E-democracy: potential for political revolution?

This article focuses on the traditional notions of democracy and governance in the context of the recent shock first-round election results in France. The results prima facie suggest voter apathy and disengagement from the democratic process. However, the spontaneous street protests confirm that voters are not apathetic about democracy, rather they are dissatisfied with the current model of government and the unresponsive nature of government. It will be argued that the interactive nature of Internet technology has the potential to reinvigorate the democratic process and re-engage citizens positively in political life

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action

Outlines a community education movement to implement Knight's 2009 recommendation to enhance digital and media literacy. Suggests local, regional, state, and national initiatives such as teacher education and parent outreach and discusses challenges

The myth of cyberdemocracy in China\u27s information society

The explosive development of the Internet in China has catalyzed the emergence of the information society. It is a commonly held view that the Internet provides an online public sphere which provides citizens real opportunities for the democratization of public life. This common sense creates a myth of cyberdemocracy. My thesis tests whether this myth can be justified with respect to China\u27s information society. First, the nature of the myth is analyzed. I examine how the Chinese people understand and interpret the myth . Second, I focus on whether the myth of cyberdemocracy can be justified, especially in the context of China\u27s information society. Based on the analysis of China\u27s information society background, I also explore how the myth works to eliminate social contradictions and to obscure the power relations underlying the discourse. I hypothesize that the contradiction between the market-oriented economy and political control impairs the Internet\u27s democratic potential, and power relations in China\u27s information society have not been changed

Knowledge is Power: the Internet and the Kenyan Public Sphere.

The Internet will… serve multiple functions as the world’s favourite public library, school classroom and medical database, post office and telephone, marketplace and shopping mall, channel of entertainment, culture and music, daily news resource for headlines, stocks and weather, and heterogeneous global public sphere.(Norris 6

Disability activism in the new media ecology: campaigning strategies in the digital era

This article examines the changing nature of disability activism through the influence of social media. As disabled people in the UK have been subjected to acute austerity, this has coincided with a new era of disability activism channelled through increased social media participation. Drawing on the analysis of one group's online activities and a qualitative content analysis of disability protest coverage in traditional news media during the 2012 Paralympic Games, this article positions this shift in the broader framework of ‘new media ecology’ (Hoskins and O’Loughlin, 2010). We explore how emerging structures of disability activism have begun to offer a more visible profile to challenge government policy and negative stereotypes of disabled people. This highlights the usefulness of campaigning strategies for generating favourable news coverage for disability protest

Reimagining Digital Citizenship via Disability

In recent times, disability has gained prominence as an important arena of social justice, politics, and citizenship. This applies also to digital technologies and cultures, where “acts of citizenship” are increasingly generated. Slowly, disability has become recognized as integral and generative part of social life and relations, especially in digital societies. In this chapter I argue that there are various ways in which disability could be explicitly recognized as core to digital citizenship. However, to do this, we need to confront significant cultural baggage.Australian Research Counci

Mediated political participation and competing discourses of online civic engagement

This article focuses on the interconnections between mediated political participation and online citizen engagement. The objective is threefold. First, it examines whether the notion of digital democracy captures the dynamic and “renewed” sense of civic responsibility brought to bear by disruptive information and communication technologies (ICTs). Second, it asks the question of whether the creation, negotiation, dissemination, and consumption of online political content really rivals those circulated by the traditional or legacy media. Finally, the article discusses the potential pitfalls of confining technological use patterns to pessimist-optimist dichotomy, arguing that such characterization ignores innovative or adapted use patterns that emerge based on varying social, political, and economic realities. Overall, the discussions presented in this article are meant to generate conceptual discussions around the links between mediated political participation and online civic engagement, and how they inform democratization processes and redistribution of political influence.Keywords: Mediated politics, mediated political participation, digital democracy, mediated public sphere, ICTs, digital divide, online civic engagement, civic responsibilit

"If they come they will build it" : managing and building e-democracy from the ground up

The possibilities for using online media to promote deliberative democracy and enhance civic participation have been identified by many. At the same time, the ‘e-democracy score card’ is decidedly mixed, with the tendency of established institutions in both government and the mainstream media to promote a ‘push’ model of communication and information provision, which fails to adapt to the decentralized, networked, interactive and many-to-many forms of communication enabled by the Internet. This paper will discuss the experience of the National Forum, which is building an Australian e-Democracy site of which is the first stage. It aims to be a combination of town-square, shopping centre of ideas, and producers’ co-operative which will allow citizens, talkers, agitators, researchers and legislators to interact with each other individually and through their organisations. Its aim will be to facilitate conversations, and where required, action. This project can be understood from a myriad of angles. At one level it is an open source journalism project, at another it deals with knowledge management. It can also be approached as a forum, an archive, an internet arketing initiative and an eCommerce resource for civil society. Central to the project is the development of feedback mechanisms so that participants can better understand the debates and where they stand in them as well as gauging the mood, desires and interests of the nation on a continuous basis. This paper deals with the practice, theories and economic models underlying the project, and considers the contribution of such sites to community formation and the development of social capital

Updating democracy studies: outline of a research program

Technologies carry politics since they embed values. It is therefore surprising that mainstream political and legal theory have taken the issue so lightly. Compared to what has been going on over the past few decades in the other branches of practical thought, namely ethics, economics and the law, political theory lags behind. Yet the current emphasis on Internet politics that polarizes the apologists holding the web to overcome the one-to-many architecture of opinion-building in traditional representative democracy, and the critics that warn cyber-optimism entails authoritarian technocracy has acted as a wake up call. This paper sets the problem – “What is it about ICTs, as opposed to previous technical devices, that impact on politics and determine uncertainty about democratic matters?” – into the broad context of practical philosophy, by offering a conceptual map of clusters of micro-problems and concrete examples relating to “e-democracy”. The point is to highlight when and why the hyphen of e-democracy has a conjunctive or a disjunctive function, in respect to stocktaking from past experiences and settled democratic theories. My claim is that there is considerable scope to analyse how and why online politics fails or succeeds. The field needs both further empirical and theoretical work