Democracy via Cyberspace
- 1 June 2001
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in New Media & Society
- Vol. 3 (2), 157-177
- https://doi.org/10.1177/14614440122226038
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 regorous 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.This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
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