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56 U.N.B.L.J. 5 (2007)
Democracy in the Age of the Internet

handle is hein.journals/unblj56 and id is 5 raw text is: DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET

Graham Longford* & Steve Patten
INTRODUCTION
As access to the Internet and the World Wide Web expanded in the early 1990s there
was considerable optimism that an age of low-cost information production and
egalitarian public conversations in cyberspace would transform and deepen
democracy. The hope was that technological advances and improved access to the
means of producing, distributing and receiving information would allow ordinary
citizens and organic civil society groups to become broadcasters and publishers
capable of sidelining the once powerful barons of the mass media.     The
unidirectional broadcast model of mass communication would give way to more
interactive and democratic forms of public communication. Citizens would have
access to a greater diversity of information and opinion as new voices found
expression in a more vibrant and inclusive virtual public sphere - indeed, the term
netizen was coined to conjure up notions of politically engaged Internet citizens
coming together online to identify and deliberate upon the issues of the day.
Governance would also be transformed as communications technology improved
access to information and enhanced the state's capacity to engage in formal dialogue
and deliberation on matters of public policy. In short, the new media would
invigorate democracy by creating new egalitarian public spaces, empowering
ordinary people with better means of communicating and organizing, and allowing
governments to pursue more open, transparent and consultative relations with
citizens.
Today this optimistic assessment of the Internet's potential to transform the
public sphere and deepen democracy seems' profoundly na've.    While some
dimensions of democratic life have benefited from popular access to the Internet, this
has not been true for other dimensions of democracy. In assessing democracy in the
age of the Internet it is evident that the Internet has had different consequences for
the electoral, deliberative and monitorial dimensions of democracy. Moreover, to
understand the complexity of the relationship between the Internet and these three
distinct dimensions of democracy, we must recognize that the democratic potential of
any communication technology will always be limited by the character of existing
social, political and economic power relations, as well as by the attitudes,
orientations and activities of governments, citizens and corporations. For example,
Graham Longford is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Information Studies at the University
of Toronto.
Steve Patten is an Associate Professor, Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta.
Roger Hurwitz, Who Needs Politics? Who Needs People? The Ironies of Democracy in Cyberspace
(1999) 28:6 Contemporary Sociology 655.

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