Post | CTZN.eu

Hi reader,

this is the second article on the topic of digital democracy, which is the readjusted version of a paper which I have written as a bachelor student.

In the first article we talked about the marvels of digital democracy, which is meant as the implementation of information and communication technology to advance, deepen, and amplify the democratic process. We have said that, while institutionalizing the technological advances and the social processes that they helped create may seem a very promising endeavour, there are some troublesome effects which can be seen everywhere around us and which cannot be ignored if we really want to exploit digital technology and not be exploited by it.

Today, we analyse the other side of the spectrum: many argue that digitalization is magnifying all the worst human vices, while the benefits are too volatile to be appreciated, and are starting to issue prognostications of impending doom. Social media spreads as much violence as literacy, as much chaos as emancipation, and as the former watchdogs of stability and democracy have lost much of their power to control the spread of content and ideas, digital technology has become for many the most menacing foe of democracy as we know it. The most blatant example is the rise of Donald Trump as president of the USA: thanks to social media, he was able to “bypass the traditional gatekeepers of American politics,” as he could directly convey his messages to his followers. Throughout his campaign, Trump had extensively made use of the most acclaimed technological advances, coupled with cheap populist rhetoric, to win over a large portion of the American population. His strategy and methods seemed ridiculous, and the elite of intellectuals in charge of predicting the 2016 election results, caught as they were in their own echo chambers, believed impossible for such a grotesque figure to become the “leader of the free world” (a term which has been rightly contested in the last four years). Yet, this is exactly what happened: in the general astonishment, Donald Trump won the elections, supported by a large group of people who were unable to grasp the complexity of the situation in the immense cloud of contrasting opinion and information which is the Internet.

Indeed, this is one of the main worries of the opponents of digital democracy: chaos. In a world of increasing bureaucratization, the virtual Far West which still is the Internet may seem like a breath of fresh air, but the risk of a descent into chaos is always around the corner. In moments of crisis, when the need for clarity and coordinate action is most felt, the Web, which is incidentally also the place where most people go to find answers to all their questions, is instead a chaotic and deafening place. Following the trend of the Covid-19 pandemic, the neologism “infodemic” has been coined to indicate the “circulation of an excessive amount of information, sometimes not scrutinized with accuracy, which makes it difficult to orient oneself on a given topic due to the difficulty of identifying reliable sources.” This phenomenon of cognitive overload has its cause in the decline of the faith in the traditional gatekeepers of information and in the (excessive) rise in the trust for one’s self-selected sources. As a consequence, a vicious circle is created: on the one hand, all media focus their communication more or less on clickbait and, in the impossibility of understanding the true (or at least the official) information, the person that shouts the loudest is most listened to; on the other, the cacophony of contrasting sources brings people to inform themselves only according to their prejudices. Then, there is not even the need for real charisma from political outsiders to be listened to and destabilize the status quo: in a process called self-polarization, isolated individuals search only for news which confirms their prejudices, and in doing so they are “not only unable to develop a critical point of view which differs from that of the ‘faiths’ to which they belong, but also and above all they feed the media machine of infodemic.” All of this not only contrasts the ideal of deepening and authenticating democracy, but if institutionalized can create major damages for the degree of democratization we have already achieved, bringing our world closer to plunging into utter chaos. Unless digital technology is controlled.

And here we have the second main current among digital democracy opponents: while the first group is concerned by the chaos and anarchism stemming from the electronic revolution, the second paradoxically (or paranoically?) fears a nightmarish future where digital technology is exploited by an all-controlling State to keep track of all its citizens, in a world without privacy and in which no one can behave or think differently. While for most people privacy is not really an issue while it is breached by private companies to enhance consumers’ comfort, when States become interested in it and begin to trespass the limit of people’s private lives, the general public starts panicking. We have seen the strength of this fear when, even in the face of a global pandemic like Covid-19, a great deal of debate and protest has arisen in many Western democracies, whose citizens have (rightly) looked with skepticism and dread at the first attempts of the EU and the USA to adopt a tracking system similar to the one of the Asian Tigers. The latter, in fact, infringed upon the privacy of individuals, with authorities disclosing the information to the general public and causing episodes of lynching against fellow citizens for “inappropriate” or “immoral” behaviour (e.g.: https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2020/03/06/news/coronavirus_dignita_privacy_corea_del_sud_chat_sms_messaggi_contagi-250414120/). In contrast, at least in the European countries, the tracking system adopted after the protests has been voluntary-based and privacy-securing (albeit being then far less used or efficient than in the Asian countries).

Furthermore, if we think that this is just a phase and that the globalizing effect of digitalization is going to prevail in the long run, we must acknowledge that, at least for now, the Internet is not as globalizing as we thought: simply by banning apps and sites and thus isolating its population from mainstream tendencies of the digital world, a State can still easily “stop” the globalization process. We have seen it before our eyes, with the ban of the popular Chinese app “TikTok” by India and the US or the recent trend of various countries, as Russia and India, to “turn off the Internet” whenever there are protests, to prevent people from organizing and showing what’s happening to the world. As I write the leaders of the European Union are discussing the possibility of implementing a European digital transformation and sovereignty process, as a response to the US-China rivalry and to a world of States closing frontiers even in the digital space.

However, these nightmarish ideas of digitalization as an instrument of chaos or oppression are as exaggerated and biased as the naïve ones which do not see (or want to see) the problematic consequences of our transition to a digital world. We should not close ourselves to the future because, from a more realistic standpoint, we are transitioning to a digital world, and we do not have the power to stop this evolution from happening. All we would achieve with such an anachronistic strategy would be being left behind by a world which is changing at an exponential pace, with no pity for those who are anchored to a lost (and maybe never-existed) past. Rather, we must take an active role in keeping track of the changes in our world, as there is the need to guide the technology (rather than simply reject it) to avoid that others, with more malicious or egoistic interests, declare themselves the leaders of the new world because we did not step up.

For example, the EU has made some of its biggest headlines worldwide with its increasingly tough approach to tech regulation, for instance by focusing on getting companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to implement a code of practice on disinformation. At the same time, the European Central Bank is promoting a progressive digitalization of the euro, which would guarantee that citizens in the euro area more choices about how to pay and make it easier for them to do so by increasing financial inclusion. These are but some examples of what has already been done in the field of e-democracy, yet these initiatives are still too far between, and there is still no coherent and comprehensive strategy to foster digital e-participation. Hence, there is considerable room for improvement: we could encourage citizens to take part in online decision-making processes, for instance by including online crowdsourcing; we could strengthen the democratic institutions’ representative character by facilitating citizen participation in policymaking, as “such innovations can help nurture participation and active citizenship, engage young people in policymaking, generate novel policy ideas, and strengthen political trust and legitimacy”; we could “organize open electronic forums, where citizens could both offer their input and respond to that of others.” There is much work to do, and much effort to be exerted, but the reward is an authentic digital democracy, guided by core democratic principles to construct and reconstruct our society for the better.

One problem remains unsolved: is it more important a free and globalizing Internet, bit with profoundly destabilizing effects because it has no rules, or a regulated and controlled Internet, which can protect liberal democracies but also hinder the marvellous possibilities of the Web? The answer, as all my analysis in these articles tried to prove, must be searched for in a moderate balance: it must not return the communicative monopoly of the few, but at the same time the Internet must not be left to develop without any constraint. The solution is not a new type of digital censorship, as then nothing would be more fitting than the classical question quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (“who will watch the watchmen?”), nor a sophist ideal for which, as there are no facts but only opinions, no one is entitled to put any constraint on others. Instead, we must face the problem by creating a new, constructive narrative, a plausible alternative which allows those with the expertise to be more than simple spectators and which uses the potential of the digital tools not to condemn or censor, but to reframe and contextualize the most destabilizing ideas on the Internet.

In conclusion, both an uncritical acceptance and an uncritical refusal of digital democracy are dangerous, as the former could lead to ignoring the potentially catastrophic effects of the Internet age, while the latter could prevent us from remaining behind the wheel of the ongoing digital revolution. Hence, there should not be such a straightforward movement towards or against digital democracy, but rather a gradual fusion of our political life with new and improved forms of communication and participation, gradual enough for us to be able to absorb them without losing the path that our liberal democracies are following (in principle at least).

Now, it is up to you: do you agree with this analysis? If so, what do you think we should do to improve the situation and to prevent the possible complications related to digital democracy? If not, what do you think of the matter and in which ways can this analysis be changed/improved?

Let us know by leaving a comment here, sending us an email with your reflections or commenting on the related post on our social profiles.

Thank you for your attention,

Davide Bertot

Mail: ctzn.eu@gmail.com

Facebook: @ctzn.eu

Instagram: @_ctzn.eu_

Twitter: @ctzn_eu

P.S. To see the original paper and the sources from which the quotes in this article are taken, you can go to this link.