to a huge amount of up-to-date
information by which to make their choices. Further, the internet promises
a means by which to register these choices. Software to enable internet
voting is already available (see, for example, Bullinga, 1996; Steeds, 1998).
Many democracy advocacy organizations are rallying behind this liberal
individualist vision, accumulating political information on web sites in order
to help inform individual voters in local and national elections. In the USA,
for instance, ‘independent’ online democracy projects such as Democracy
Network (democracynet.org), Project Vote Smart (vote-smart.org), The
California Online Voter Guide (calvoter.org), and Politics.com are using the
internet to increase the amount of information available to the individual
voter so that they can make the best possible election choice. Some of these
projects also enable direct interaction between individuals and politicians.
For example, Vote.com offers users the chance to vote on a topic listed on
its site. Votes are sent to congressional representatives, Senators and the
President and subsequently users are sent reports on how their
representatives voted on each issue. These projects all promote a liberal
individualist model, attempting to provide individuals with both the
information necessary to make the best choices for themselves on all
available political options and the means of registering these choices.
The liberal individualist ethos is also influencing local and national
government internet-democracy initiatives. I have already mentioned
President Clinton’s ‘virtual town hall meeting’. Hacker and Todino’s (1996)
study of the White House citizen email communication system shows that
liberal individualist assumptions are used as a blueprint for US Government
online initiatives.7
The same is true for most other online government
efforts. Despite the unique qualities of the internet for facilitating dialogue,
it is largely being employed by government as a way to improve the
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efficiency of liberal individualist systems already in place. Most governments
are merely providing the electronic equivalents of their offline services:
information provision, electronic forms for making submissions and
completing transactions, formula replies to email enquires, and electronic
voting.8
Wired cities and nations have been a particularly dramatic response to the
demand to link individuals into the so-called information society. For
instance, Wellington is attempting to build itself as an ‘Info-City’, wiring
public places, schools and businesses (McDonald, 1997). Singapore is
developing itself as an ‘intelligent Island’, attempting to link every household
to the internet (Wong, 1997). The US Government has had its own grand
schemes, most notably its National Information Infrastructure initiative and
Global Information Infrastructure vision. These ‘information highways’ are,
among other things, seen as spreading liberal individualist democratic values
across the globe (Gore, 1994). Yet many liberal individualists, particularly
those whom I will call cyber-libertarians, have opposed these initiatives
because they threaten to allow state interference of cyberspace.9
Moreover,
cyber-libertarians believe that the internet is already a medium par
excellence for the global spread of liberal individualism. George Keyworth
(1997), of the libertarian Progress and Freedom Foundation, explains the
difference between the ‘superhighway’ vision of liberal governments and the
cyber-libertarian understanding of cyberspace:
Superhighways tend to be government owned, operated by bureaucracies, and
with limited access. Cyberspace, with the Internet as its initial manifestation,
has a vast array of ownerships, is operated by empowered individuals, and with
virtually unlimited access. . . . [C]yberspace is the culture and society of
people who are individually empowered by digital connection.
This cyber-libertarianism, which largely hails from the United States, has
been a powerful force promoting the liberal individualist conception of
democratic cyberspace: ‘life in cyberspace’, Mitchell Kapor (1993) proclaims,
is (or should be) ‘founded on the primacy of individual liberty’. Rejecting
government attempts to ‘ward of the virus of liberty’, John Perry Barlow
(1996) declares cyberspace a place of undistorted expression where ‘we are
forming our own Social Contract’ based on ‘enlightened self-interest’. This
equation of individual liberty and democracy through cyberspace can be
seen in the charter of another libertarian ‘public interest’ advocacy
organization, the American-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) of
which Kapor is director. The EFF champions individual rights and civil
liberties as the basis of a healthy ‘cyber-democracy’. As Kapor and Weitzner
(1993: 299–300) explain, the EFF is an organization that intends ‘to educate
the public about the democratic potential of new computer and
communications technologies’. It aims
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. . . to develop and implement public policies to maximise civil liberties and
competitiveness in the electronic social environments being created by new
computer and communications technologies. Our primary mission is to ensure
that the new electronic highways . . . enhance First and Fourth Amendment
rights and other laws that protect freedom of speech and limit the scope of
searches and seizures, encourage new entrepreneurial activity, and are open and
accessible to all segments of society.
Democracy is once more seen as complementary (and often conflated) with
consumer capitalism. Cyber-democracy means that consumers are at liberty
to freely move around cyberspace and make the choices they desire without
the restrictions found in ‘real’ space, whether bodily, geographical, cultural
or political.
Cyber-libertarianism, the ‘purist’ form of liberal individualism found in
the electronic democracy rhetoric, is strongly adhered to by many
participants of cyber-politics.10
However, along with other liberal
individualist-based electronic democracy positions, it does not go
unopposed. Liberal individualist models are increasingly being challenged by
electronic democracy visions inspired by communitarianism.
THE COMMUNITARIAN CAMP
In the 1980s new ‘technological possibilities’ (particularly portable video and
cable television) combined with the ‘festering sentiments’ of past radical
democracy movements to stimulate community-oriented media projects
(Tehranian, 1990: 98–101). However, rather than social revolution, these
projects have generally been more interested in the use of new information
and communications technologies to foster local community development in
the face of rampant individualism, commercialization and bureaucratization.
Communitarian ideas have been particularly influential in this effort to
revive community.
Communitarianism argues that sustainable democracy must be based upon
the shared values and conceptions of ‘the good’ that bind people into
community.11
Unlike the unencumbered self of liberalism, the
communitarian self is understood to be constituted within relationships
structured by social roles and shared subjectivity. The community comes
before and enables individual freedom, expression and democracy.
Democratic dialogue serves the common life of the group, rather than the
interests of a private individual. It enables members of a community to
discover their shared identity and purpose.
New interactive media are celebrated as a means of fostering these
communitarian ideals. As against the centralizing force of the mass media,
small media offer the two-way, decentralized communication necessary for
building community (Tehranian, 1990: 235–6).12
Eschewing the technodeterminism
of much cyber-libertarian rhetoric, communitarian electronic
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democrats emphasize that media structures need to be developed to support
local rather than commercial, government, or ‘public’ interests.13
As
communitarian media enthusiast Majid Tehranian (1990: 236) argues, for
‘community media to serve community interests, we need to invent
structures that put the ownership, management and operation of the media
in the hands of people themselves’.
These communitarian ideals have been particularly prominent within
community access television initiatives in North America (Abramson et al.,
1988: 25).14
Cable television has promised much. It can be locally owned
and operated. It also allows participation by members of a community in
their own programme making. By enabling individuals and groups to share
their values, commitments and visions, cable television provides the means
for a community to discover, reinforce and celebrate its common good. Yet
cable television has not realized communitarian ideals. Community access
television has been undermined by pressures toward professionalization and
commercialism (Tehranian, 1990: 236).
Just as hopes for cable television began to fade, yet another technology
arrived on the scene to reinvigorate communitarian-based electronic
democracy. This new technology was computer networking. Computer
networks promise to be the best medium yet for community building, given
that they offer cheap, decentralized, two-way, communication. They began
to be utilized by communitarian-oriented media activists in the 1980s. Basic
bulletin boards or specially designed networking systems, as used by
‘FreeNets’, were employed to create community computer networks.15
The
purpose of such a network is explained by the self-definition of the
National Capital FreeNet in Ottawa:
The National Capital FreeNet is a free, computer-based information sharing
network. It links people and organizations of this region, provides useful
information, and enables an open exchange of ideas with the world.
Community involvement makes FreeNet an important and accessible meeting
place, and prepares people for full participation in a rapidly changing
communication environment. (cited in Navarro, 1997)
Community networks have increasingly turned to the internet to facilitate
this virtual meeting place (Kanfer, 1997).16
The internet is often cheaper to
utilize and provides more advanced interactive conferencing tools than other
computer networks. However, moving to the internet may have major
implications for community networking given that one’s potential
community is no longer confined to one’s physical locality. With ‘the advent
of the Internet’, Navarro (1997) speculates, we may be entering a new
‘phase of Community Networking’, one in which ‘your local community
can become global’.
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Communities networked through the internet add to a myriad of other
groups that are already based in cyberspace, flourishing through email lists,
electronic bulletin boards, online chat groups and role-playing domains.17
Although geographically dispersed, participants of these virtual groups gain a
strong sense of belonging (Navarro, 1997). They become bound by shared
problems, interests, ideologies and values, rather than by geography (Watson,
1997; Wellman and Gulia, 1999). As such, these virtual groups are often
referred to as ‘virtual communities’. Most virtual communities, unlike
community networks, do not explicitly attempt to build offline,
geographically located community. Instead, virtual communities can be seen
as providing a replacement for the degraded public spaces of modern urban
life, enabling people to interact and form meaningful relationships online
(Heim, 1991: 73; Stone, 1991: 11). Cyberspace is seen as providing what
Ray Oldenburg (1989) has called ‘third places’, informal associational spaces
between home and work essential to forming community. Although these
traditional ‘third places’ of communal life may have been eroded in
modernity, there is the possibility, according to the likes of Rheingold
(1993: 25–6), that they can be developed through cyberspace.
When the automobile-centric, suburban, fast-food, shopping mall way of life
eliminated many of these ‘third places’ from traditional towns and cities around
the world, the social fabric of existing communities started shredding. . . .
Perhaps cyberspace is one of the informal public places where people can
rebuild the aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became a
mall.
However, many communitarians have resisted the idea that virtual
communities can stand in the place of geographically located, face-to-face
communities. Doheny-Farina (1996: 72) doubts whether virtual groups can
embody community. Virtual worlds, he argues, lack the necessary elements
to be third places:
. . . a third place cannot exist separate from a locality because it exists only in
comparison to its neighbourhoods, to local work, play, and family life, to the
institutions and formal rituals that encompass daily life.
So-called virtual communities, Doheny-Farina (1996: 47–50) argues, lure
us into a false sense of collectivity. They provide only an appearance of
community because they are based on no more than shared interests. They
do not involve the deeper community bonds and values that are shared in
the places one physically lives. Virtual communities actually individuate
because ‘they encourage us to ignore, forget, or become blind to our sense
of geographic place and community’ (Doheny-Farina 1996: 14). Other
communitarian-oriented commentators agree, warning of the hazards to our
moral, psychological and social welfare that may accompany the move from
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real, embodied community to de-materialized, geographically dispersed, and
mediated, virtual association (see, for example, Sclove, 1995; Slouka, 1995;
Stoll, 1995). This does not mean, they argue, abandoning online interaction.
Rather, such interaction must be aimed at fostering geographically located
relationships.
If the prospect of telecommunity replacing spatially localized community ought
to evoke skepticism or opposition, one can nevertheless remain open to the
possibility of democratically managing the evolution of telecommunications
systems in ways that instead supplement more traditional forms of democratic
community. (Sclove, 1995: 81)
Community or civic networks are seen as being able to manage cyberspace
in order to enhance located community.
Civic networking describes limited, focused, carefully applied efforts that
attempt not to move us into cyberspace but to use communication
technologies to help reintegrate people within their placed communities.
(Doheny-Farina, 1996: xxiii)
According to Doheny-Farina (1996: 54–5), the internet ‘can either enhance
communities by enabling a new kind of local public space or it can
undermine communities by pulling people away from local enclaves and
toward global, virtual ones.’ Virtual community enthusiasts disagree. They
emphasize the reality of online community.18
Yet, they do tend to agree
with the importance of an ongoing interplay between offline and online
interactions. Virtual interactions are seen as complementary to face-to-face
relations. Virtual communities can be both ‘places people meet’ and ‘tools’
for real-world projects (Rheingold, 1993: 56).
This debate about how the internet can facilitate ‘real’ community shows
the increasing maturity of communitarian-oriented electronic democracy
positions. Continuing to unite these positions is the belief that the internet
will only enhance democratic participation to the degree that it strengthens
community by bringing people together to discover and build upon what
they have in common. This stands in stark contrast to liberal individualism
which promotes the expression of individual wills. Internet-democracy
rhetoric and practice generally draw upon one of these two camps.
However, there is also a third position being drawn upon, one that posits a
different notion of democratic legitimacy from both liberal individualism
and communitarianism. This third position is deliberative democracy.
THE DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY CAMP
The idea of building third places online is associated in electronic
democracy literature not only with virtual community but with the notion
of a virtual public sphere (see, for example, Hauben and Hauben, 1997;
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Rheingold, 1993; Surman, 1994). This latter notion points to the existence
of a third electronic democracy camp, one that is based upon the
deliberative model of democracy.
Benjamin Barber’s (1984) call for the use of new information technology
to foster ‘strong democracy’ is an early and influential example of electronic
democracy rhetoric inspired by deliberative ideals.19
Barber rejects both the
unitary politics of communitarianism and the ‘weak democracy’ of
liberalism. For Barber, democracy demands the transformation of private
individuals into active citizens through the institution of ‘strong democratic
talk’. In similar vein, Abramson et al. (1988) argue for the development of a
form of electronic democracy based on rational dialogue. They promote ‘the
democratic art of persuading or being persuaded in turn’ and the idea that
people should ‘justify individual opinions in terms of the common good’
(Abramson et al., 1988: 276). Moreover, they argue for the use of ‘the
congregating and conferencing capacity of the new media’ to ‘involve more
citizens than ever in meetings and debates, discussion, and dialogue’ (1988:
295).
An emphasis upon rational public deliberation has continued to be a
prominent aspect in electronic democracy rhetoric referring to the internet
(London, 1995; Street, 1997). The development of this deliberative strand of
cyber-democracy will be discussed further below. First I want to define the
notion of deliberative democracy by contrasting it with both liberal
individualism and communitarianism.20
Deliberative democracy conceives of political interaction very differently
from liberal individualism. The latter’s marketplace conception of politics
sees the expression (and subsequent clash) of private interests as important
for enabling individuals to arrive at ‘informed’ choices about the issues at
hand. Deliberative democracy demands more of democratic interaction. In
free and open dialogue, participants put forward and challenge claims and
arguments about common problems, not resting until satisfied that the best
reasons have been given and fully defended. Participants attempt to come to
an understanding of their interlocutors and to reflexively modify their prediscursive
positions in response to better arguments. In the process, private
individuals become public-oriented citizens. Rather than the self-seeking
utility maximizer of liberal individualism, the deliberative model relies ‘upon
a person’s capacity to be swayed by rational arguments and to lay aside
particular interests and opinions in deference to overall fairness and the
common interest of the collectivity’ (Miller, 1992: 56).
At the same time, the deliberative model can be distinguished from the
communitarian conception. In the latter, dialogue is intended to help
discover an already existing common good. In contrast, deliberation
democracy sees dialogue as helping participants move towards understanding
and agreement despite their differences. Deliberation, as Bohman (1996: 8)
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asserts, is a ‘public’ rather than ‘collective’ activity. While communitarianism
assumes a subject that is always already community focused, deliberative
democracy posits a subject that becomes oriented towards a larger public
purpose only through rational deliberation.
For both liberal individualism and communitarianism, the source of
democratic legitimacy (and rationality), is based upon the will of all, which
is derived from the expression of already formed wills, either pre-discursive
interests or pre-given values. Both positions are rooted in notions of a selfdetermining
subject, individual or collective (Habermas, 1996: 103). In
contrast, deliberative democracy relies upon intersubjectivity. All prediscursive
interests and values are up for grabs. A legitimate (and rational)
decision rests not upon the expression of pre-given wills but upon the
deliberative process by which everyone’s will is formed (Manin, 1987:
351–2).
The public sphere is the institutional arena in which this rational
deliberation and the making of public citizens takes place. It stands between
the private individual and the state, allowing the ongoing critical scrutiny of
official decision making. Communitarian and liberal individualist positions
sometimes refer to the public sphere, but their interpretations give it a much
less significant role than in the deliberative model. The public sphere for
communitarianism is conflated with spaces of interaction that reinforce,
rather than critique, the values that bind community. In the case of liberal
individualism, a separation of spheres is first and foremost demanded to
protect private interests. The public sphere is simply an arena in which these
private interests can be strategically pursued.21
Deliberative democracy’s rational public sphere relies upon discursive
spaces which are largely constituted in modern society through
communications media (Habermas, 1989). The internet is now seen by
some deliberative democracy proponents as an exemplary medium for
facilitating such spaces.22
They point to the many informal deliberations on
usenet groups, email lists, and web forums that go beyond the mutual
support of virtual communities and involve the type of rational-critical
discourse expected by the deliberative model. There are also a number of
internet-democracy initiatives explicitly attempting to facilitate rational
deliberation online. Since 1994, Minnesota E-Democracy has helped foster
an ‘online interactive public sphere’ where people can go to rationally
deliberate upon issues relating Minnesota politics.23
The Minnesota model
has been replicated by the Iowa E-Democracy project.24
It has also
influenced the United Kingdom Citizen’s Online Democracy project and
the Nova Scotia Electronic Democracy Forum.25
Other online deliberative
democracy projects are developing independent of Minnesota E-Democracy.
One very promising deliberative effort, still in its early stages of
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construction, is the CivicExchange: Strong Democracy in Cyberspace
project driven by Benjamin Barber’s Walt Whitman Center for Culture and
Democracy at Rutgers University and the Information Society Project at
Yale Law School. The project is being designed with the belief that
‘cyberspace is the new public space of the next century’. It ‘aims to build a
deliberative web site that will facilitate lively and self-governing political
discourse . . . [that] assure[s] ongoing deliberative, thoughtful dialogue
where citizens can think and rethink issues, confront new ideas and people,
and change their minds in the course of the discussion’ (quoted from
CivicExchange home page).26
Such online deliberative initiatives are not
confined to Western democracies. For example, Malaysia.net offers a space
for discourse on Malaysian political issues in a context where tight controls
exist over political discussion in the mass media. In addition to these
projects, deliberative forums are a central aspect of many community
networks and a number of CityNet projects such as Santa Monica’s Public
Electronic Network (PEN), Amsterdam’s Digital City, and the IperBolE
project of Bologna (see Tsagarousianou et al., 1998).27
There is growing interest from academic commentators in whether these
informal and more organized online deliberations can actually enhance the
public sphere. According to internet researchers Michael Hauben and
Rhonda Hauben (1997), the emergence of a deliberative sphere through
cyberspace is clearly evident from the thousands of diverse conversations that
can be found taking place online at any time. Douglas Kellner (1999)
agrees, emphasizing the expansion of the public sphere through the online
communications of civil society. On the other hand, Mark Poster (1997)
strongly contests the claim that such a sphere can be facilitated through
cyberspace. This debate promises to develop further given that both cyberdiscourse
and the deliberative model of democracy have been steadily
gaining academic attention. As this happens, the deliberative position
promises to become an increasingly prominent alternative to both liberal
individualism and communitarianism in electronic democracy rhetoric and
practice.
CONCLUSION
I have outlined three electronic democracy camps that can be identified in
internet-democracy rhetoric and practice. My purpose here has not been to
offer a critical evaluation of the positions. I have aimed instead to provide
some background observations and demarcations that will aid further
research. A considerable amount of research (and promotion) is already
being undertaken with regards to the liberal individualist camp.
Governments, universities and research institutes throughout the world are
conducting pilot projects and looking at ways of enhancing liberal
Dahlberg: Democracy via cyberspace
169
individualist systems through the use of the internet. Communitarianoriented
cyber-democracy is also being paid considerable attention. A
substantial literature analysing community on and through the internet is
being produced by community network activists, communitarian critics of
liberalism, and especially by social researchers who have found this to be a
rich ethnographic field. There has also been much commentary and debate
on the possibility of the internet facilitating deliberative democracy.
However, actual research into this prospect has been sketchy (see, for
example, Roper, 1999; Wilhelm, 1999). Attempts to develop in-depth
research have largely been limited to graduate student thesis work (see, for
example, the dissertations by Abe, 1998; Nien-Hsuan Fang, 1995;
Schneider, 1997; Thornton, 1996). This is despite the claim that the
deliberative model not only has an affinity with the communicative spaces
proliferating through the internet but offers a powerful vision of democracy
that is in step with the needs of contemporary pluralist society: the
deliberative model recognizes difference between individuals and the
importance of rational deliberation to build strong citizens. I find this to be
a provocative argument deserving greater attention. More extensive analysis
of the intersection between the internet and deliberative democracy may not
only be sociologically fruitful but could provide interesting possibilities for
enhancing contemporary democratic practices.
Notes
1 An earlier version of this article was presented in June 1999 at the Exploring Cyber
Society Conference, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK.
2 I use the term ‘electronic democracy’ to encompass all those rhetorics and practices
that refer to the use and impact of electronic media technologies (from the telegraph
to the satellite) in democratic processes. I use the term ‘internet-democracy’
specifically in relation to those rhetorics and practices that refer to the role of the
internet in democratic processes.
3 See Becker and Slaton (2000) for a reflection on past teledemocracy efforts and a
vision of where they see their model heading in the 21st century.
4 Liberal individualism underpins the diverse positions of, among others, direct
democrats (such as the teledemocrats), liberal pluralists (Dahl), egalitarian liberals
(Rawls), elite democrats (Schumpeter), and libertarians (Nozick). Although these
traditions may disagree on the problems facing democracy (state power,
majoritarianism, poverty, elites, etc.) and may suggest divergent solutions (the free
market, representation, division of powers, distributive justice, direct democracy,
negative rights, etc.), they all assume a similar liberal individualist notion of the
subject. This subject is what communitarian critic Michael Sandel (1992) describes as
the ‘unencumbered self’, a self-knowing subject individuated antecedently to its
choice of ends. It is the form of political subject also referred to in C.B.
MacPherson’s (1962) analysis of possessive individualism, Jane Mansbridge’s (1993)
discussion of self interest in ‘adversary democracy’ and Iris Marion Young’s (1990)
critique of the interest-based conception of democracy.
New Media & Society 3(2)
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5 For a comparison of the theoretical differences between the democratic positions
underpinning teledemocracy and liberal pluralist projects see Abramson et al. (1988:
28–9).
6 Selected questions from computer users were answered by the US President via
webcast. See http://www.excite.com/townhall/ (consulted July 2000).
7 On 24 June 2000, President Clinton and Vice President Gore announced via webcast
major new ‘E-Government initiatives’. These new initiatives remain driven by the
goal of providing an array of government information online in order to maximize
individual choice. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/html/
e-government.html (consulted July 2000).
8 The internet is increasingly being used to enhance political voting systems. For
instance, in the US, VoteHere.net ran a straw poll in Alaska for the Republican Party
in January 2000, Election.com helped run the Arizona Democratic Primary in
March 2000, and eBallot.net has enabled internet voting in the Reform Party’s
August 2000 Presidential nominations.
9 For a selection of electronic democracy rhetoric from influential cyber-libertarians
see Barlow (1996), Dyson et al. (1994), Gates (1999), Grossman (1995), Keyworth
(1997), and Toffler and Toffler (1994). A celebratory look at many such figures is
offered by Brockman (1997). For more critical analysis see Barbrook and Cameron
(1995) and Rowe (1996).
10 Katz (1997) reports research that shows that online politics tend to be dominated by
libertarians committed to free-market style politics.
11 Communitarian theorists tend to put forward a more sophisticated version than the
crude communitarianism advocated in the popular literature and that I have
described here. For further insight into the communitarian position see The
Communitarian Network, http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/catel.html (consulted July
2000) or refer to communitarian theorists such as Etzioni (1993), MacIntyre (1981),
and Sandel (1982).
12 These ‘small media’ include ‘posters, small press, transistor radio, mimeograph
machines, copying facilities, public phones, portaback video, audio and video cassette
recorders, and personal computers’ (Tehranian, 1990: 235–6).
13 ’Public’ systems are seen as dominated by cultural elites with little community
participation, let alone community ownership and control (Tehranian, 1990:
107–10).
14 For examples of electronic democracy projects influenced by communitarian ideals
see Abramson et al. (1988) and Tehranian (1990).
15 Community networks are sometimes set up using basic bulletin board systems, but
more often employ specially developed software. For instance, most so called FreeNets
use FreePort software developed at Case Western Reserve University for the
Cleveland Free-Net (Beamish, 1995). The term Free-Net is a service mark of the
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN), an umbrella organization that
helped sustain community member networks before it went bankrupt in September
1996 (Kanfer, 1997; Schuler, 1996: 26).
16 For instance, in Britain the BBC (http://www.partnerships.org.uk/bol/) and
Partnership Online (http://www.partnerships.org.uk/index.htm) both offer online
links to community networks and support for those wanting to build local
community through the internet (both consulted July 2000).
17 Many virtual communities are linked to mega-communities – web sites that host
literally thousands of online communities. The OneList (www.onelist.com) megaDahlberg:
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171
community at last count boasted 280,000 communities while Six Degrees
(www.sixdegrees.com/invite.asp) boasted over three million members. Geocities
(geocities.yahoo.com) offers web space where tens of thousands of individuals and
groups ‘build’ their home pages around ‘themed communities’ or ‘clusters of interests’
– ‘communities of like-minded pages’. Geocities is now part of Yahoo which also
hosts thousands of online ‘clubs’ (clubs.yahoo.com/). Other mega-communities
include Microsoft communities (communities.msn.com/home), Excite’s community
boards (boards.excite.com/communities/directory), Lycos clubs (clubs.lycos.com/
libe/Directory/welcome.asp), and Talk City (talkcity.com). These mega-community
sites tend to be profit oriented. They offer free space to public (i.e. non-profit)
virtual communities but sell space to advertisers attempting to target certain
communities of interest. (All web sites consulted May 2000.)
18 The ‘reality’ of online community is supported by social research including Turkle
(1995), Watson (1997) and Wellman and Gulia (1999).
19 Barber (1998a, 1998b) continues to provide persuasive arguments for his deliberative
vision for democracy and the use of new communications technologies to do this.
20 Some of the strongest formulations of deliberative democracy can be found in
Bohman (1996), Chambers (1996), Cohen (1989), Dryzek (1990), Habermas (1996),
Manin (1987) and Miller (1992). Recently a number of useful collections discussing
deliberative democracy have appeared. One of the most interesting of these is
Benhabib (1996). See also Bohman and Rheg (1997) and Elster (1998). See Bohman
(1998) for a survey of the developing deliberative position.
21 There are large variations between different liberal individualist conceptions of the
public sphere. Liberal pluralism sees it as an arena for maintaining a vibrant
marketplace of ideas. The concept becomes subsumed within parliamentary and
party deliberations in elite theories of democracy. Direct democrats (such as
teledemocrats) tend to ignore the public sphere altogether, arguing that individuals’
pre-discursive interests should be expressed free from any intermediary institutions.
22 Proponents of the idea that cyberspace may (given the right social conditions) offer a
renewed public sphere include Aikens (1997), Barber (1998a and 1998b), Clift
(1999), Fernback (1997), Hauben and Hauben (1997), Kellner (1999), Moore (1999)
and Noveck (1999).
23 See Minnesota E-Democracy’s home page at http://www.e-democracy.org/
(consulted July 2000).
24 See http://www.e-democracy.org/ia/ (consulted July 2000).
25 Neither of these projects were operating online at the time of writing (as at July
2000).
26 See http://www.law.yale.edu/infosociety/civicexhange.html (consulted July 2000).
27 The British Government internet site is a rare example of a national government
providing discussion forums as well as the more standard information and feedback
facilities. See http://www.number-10.gov.uk/default.asp?pageid=7 (consulted July
2000). Discussion forums are more likely to be provided by city council online
initiatives. However, as Hale et al. (1999) show, city and municipal networks do not
often actively encourage citizen deliberation. Even the much celebrated deliberative
aspects of Santa Monica’s PEN are now being down-played by officials and not
being taken up by councils emulating PEN (Doctor and Dutton, 1998: 147). For
further discussion of various government initiatives see Ostberg and Clift (1999).
Refer to Tsagarousianou et al. (1998) for a number of excellent evaluations of city
networks.
New Media & Society 3(2)
172
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LINCOLN DAHLBERG has recently completed a doctorate in sociology from Massey
University, New Zealand. His thesis research focuses on the possibility of the internet
enhancing the public sphere. He is following up his doctorate with further research into the
role of new information and communications technologies in local and global processes of
democratization and social justice.
Address: School of Sociology, Social Work, and Social Policy, Massey University, Private Bag
11222, Palmerston North, New Zealand. [email: L.J.Dahlberg@xtra.co.nz]
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