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Democracy via CyberspaceMapping the Rhetorics and Practices of Three Prominent CampsMassey University, New Zealand 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.
Key Words: communitarianism • deliberative democracy • electronic democracy • internet • liberal individualism
New Media & Society, Vol. 3, No. 2,
157-177 (2001) This article has been cited by other articles:
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