This chapter explores the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on digital democracy, focusing on four main areas: citizenship, participation, representation, and the public sphere. It traces the evolution from electronic to virtual and network democracy, underscoring how each stage has broadened democratic engagement through technology. Focusing on digital citizenship, the chapter examines how AI can improve online engagement while posing privacy risks and fostering identity stereotyping. Regarding political participation, it highlights AI's dual role in mobilising civic (...) actions and spreading misinformation. Regarding representation, AI's involvement in electoral processes can enhance voter registration, e-voting, and the efficiency of result tabulation but raises concerns regarding privacy and public trust. Also, AI's predictive capabilities shift the dynamics of political competition, posing ethical questions about manipulation and the legitimacy of democracy. Finally, the chapter examines how integrating AI and digital technologies can facilitate democratic political advocacy and personalised communication. However, this also comes with higher risks of misinformation and targeted propaganda. (shrink)

Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This article argues (...) for implementing one such vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States, this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity. (shrink)

This paper examines how three Dutch political parties employ the Internet as a tool to enhance ‘digital democracy’. The potential of digital democracy is considered to be strongest in the sphere of collective action outside the domain of political institutions. In this article, however, attention is given to how institutionalized channels might be supportive of digital democracy. Three components of the democratic process – information provision, deliberation, and political decision-making – are examined in the (...) content and user assessments of the web sites of the Socialist Party, the Christian Democratic Party and the Green Party. Minor differences were found in the party web sites regarding information provision; substantial differences were found regarding the degree and nature of political deliberation available on the sites. Indicators of the third component, political decision-making, were least evident on all three web sites. User assessments of the sites and opportunities for political deliberation followed, more or less, the general public images of the related political parties. (shrink)

This article examines an innovative experiment in democratizing international broadcasting through embracing a participatory model of production. In spring 2010, a political debate television series was co-created by BBC Arabic and citizen producers, using social media tools. Based around interviews with prominent political and controversial public figures, the programme (G710) was broadcast weekly on satellite TV across the Middle East and the Arabic-speaking world. Combining collaborative ethnography with corporate ‘big data’ analysis, the research team followed the experiment from conception to (...) premature closure. The article argues that the kinds of digital tools deployed in producing the programme, and used by BBC audience research to monitor user practices in real time, have become essential to corporate processes of BBC World Service governance and management procedures, business strategy, accountability measures, marketing practices and editorial decision-making. They act as change agents, presenting methodological problems and opportunities for the BBC’s audience researchers and academic researchers, as well as symbolizing the contradictory logic of empowerment and surveillance. (shrink)

This paper serves a dual function: (1) it is intended to proffer a stable understanding of our digital engagement on the Internet as a form of labor that is co-opted by digital firms for private profit; (2) it extends the concept of participatory democracy to our digital world, arguing that our collective or common production of value for digital firms (in the form of what I call“knowledge goods”) requires the implementation of participatory democratic governance mechanisms (...) over these digital firms and the experimentation with democratic digital alternatives.Whereas others have argued in favor of democratic control over digital platforms on the basis of the power that digital firms have over user's lives (Engelmann et al.,2020), this paper adds to this discussion by arguing in favor of digital platform democratization based on the value-generating labor contributed by digital users. (shrink)

In the digital sphere, users often find themselves in a situation described in Greek as idiotefsi ( ιδιώτευση ). They behave as “idiots” ( idiotes/ιδιώτες ), which in Greek means a private person. In this new structure of participation, the paper focuses on remoteness, on communication in the physical absence of the communicating parties, to make the point that the remote mode challenges the traditional understanding of an assembly, whether an Agora or a Parliament or even a party session, (...) and at the same time it challenges the constitutive myth of democracy. To illustrate this point, the paper uses Hannah Arendt’s approach of the public realm and action, i. e. a theory of civic participation with a strong deliberative ideal, relying on “visibility” and “appearance”. (shrink)

This paper argues that social media companies’ power to regulate communication in the public sphere illustrates a novel type of domination. The idea is that, since social media companies can partially dictate the terms of citizens’ political participation in the public sphere, they can arbitrarily interfere with the choices individuals make qua citizens. I contend that social media companies dominate citizens in two different ways. First, I focus on the cases in which social media companies exercise direct control over political (...) speech. They exercise quasi-public power over citizens because their regulation of speech on social media platforms implies the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with citizens’ democratic contestation in the political system. Second, companies’ algorithmic governance entails the capacity to interfere with citizens’ choices about what mode of discursive engagement they endorse in their relationships with fellow citizens. By raising the cost of deliberative engagement, companies narrow citizens’ choice menu. (shrink)

The pace of technological change continues to outstrip the evolution of democratic institutions, creating an urgent need for innovative approaches to democratic reform. However, the experimentation bottleneck - characterized by slow speed, high costs, limited scalability, and ethical risks - has long hindered progress in democracy research. This paper proposes a novel solution: employing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to create synthetic data through the simulation of digital homunculi, GenAI-powered entities designed to mimic human behavior in social contexts. By (...) enabling rapid, low-risk experimentation with alternative institutional designs, this approach could significantly accelerate democratic innovation. I examine the potential of GenAI-assisted research to mitigate current limitations in democratic experimentation, including the ability to simulate large-scale societal interactions and test complex institutional mechanisms. While acknowledging potential risks such as algorithmic bias, reproducibility challenges, and AI alignment issues, I argue that the benefits of synthetic data are likely to outweigh their drawbacks if implemented with proper caution. To address existing challenges, I propose a range of technical, methodological, and institutional adaptations. The paper concludes with a call for interdisciplinary collaboration in the development and implementation of GenAI-assisted methods in democracy research, highlighting their potential to bridge the gap between democratic theory and practice in an era of rapid technological change. (shrink)

The deliberative model of politics has recently been criticized for not being very well equipped to conceptualize current developments such as the misinterpretation of political difference, the digital turn, and public protests. A first critique is that this model assumes a conception of public spheres that is too idealistic. A second objection is that it misconceives the relationship between empirical reality and normativity. Third, it is assumed that deliberative democracy offers an antiquated notion of a shared ‘we’ of (...) political actors and because of this, fourth, fails to take into consideration the ‘digital turn’, in particular the de-personalizing effects of social media that have led to a rapid decline of the public sphere. And a fifth critique states that the deliberative model ignores the fact that politics is not, and especially protests and revolutions are not, seminar-like debates but spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes violent expressions. I will argue that all of these critiques fall short in a variety of ways. A deliberative model of politics allows us to address the tension between the ideal and the real, the ‘old media’ and the so-called digitalization of public spheres as well as peaceful discourse and violent uprisings. Especially the concept of communicative power, a notion also used by Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, reveals the potentials for future participation in digital spaces and public places. (shrink)

The digital space has created a new form of public space: one which provides a dangerous blending of public protest, mob justice, and acquiescence. It offers transformative beliefs a voice while mob justice encourages sanctions against (and the erasure of) detractors. This article argues that the digital is not antithetical to the public sphere but has instead generated a ‘false public.’ It argues that hyperliberal illiberalism acts as a form of social control that triggers a Spiral of Silence, (...) an intolerance of opposing ideologies and a fracturing of the public sphere into macro- and micropublics. This article argues for a return to both free expression and meaningful debate which are fundamental to the proper exercise of democracy. (shrink)

This special issue of Etikk i praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics deals with the largely underexplored connections between public domain and democracy in the digital age and features articles highlighting various aspects of this broader theme.

This paper aims to explore the changes that representative democracy is experiencing as a result of the transformation of communication channels. In particular, it focuses on non-electoral representation in the form of movements that emerged throughout the 2010s and that were defined by a strong social media presence (e.g. Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Yellow Vests). Despite not attempting to gain political power via elections, these movements, through online and offline activities, nonetheless managed to shape the realm (...) of politics. The paper thus analyzes the movements’ inner representative dynamics and the ways they reshape representative democracy. It engages with a critical reading of Hanna Pitkin’s concept of symbolic representation and draws on Michael Saward’s framework of the representative claim to reevaluate Bernard Manin’s notion of “audience” democracy as today’s form of representative government. The argument is that, as digital development provides citizens with less demanding modes of political participation and platforms of representative claim-making, it enhances the sphere of opinion formation and the role of non-electoral representation. This sphere entails a tendency towards a re-depersonalization of politics, thus leading towards the transformation of “audience” democracy. (shrink)

Election interference is one of the most widely discussed international phenomena of the last five years. Russian covert interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election elevated the topic into a national priority, but that experience was far from an isolated one. Evidence of election interference by foreign states or their proxies has become a regular feature of national elections and is likely to get worse in the near future. Information and communication technologies afford those who would interfere with new tools (...) that can operate in ways previously unimaginable: Twitter bots, Facebook advertisements, closed social media platforms, algorithms that prioritize extreme views, disinformation, misinformation, and malware that steals secret campaign communications. Defending Democracies examines the problem through an interdisciplinary lens and focuses on: defining the problem of foreign election interference, exploring the solutions that international law might bring to bear, and considering alternative regulatory frameworks for understanding and addressing the problem. The result is a deeply urgent examination of an old problem on social media steroids, one that implicates the most central institution of liberal democracy: elections. The volume seeks to bring domestic and international perspectives on elections and election law into conversation with other disciplinary frameworks, escaping the typical biases of lawyers who prefer international legal solutions for issues of international relations. Taken together, the chapters in this volume represent a more faithful representation of the broad array of solutions that might be deployed, including international and domestic, legal and extra-legal, ambitious and cautious. (shrink)

Are current digital technologies supporting democracy? Answering that question depends, among other things, on what is meant by democracy. This article mobilizes a communicative conception of democracy. While it is generally accepted that communication is important for democracy, there are directions in democracy theory that understand communication as not merely instrumental but as central to what democracy is and should be. Inspired by Dewey, Habermas, and Young, this paper articulates a conception of (...) class='Hi'>democracy as communication. It is then argued that this “deep-communicative” ideal of democracy, together with the usual ethical and epistemic norms of communication as sketched by O’Neill, offer a tentative normative framework for evaluating digital technologies in relation to democracy. (shrink)

The digital revolution is growing at breahnech speed. The basis of this revolution is the techno-economic paradigm, however with new instruments. Instruments reaching a planetary level and influence the relationship of our personality with the world. The disinformacion is a trail of gunpowder for the emergence, increment and dissemination of racist and xenophobic concepts. This change calls into question democratic valves. In this text we will expose, discuss and demonstrate the consequences of this state of affairs that we live (...) in today. We must unberstand the mechanisms of how this occurs, the new instruments used, the conection between sources of information, the paths that go of persuasion of ideas to impossingacts. At long last, we will defend a position of those who believe that democratic living should be extended to everyone who lives on this tinyplanet. In short, we will defend a position against the absolutization of desinformation. We will use the concept of “Aparatus” used by Karl Jaspers, in the middle of the last century, to demonstrate the strength and influence of desinformation on the masses that coalesc and act from the simple touch of the cell phone. (shrink)

The notion of digital virus covers, in our view, two points: computer viruses that infect our computers and technological solutionism, the unreasonable passion that consists in considering that the solution to all social problems lies in the digital world. Yet the digital world is as vulnerable as the biological world. Moreover, it is dangerous because it pushes us into a digital bondage that undermines democracy. The solution to the crisis is not less democracy, but (...) more democracy. More precisely, we will argue that digital devices do not strengthen democratic communication, they promote a digital connection that hinders deliberation and threatens the very idea of democracy. (shrink)

This article contrasts two reform proposals articulated in recent debates about how to democratize the digital economy: data-owning democracy and digital socialism. A data-owning democracy is a political-economic regime characterized by the widespread distribution of data as capital among citizens, whereas digital socialism entails the social ownership of productive assets in the digital economy and popular control over digital services. The article argues that while a degree of complementarity exists between the two, there (...) are important limitations to theories of data-owning democracy that have not yet received significant attention within the literature. The bulk of the article highlights three ways in which digital socialists would consider a data-owning democracy to fall short of achieving a more just digital economy: a lack of workplace democracy, limitations in terms of scope, and a lack of democratic control over long-term investment decisions in new technology. The article thus contributes to determining what is at stake in recent debates about how to democratize the digital economy. (shrink)

This volume consists of an interesting collection of essays that highlight some of the difficulties societies and political systems are facing as a result of growing globalization and rapid technol...

Drawing on current debates at the frontiers of economics, psychology, and political philosophy, this book explores the challenges that arise for liberal democracies from a confrontation between modern technologies and the bounds of human rationality. With the ongoing transition of democracy's underlying information economy into the digital space, threats of disinformation and runaway political polarization have been gaining prominence. Employing the economic approach informed by behavioral sciences' findings, the book's chief concern is how these challenges can be addressed (...) while preserving a commitment to democratic values and maximizing the epistemic benefits of democratic decision-making. The book has two key strands: it provides a systematic argument for building a behaviorally informed theory of democracy; and explores how scientific knowledge on quirks and bounds of human rationality can inform the design of resilient democratic institutions. Drawing these together, the book explores the centrality of the rationality assumption in the methodological debates surrounding behavioral sciences as exemplified by the dispute between neoclassical and behavioral economics; the role of rationality in democratic social choice; behaviorally informed paternalism as a response to the challenge of irrationality; and non-paternalistic avenues to increase the resilience of the democratic institutions towards political irrationality This book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in behavioral economics and sciences, political philosophy and the future of democracy. (shrink)

The study of digital economies and the sociology of risk have, with few exceptions, a relationship of benign mutual neglect despite possible important connections between the two. This article aims to bridge the gap between these two fields using Beck’s theory of risk society to explore how the digital economy’s momentum of innovation is generating risks and limiting the scope of existing democratic decision-making via the power of the digital economy to create social faits accomplis outside of (...) democratic control. Three specific risks emerging from the dynamics of innovation of digital economies are discussed as vignettes to illustrate these developments: (1) the remaking of interpersonal co-presence and solitary life; (2) the growing threats of AI to intensify unemployment and inequality; and (3) the impact on the environment of an ‘always on’ and ‘always upgrading’ digital communication ecosystem. With the gap between the potential and the actual use value of the digitalization of the infrastructure of life continuing to grow, this article argues that a different relationship between digital innovation and private and public spheres needs to be established to protect the effectiveness of contemporary democracy. (shrink)

In “Datafeudalism: The Domination of Modern Societies by Big Tech Companies” (Saura García in Phil Technol 37(3):1–18, 2024a) I analysed the concept of datafeudalism and its implications for the proper functioning of democracy. In this article, I put forward the hypothesis that big digital companies are exercising domination over the current social context and its different functional spheres, such as politics and democracy, and critique the negative implications that datafeudalism is having for the proper functioning of modern (...) democratic systems. In this regard, Wörsdörfer (Phil Technol 37(3):1–5, 2024) has offered a critical commentary on the content in question. In particular, he focuses his discourse on the concept of the digital panopticon and its link with datafeudalism. The following replay present a reasoned response to these questions. (shrink)

What does a truly democratic experience of political action look like today? In this provocative new work, Adriana Cavarero weighs in on contemporary debates about the relationship between democracy, happiness, and dissent. Drawing upon Arendt's understanding of politics as a participatory experience, but also discussing texts by Émile Zola, Elias Canetti, Boris Pasternak, and Roland Barthes, along with engaging Judith Butler, Cavarero proposes a new view of democracy, based not on violence, but rather on the spontaneous experience of (...) a plurality of bodies coming together in public. Expanding upon the themes explored in previous works, Cavarero offers a timely intervention into current thinking about the nature of democracy, suggesting that its emergence thrives on the nonviolent creativity of a widespread, participatory, and relational power that is shared horizontally rather than vertically. From digital democracy to selfies to contemporary protest movements, Cavarero argues that we need to rethink our focus on individual happiness and turn toward rediscovering the joyful emotions of birth through plural interaction. Yes, let us be happy, she urges, but let us do so publicly, politically, together. (shrink)

Commercial companies are increasingly being recognized as agents of societal governance operating alongside the public authorities in their traditional role as governance bodies. In addition, companies are claiming to be ‘corporate citizens’ in the way they deal with their environmental, employment and social/ethical responsibilities. Given the fact that large corporations are now heavily internationalized in their operational characteristics – with branches, subsidiaries, affiliates and extended supply chains operating in multiple jurisdictions – can such organizations be brought into a democratic register? (...) Citizenship and democracy are conventionally associated with a territorial state, national sovereignty and jurisdictional independence. So, how can internationalized companies be subject to democratic forms of governance? An added problem arises with platform companies and blockchain organized digital currency providers whose operations transcend national borders from the start. This contribution discusses the issues of and provides a way for considering corporate democracy afresh in these rapidly evolving contexts. (shrink)

It is argued that Pettit’s conception of “contestatory democracy” is superior to deliberative, direct and epistemic democracy. The strong and weak points of these conceptions are discussed drawing upon the work of a.o Bruce Bimber. It is further argued that ‘contestation’ and ‘information’ are highly relevant notions in thinking about, just, viable and sustainable design for E-democracy.

The deliberative model of politics has recently been criticized for not being very well equipped to conceptualize current developments such as the misinterpretation of political difference, the digital turn, and public protests. A first critique is that this model assumes a conception of public spheres that is too idealistic. A second objection is that it misconceives the relationship between empirical reality and normativity. Third, it is assumed that deliberative democracy offers an antiquated notion of a shared ‘we’ of (...) political actors and because of this, fourth, fails to take into consideration the ‘digital turn’, in particular the de-personalizing effects of social media that have led to a rapid decline of the public sphere. And a fifth critique states that the deliberative model ignores the fact that politics is not, and especially protests and revolutions are not, seminar-like debates but spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes violent expressions. I will argue that all of these critiques fall short in a variety of ways. A deliberative model of politics allows us to address the tension between the ideal and the real, the ‘old media’ and the so-called digitalization of public spheres as well as peaceful discourse and violent uprisings. Especially the concept of communicative power, a notion also used by Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, reveals the potentials for future participation in digital spaces and public places. (shrink)

Digital sovereignty, and the question of who ultimately controls AI seems, at first glance, to be an issue that concerns only specialists, politicians and corporate entities. And yet the fight for who will win digital sovereignty has far-reaching societal implications. Drawing on five case studies, the paper argues that digital sovereignty affects everyone, whether digital users or not, and makes the case for a hybrid system of control which has the potential to offer full democratic legitimacy (...) as well as innovative flexibility. (shrink)

Western democracies have become neoliberal with all the disproportions of economic and political power that have emerged in capitalist society. The power acquired in the free market not only deforms the integrity of society and economic and political balance, but also it has become virtually impossible for democracy as a form of government to exist. As the scale of the free market became global, the economic entity has also gone global creating disproportions that have led Western democracies to be (...) ruled by economic entities rather than political ones. However, proper education, the use of new economic decentralisation trends, changing the role of politicians and the activity of citizens, and emerging new possibilities of digital democracy give us a glimpse of how to use the opportunities of the free market for strengthening democracies. At the same time, the reforms that have taken place in China in recent years have paradoxically shown that neoliberalism can also have positive aspects for society, which, as a new balance of economic and political capital, can be applied in the West as well. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the shifting conceptualization of the democratizing potential of digital technology can be more comprehensively understood by bringing in science and technology studies (STS) perspectives to communication scholarship. The synthesis and discussion are aiming at providing an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for comprehensively understand the democratizing potential of digital technology, and urging researchers to be conscious of assumptions underpinning epistemological positions they take when examining the issue of democratizing potential of (...) class='Hi'>digital technology.,The paper is a constructive literature review that synthesizes and integrates existed literature from communication and STS on the democratizing potential of digital technology. The author attempts to bridge theoretical perspectives from communication and STS by identifying core arguments and debates around key concepts and discussing potential implications of different epistemological positions.,Tracing the evolving analytical perspectives of technological determinism, the social construction of technology and actor-network theory, the author argues that researchers should be aware of their underlying epistemological assumptions embedded in relationships among users, technological systems and social factors. Analyzing the contested notion of power in the democratizing potential of digital technology from two contrasting perspectives, the author argues that researchers should recognize both the front end and the back end of digital technology in their analysis. In addition, new challenges of algorithm opacity and accountability in impacting the democratizing potential of digital technology are further discussed.,This study provides an original interdisciplinary theoretical framework by reviewing and bridging scholarship from communication and STS in examining the democratizing potential of digital technology. Adopting this interdisciplinary theoretical framework helps researchers develop a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the democratizing potential of digital technology. (shrink)

The section of the collective monograph provides a comprehensive analysis of the digital information impact and political modernization on the formation of a holistic and high-quality image of transitive democracy. The technologies of implementing effective changes in the political system in the context of building the domestic and foreign policy image of a transitive state are revealed. The role of information and the impact of the digitalization process on it in the context of the formation of the image (...) of transitive democracy is studied. (shrink)

This article seeks to identify, theoretically,some broad ethical issues about the type ofspace which the Internet is becoming, issueswhich are closely linked to developing newagendas for empirical research into Internetuse. It seeks to move away from the concept of''digital divide'' which has dominated debate inthis area while presuming a rather staticnotion of the space which the Internet is, orcould become. Instead, it draws on deliberativedemocracy theory in general and John Dryzek''sconcept of ''discursive design'' in particular toformulate six types of (...) issue (Convergence, WhoConverges?, Deliberation, Public Action,Relations to the State, and Long-term Patternsof Practice) around which both empiricalresearch and ethical debate can focus, andwhich taken together will help answer whetherthe Internet is, or can be, in part a''discursive design'' which contributes to theconditions of democratic public life. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics is a lively and authoritative guide to ethical issues related to digital technologies, with a special emphasis on AI. Philosophers with a wide range of expertise cover thirty-seven topics: from the right to have access to internet, to trolling and online shaming, speech on social media, fake news, sex robots and dating online, persuasive technology, value alignment, algorithmic bias, predictive policing, price discrimination online, medical AI, privacy and surveillance, automating democracy, the (...) future of work, and AI and existential risk, among others. Each chapter gives a rigorous map of the ethical terrain, engaging critically with the most notable work in the area, and pointing directions for future research. (shrink)

This Open Access book explains the philosophy, design principles, and community organization of Decidim and provides essential insights into how the platform works. Decidim is the world leading digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, built entirely and collaboratively as free software, and used by more than 500 institutions with over three million users worldwide. -/- The platform allows any organization (government, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood, or cooperative) to support multitudinous processes of participatory democracy. In a context dominated by (...) corporate-owned digital platforms, in the era of increasing social structuring via Artificial Intelligence, Decidim stands as a public or community owned platform for collective human intelligence. Yet, the project is much more than its technological features. Decidim is in itself a crossroad of the various dimensions of the networked society, a detailed practical map of its complexities and conflicts. Theauthors distinguish three general dimensions of the project: (1) the political - shedding light on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations, (2) the technopolitical - explaining how this technology is democratically designed and managed to produce and protect certain political effects, and (3) the technical - presenting the conditions of production, operation, and success of the project. This book systematically covers those three levels in an academically sound, technologically consistent, and politically innovative manner. Serving as a useful resource and handbook for the use of Decidim, it will not only appeal to students and scholars interested in participatory and digital democracy but also to professionals, policy-makers, and a wider audience interested in learning more about the Decidim platform. (shrink)

Victorian Critics of Democracy was first published in 1938. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Based on a deliberative democracy, this book uses a hermeneutic-critical methodology to study bibliographical sources and practical issues in order to analyse the possibilities, limits and consequences of the digital transformation of democracy. Drawing on a two-way democracy, the aim of this book is intended as an aid for thinking through viable alternatives to the current state of democracy with regard to its ethical foundations and the moral knowledge implicit in or assumed by the way (...) we perceive and understand democracy. It is intended to stimulate reflection and discussion on the basis that, by addressing what we understand as democracy, we can inevitably influence the reality known as democracy. Democracy’s evident regression in today’s world makes this all too apparent: it has become a hostage to all kinds of autocracies and technopopulisms, which are supported to a greater or lesser extent by the current algorithmic revolution. (shrink)

This article extends property-owning democracy to the digital realm and introduces “data-owning democracy,” a new political economic regime characterized by the wide distribution of data as capital among citizens. Drawing on republican theory and acknowledging data's unique role in the digital economy, it proposes a two-tier model that combines different modes of data ownership and corresponding rights. The first layer of “data-owning democracy” is characterized by a digital public infrastructure that enables citizens to collectively (...) generate data and have a say in how their citizen data are used. In the second layer, individuals automatically receive machine-readable copies of their data whenever they are generated—a slightly more advanced form of the European Union's existing right to data portability (Art. 20). With its focus on empowerment, data-owning democracy is designed to be complementary to existing data protection regulations. It also illustrates how political theory more broadly, and republican theory specifically, can be instructive for specifying the normative components of a new political economy dealing with questions of empowerment and digital rights. (shrink)

This analysis builds on the arguments of Manuel Castells, Jan Van Dijk and others who describe the emergence of network societies and networked global communication, economics, and political communication. Research has shown that those who are building communication networks that have political significance are also able to create new contacts, retrieve useful political information, distribute and discuss retrieved information with others, and establish contacts with various centers of power that provide them with new channels of access and political interactivity. Castells (...) and others argue that those who are left out of the network society and important political networks are members of a Fourth World of inequalities, growing poverty, and sustained disempowerment. In this paper, the study of digital democracy and networks of political communication is related to what Van Dijk calls polycentric politics and what Castells describes as variable political geometry. From the concepts of network society and digital democracy, a concept of network democracy is proposed. With this concept, the argument is made that the structurational aspects of digital democracy can be used to establish ICT systems that help new participants become part of networked power structures rather than serving to extend the participation of those who are already involved in systems of empowerment. (shrink)

Drawing on an analysis of German national cybersecurity policy, this paper argues that cybersecurity has become a key site in which states mobilize science and technology to produce state power. Contributing to science and technology studies work on technoscience and statecraft, I develop the concepts of “territorialization projects” and “digital territory” to capture how the production of state power in the digital age increasingly relies on technoscientific expertise about information infrastructure, shifting tasks of government into the domain of (...) computer scientists and network engineers. The notion of territorialization projects describes states’ ongoing struggle to mobilize science and engineering in order to transform globally distributed information infrastructure into bounded national territory and invest it with patriotic meaning: making digital territory. Digital territory, in other words, is nationalized information infrastructure: it includes building and monopolizing infrastructure as well as normative ideas about nation—who is a digital citizen, and who isn’t; or what constitutes “good” and “bad” digital citizens. Nationalizing information infrastructure and placing statecraft into the hands of scientists and engineers might indicate an emerging form of “techno-nationalism”—a combination of nationalist and technocratic tendencies—raising urgent questions for STS scholarship to investigate the consequences of territorialization projects for justice, democracy, and civic life. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly common for authoritarian regimes to leverage digital technologies to surveil, repress and manipulate their citizens. Experts typically refer to this practice as digital authoritarianism (DA). Existing definitions of DA consistently presuppose a politically repressive agent intentionally exploiting digital technologies to pursue authoritarian ends. I refer to this as the intention-based definition. This paper argues that this definition is untenable as a general description of DA. I begin by illustrating the current predominance of the (...) intention-based definition (Section 2). Section 3 then presents four counterexamples to this definition: benign surveillance; digital sovereignty; attention-harvesting algorithms; and tech-induced loneliness. In each case, we witness authoritarianism being promoted by digital technologies without any evidence of this being intentionally caused by politically repressive agents. Based on these observations, I contend that the intention-based definition is underinclusive and is therefore unsustainable. Section 4 outlines an improved definition of DA – what I call the promotion-based definition. Since this more expansive definition does not posit intentional, politically repressive agency as a precondition of DA, it can accommodate the counterexamples discussed in Section 3. Moreover, it enables us to catch a broader spectrum of cases of DA, such as tech-induced loneliness, which those adhering to the intention-based definition are prone to overlook. After outlining further practical benefits of the promotion-based definition, I argue that we still need to distinguish between intentional and unintentional forms of DA since they call for distinct types of remedial action. -/- . (shrink)

As the multiple issues of the digital public sphere threaten our democracies and the cohesion of our societies, most attempts for a betterment of the digital networks and platforms revolve around a risk-response approach. This paper takes the opposite approach and develops a positive definition of the ideal ethical public sphere, combining normative features with original taxonomies. In view of defining common standards for a healthy digital public sphere, this paper offers an interdisciplinary literature review, and original (...) recommendations, before discussing potential leverages for implementing these changes. The suggested ethical normative features derive from a positive approach to the digital public sphere, as ideal common standards. Sustained by the underlying assumption that the composite landscape of the media ecosystem and its different layers (networks, platforms, users) cannot be steered by government regulations alone, the normative (deontological) approach serves to understand and justify the need for a normative approach, to help envision new pathways for an ethical transformation. (shrink)

The article examines the impact of the virtual public sphere on how urban spaces are experienced and conceived in our data-driven society. It places particular emphasis on urban scale digital twins, which are virtual replicas of cities that are used to simulate environments and develop scenarios in response to policy problems. The article also investigates the shift from the technical to the socio-technical perspective within the field of smart cities. Despite the aspirations of urban scale digital twins to (...) enhance the participation of citizens in the decision-making processes relayed to urban planning strategies, the fact that they are based on a limited set of variables and processes makes them problematic. The article aims to shed light on the tension between the real and the ideal at stake during this process of abstracting sets of variables and processes in the case of urban scale digital twins. (shrink)

The digital divide is considered by many authors as one of the major ethical issues of the information age as it reinforces existing inequalities in society. This paper examines the gender digital divide in Europe and presents a detailed case-study of one of the most successful e-Government systems in Greece: the Greek TAXation Information System. Surprisingly, this efficient and well-running system exhibits longstanding gender discrimination. However, the problem is not technical but legal and political and requires careful consideration, (...) as the analysis unveils a gender digital gap in e-Government usage not only in Greece but all around Europe. (shrink)