REVIEWS
“At a moment when democracy around the world is being weakened, challenged, and attacked, this volume is a timely and essential addition that will help its audience understand the affordances—but also the very real detrimental effects—of social media in society on our governing principles and institutions. We urgently need this expert realist approach and global perspective if we are to have any chance of effectively engaging with these tech firms and their technologies and any hope of guarding democracy against the outsize impact of both.”
— Sarah T. Roberts, University of California, Los Angeles
“This book serves the much-needed purpose of advancing the conversation about the impact of technology on democratic theory and the role of democratic theory in helping us to understand the relationship between technology and power. This diverse collection of essays addresses how to reimagine the informational diet of democracy, free speech and association, the boundaries of the demos and political exclusion. An important and engaging read!”
— Beth Simone Noveck, director, The Governance Lab
"Ten papers examine how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democratic practice and theory, focusing on how democratic ideals might provide a framework for understanding and shaping today’s digital transformation."
— Journal of Economic Literature
"Each of the chapters is written in a clear and engaging manner and will not exclude students, nonspecialists, and, indeed, a wider interested and informed audience. This is to the editors’ credit. The drawback of tackling questions related to new technologies in book form is, as the authors admit, that the speed of events in the digital world means the arguments made here might be left behind very quickly. However, the timing of this book’s publication leaves it feeling instead rather prescient, in the sense that much of its content is now of a far wider interest than might otherwise have been the case. The call made by the contributors to this collection is now urgent, rather than just timely, and the arguments made here will be of significant influence on the theoretical reimagination of democracy that must surely follow."
— Perspectives on Politics
"Drawing a necessarily wide scope, the volume includes theoretical work alongside the kind of novel empirical input necessary to give a full account of the ways in which democracy and digital technology intersect. Indeed, a strength of the book is that it does not focus solely on contributions from 'traditional' democratic theorists but includes researchers working in fields as diverse as communications, economics, and computer science. . . . As is made clear in the
opening pages, this breadth is both a strength and a necessity, because the kinds of challenges presented to democratic theory by the structural changes brought by new technologies are unlikely to be resolved through conventional means."
— Dacombe Review
"Digital Technology and Democratic Theory is an important contribution to a field previously overlooked by democratic theorists. In an age in which digital environments create new barriers to equal rights and political participation, the volume carefully assembles an array of cross-disciplinary perspectives and asks the question: is there a need for a digital democratic theory?"
— LSE Review of Books
"Can we use digital technologies to forward democratic ends? In a collection of essays written by political scientists, computer scientists, and an array of other academics... Digital Technology and Democratic Theory offers answers to this question. The book could not be more timely."
— Contemporary Sociology
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - Lucy Bernholz, Hélène Landemore, Rob Reich
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0001
[democracy;technology;demos;democratic theory]
Many scholars and citizens are concerned about the future of democracy, yet democratic theory has yet to offer frameworks for fully considering the contemporary challenges and opportunities specific to our ever expanding digital systems. Similarly, many technologists are latecomers to concerns about centralized control, lack of personal autonomy, and the power imbalances inherent in the primarily commercial, but societally pervasive, global networks built over the last two decades. This chapter lays out several key intersections where democratic theory and technological reality challenge core assumptions of the other. The omnipresence of networked digital technologies requires us to reexamine several of the most fundamental questions of political theory, such as “Who governs?” and “What are the boundaries of the demos?” Democratic values enable us to imagine, and perhaps design and implement, digital technologies that facilitate self-governance, expand the franchise, and protect individual liberties. This chapter lays out these questions and the aspiration of future research focused on the entangled nature of digital technologies and democratic theory. (pages 1 - 22)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
1. Democracy and the Digital Public Sphere - Joshua Cohen, Archon Fung
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0002
[deliberation;public sphere;democracy;social media;internet;technology;news]
A healthy democracy requires a deliberative public sphere—an informal space for citizens to gain information and communicate with one another in order to detect problems, bring them to public view, suggest ways to address those problems, and debate whether they are important and worth addressing. In this paper, we take up concerns that digital technologies have destroyed the democratic qualities of the public sphere. This chapter aims to lay out standards for the healthy democratic public sphere. These standards consist first of a set of individual rights and opportunities to create equal, substantive communicative freedom; and second, of a set of norms and dispositions that must be widespread in order for the public sphere to function democratically. The chapter applies these standards to assess the democratic strengths and deficits to two information systems: the 20th century mass media public sphere and the 21st century digitized social media public sphere. Finally, the chapter offers some tentative suggestions about what can be done to make the 21st century digital public sphere supportive of successful democratic governance. We offer suggestions for government action, platform reform, and the responsibilities of individual citizens. (pages 23 - 61)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
2. Open Democracy and Digital Technologies - Hélène Landemore
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0003
[open democracy;open minipublics;elections;democratic representation;deliberation;representative democracy;lottocratic representation;Facebook;Citizenbook;liquid democracy]
The most attractive normative theory of democracy currently available—Habermas’s model of a two-track deliberative sphere—is, for all its merits, a self-avowed rationalization of representative democracy, a system born in the eighteenth century under different epistemological, conceptual, and technological constraints. This chapter show the limits of this model and defends instead the alternative paradigm of “open democracy,” in which digital technologies are used to transcend the dichotomy of ordinary citizens and democratic representatives. Rather than just imagining a digitized version or extension of existing institutions and practices—representative democracy as we know it—the chapter thus takes the opportunities offered by the digital revolution to envision new democratic institutions, such as randomly selected legislatures connected to democratically crowdsourcing platforms, from the local to the global level. What would democracy look like if we could reinvent it from scratch? (pages 62 - 89)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
3. Purpose-Built Digital Associations - Lucy Bernholz
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0004
[association;digitized data;intellectual property;data trusts;democracy;nonprofits;civil society;philanthropy;collective]
This chapter examines institutional adaptations driven by the aspiration to manage digitized data for public benefit, specifically within the U.S. nonprofit sector. Within this institutionally dominant slice of civil society we find a common reliance on licensing schemes and the use of contract law to define how digitized data will be applied to a specific public purpose. This represents an important shift for civil society—away from an era in which corporate, tax, and charity law have served as the primary defining bounds of the sector to one in which intellectual property law and data protections are increasingly important. (pages 90 - 112)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
4. Digital Exclusion: A Politics of Refusal - Seeta Peña Gangadharan
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0005
[digital inclusion;digital exclusion;marginality;social justice;technological refusal]
Centering on issues of marginality, technology, and social justice, this chapter address issues of inclusion and exclusion in a datafied society. Specifically, it argues that digital exclusion involves processes of political reimagining, rather than just deprivation or loss. Individuals and groups exclude themselves by refusing, rejecting, or resisting the terms and conditions of technology adoption and technological control. To develop this argument, the chapter proposes a framework for envisioning communicative justice. The framework challenges claims that exclusion means the inability of members of marginalized groups to participate meaningfully in a democratic society. It highlights the value of collective self-exclusion in transforming communicative and political power and underlines the role of technology in mediating such power. Using this framework, the chapter unpacks negative interpretations of digital exclusion, contrasts these with an affirmative definition focused on refusal, and examines practices of refusal among community organizers and members of marginalized communities in the city of Detroit. Seen in this light, digital exclusion allows individuals and groups to reimagine sociotechnical systems and demand better of them. (pages 113 - 140)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
5. Presence of Absence: Exploring the Democratic Significance of Silence - Mike Ananny
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0006
[networked publics;digital technology;online journalism;new media;media infrastructure;technology refusal;silence;digital divide]
How can an absence of media help democratic theorists better understand listening, observation, and reflection as legitimate forms of public participation? Drawing on Communication Theory and Science and Technology Studies, the chapter argues that a seeming lack of media—left by individual behaviors, media-making cultures, sociotechnical infrastructures, and algorithmic systems—that might be misread as apathy is actually a significant and understudied site of political power that should more precisely be seen as new forms of expression, exclusion, and empathy. (pages 141 - 166)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
6. The Artisan and the Decision Factory: The Organizational Dynamics of Private Speech Governance - Robyn Caplan
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0007
[platform governance;platform accountability;content moderation;Facebook;social media]
Concerns about the spread of false information and hate speech over social media networks has renewed attention on how platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube govern content posted by users. Though these companies play an important role in the public sphere, they are private platforms, which (in many cases) gives these companies the leeway to govern content posted by users as they see fit. This chapter explores issues related to the private governance of speech by online platforms, and how the debate about online speech governance—present since the late-1990s—has shifted as new content concerns have emerged. The chapter examines three different strategies of content governance—artisanal, industrial, and community-reliant—that have been used by platforms as they sought to balance the need to be consistent and fair with content decisions, with the need to be flexible to local contexts and culture. (pages 167 - 190)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
7. The Democratic Consequences of the New Public Sphere - Henry Farrell, Melissa Schwartzberg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0008
[trust;democracy;authority;media;social media;partisanship]
Many worry that social media and search technologies worsen political ignorance through spreading falsehoods, exacerbating cognitive bias to undermine informed democratic decision-making. We examine these worries critically. This chapter systematically considers the consequences of transformations in the media environment from a “strong gatekeeper” approach, in which access to media was highly circumscribed, to a “weak gatekeeper” approach, where access is largely unregulated. Such transformations have altered the structure of epistemic authority and trust, the sources on which citizens rely to form beliefs about the world, particularly politically relevant beliefs. Where there are weak gatekeepers, people require a heuristic to determine which sites will provide them with trustworthy information; for many people, partisanship constitutes that heuristic. Epistemic trust grounded in partisanship may lead people to discount even obvious truths in favor of politically convenient ones. Yet the implications for democratic decision-making are not all negative. In a world of weak gatekeepers, traditionally excluded people may acquire epistemic authority, and supporting evidence and partisan biases may be more available for public scrutiny or subject to challenge, ultimately providing more security. (pages 191 - 218)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
8. Democratic Societal Collaboration in a Whitewater World - David Lee, Margaret Levi, John Seely Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0009
[pragmatic democracy;reskilling;societal collaboration;participatory democracy;expanded community;learning at scale]
Technological, natural, and political transformations generate radical contingencies, accompanied by sudden and regular shocks to society, making it difficult for individuals and communities to know how to adapt and protect themselves from the downstream consequences of change. We argue that a necessary step in preparing for the world we live in are societal collaborations in the service of democracy, collaborations using digital and other technologies not previously available. To determine how to build such societal collaborations, we build on thinking in three domains: pragmatism, arguments about building and sustaining the commons, and research on organizational cultures and institutional design that facilitate collective action that goes beyond the narrow self-interest of those engaged in the action. (pages 219 - 240)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
9. From Philanthropy to Democracy: Rethinking Governance and Funding of High-Quality News in the Digital Age - Julia Cagé
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0010
[democracy;philanthropy;foundations;nonprofit media organization;media;news]
The modern media industry is in a state of crisis. Digitalization has changed the nature of competition in media markets and the range of products provided. There is growing concern over news quality and the effectiveness of the media as a check on power. Furthermore, the number of journalists is plummeting in all developed countries, a major social change that may reflect media outlets’ declining incentives to invest in quality. An open question—with consequences for journalists and more generally for the quality of the democratic debate—is whether news still has a commercial value, and what kind of new business models and legal status need to be developed for media organizations. This chapter explains why quality news should be considered a public good, and why this public good is essential in well-working democratic societies. It then investigates why this public good is under-provided—and under-consumed—in contemporary democracies, and discusses solutions to provide adequate long-term financing and capitalization of news media while preserving media independence. The chapter stands-up a new “non-profit media organization” (NMO) model that leverages digital technologies to remove direct links between the philanthropists and the media they fund. (pages 241 - 273)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
10. Technologizing Democracy or Democratizing Technology? A Layered-Architecture Perspective on Potentials and Challenges - Bryan Ford
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226748603.003.0011
[digital democracy;polarization;social media;liquid democracy;voting;participation;digital identity;blockchain]
While technology is often claimed to be “democratizing”, the technologizing of society has more often yieldedundemocratic or even anti-democratic outcomes. This chapter explores howtechnology has failed tosupport robust democracy—but could do better—in the context of four basic social processes: collective deliberationand choice,information distribution and filtering, economic commerce, and identity. Technology could eventually help people make better collective choices, but only if we can make digital deliberationand voting systems both truly participatory and secure. We need digital forums that enable communities to vet and filter a delugeof informationdemocratically. Effective participation isimpractical for those who must spend every moment of time struggling to survive, so a healthydigital democracy will require a reformulation of money and commerce as well. Finally,none of these social processes can resist abuse or subversion without a democratic basis for digital identity that candistinguish real people while preserving the privacy needed for freedom andtrue self-expression. This chapter suggests a framework or layered architecture we might take as a tentative blueprint for digitaldemocracy. (pages 274 - 308)
This chapter is available at:
University of Chicago Press
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
