Electronic Democracy

While philosophers lament the demise of citizen politics, hidden within the hype of the Internet are examples of democratic citizenship in on-line, electronic communities. These citizen networks (often multiple-computer sites sponsored by local authorities), were established as information services but extended their role to debate and activism on a range of social and environmental issues. But ‘flaming’ on the ‘Net’ has hindered the inclusion of minorities (especially women), and demonstrated the need for protocols to curb uncivilized behaviour which threatens the potential of the Internet as a global public space for rational-critical discourse, and its openness to popular participation. The communicative action and discourse ethic theories of Jurgen Habermas offer a valuable theoretical framework for citizen politics and make explicit the connection between democratic polity and the open communication facilitated by computer-mediated communication technologies.