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July 10, 2005
This post over at public opinion raises the issues of digital democracy. It argues for the need to revive and foster the political conversation in this country. A good way to do this is with a festival of ideas, as this provides a platform for people to express interesting, thoughtful ideas on topical issues. But we need to think through the relationship between a festival of ideas and democracy.
The public opinion post contextualized the Adelaide festival in the way that newspapers, radio, television and government spin constitute the informational framework of our lives, and still determine our reception of our ideas on topical issues and the way we put forward competing solutions. Public opinion suggested that the new media of the internet can, and should, provide a pathway out of the historical failure of the mass media to provide a forum for informed public debate by citizens concerned about their country.
Public opinion then criticised festival for failing to make this move to become a part of a digital world. I'm going to give some reasons here for why we need to make the move. It builds on earlier posts here and here
The Internet is new media, not just because of the technology. Though many see the Internet as a place to use words and text, others, informed by television, see it as a world of images and pictures. Public opinion assumed that the new technologies could be deployed to improve democracy, enhance civic discourse, and help the spread of a democratic political culture in oppposition to the commercial use of the internet.
In Australia democracy is representative democracy, what can be called 'weak democracy', as citizenship is limited to voting. Thsi has the following consequences: ordinary citizens can feel privatized and marginalized; the voter votes once every three years and then goes home and watches political events on the news, waits till the next election. Inbetween elections he or she lives privately as a consumer or a client letting her elected representatives do the governing. Often we have party elites and powerful leaders manipulating issues to win over impassioned, but disengaged, subjects, and gain populist approval for their hegemony.
The Adelaide Festival of Ideas introduces the active citizen who are engaged in the discussion of ideas, thereby adding to the idea of active citizens in their neighborhoods, towns, schools and churches. This presupposes social capital and trust in civil society, which is quite different from the social cohesion desired by representative-style liberal governments. The ethos of the festival--informed debate, challenging ideas, trying to shape government decisions--points to participatory democracy. But that is what we don't have in Australia.
One advantage of a Festival of Ideas embracing a digital world is its speed. Computer communication permits instant communication. This does not mean instant thinking; it does mean using the speed to post the festival speeches on a website to enable democratic deliberation. We e-citizens can read then the material at our lesiure, treat the ideas with patience and consideration. We can download them, mull over them, sift them, reconsider them, use them to question our own thinking.
That kind of critical filtering enables us to avoid the instant thinking and chatter in the form of the venting of our unfiltered prejudice and unthought opinions; and so it allow us to develop our civic and political judgement. This provides a space to avoid the mass media's relationship to democracy caused by the media's inclination to reductive simplicity, binary dualisms of left and right. It also allows us the space to explore the complexities and possibilities of the common ground between two polar alternatives.
It is often argued that a digital world has a tendency to divide,isolate and atomize people because of the necessary solitude of the computer terminal. We sit alone in front of keyboards and screens and relate to the world only virtually, our bodies in suspension, whilst we surf the net. Surfing alone leads to the privatization of politics.
This argument fails to take into account the blogging publishing platform with its public posts, comments, linkages, discussion and common deliberation. This provides a forum where those with something to say are obliged to face public scrutiny of their prejudices and publicly defend their views. So we don't just have the solitude or hyper-individualism of the virtual interface.
Benjamin Barber acknowledges the existence of the virtual communities that have been created on the Internet, but argues that they:
"...are narrow communities of interest,in effect, special interest groups comprised by people who share commonhobbies or similar identities or identical political views. Or they are a continuation of communities forged in real time and space. It's one thing to use the net to reinforce an extant community, quite another to create acommunity from pixels alone. And often, communities that use the web to spread their nets do so in the name of resistance and terror-- radical fundamentalist Christians and Islamic Jihad (not to speak of the Neo-Nazi movement)---have all used the internet to forge something like a trans-national political community. Ironically, almost all conference addressing the potential of the newcyber-technology meet in real time and space--their modus operandi standing as a living reproof to the cyber-communitarian theories they celebrate."
But bloggers do create a virtual community from their posts in spite of the partisan nature of political discourse. Barber has another objection:
"It is hard enough to determine whether cyber-community is feasible; even if we assume it is, this leaves open the question of whether democracy is likely to benefit. Representative democracy, founded on the pluralism of interests and groups and rooted in individualism and rights theory, puts little stock in communities to begin with, and its advocates are unlikely to feel benefited by whatever good deeds the new technology can perform on behalf of community. Strong democrats, on the other hand, may feel that the technology’s ultimate benefit to participation will rest entirely on its capacity to contribute to the building of the kinds of community on which spirited participation and social capital depend."
This ignores the value of the online public discussion of ideas, the debate that takes place and the deepening understanding that comes from this conversation. The publishing technology provides micro but interlinked forums for citizens to participate in a conversation that takes us beyond asking a few questions at the end of a well presented talk by an expert in a festival of ideas.
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Another great post. It captured the essence of what I hope for in the internet/blogging.
However, I wasn't sure about this line.
"We can download them, mull over them, sift them, reconsider them, use them to question our own thinking."
Maybe. I don't know how many people have the desire to do this. I'm thinking that many people tend to accept easy answers and solutions. "Don't make me think" could be be catchcry of many a modern person.
Without the desire to think, people won't, no matter what tools, information you give them.
But perhaps this is too dark/too negative. I hope so. Maybe over time, the internet will help all people think.