Web 2.0 - Demokratie 3.0?

Meißelbach, Christoph

doi:10.5771/9783845220987

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…These include 'liking' political opinions and supporting online petitions as actions that only require very little effort and yet can still be effective if many join them. The related possibilities were recognized early on by non-governmental organizations [11], which use digital networks "to spread their interests to the public at the lowest possible cost and to mobilize supporters" [12].…”

Section: Relevance From Today's Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

The Perspectives of Democratic Decision Making in the Information Society

Winkel¹

2016

IJCSIT

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In order to structure the debate on the democratic potentials of digital information technology Hubertus Buchstein in 1996 created three ideal types, net optimism, net pessimism and net neutrality. In this study the viability of these positions is put under scrutiny from a current viewpoint. As a result, it should be noted that all positions, however, contain both elements that are still viable today as well as components whose relevance now appears questionable. It should be emphasized that the digital information society, such as the net pessimistic side assumed, in fact has become in many ways a world of bad alternatives, in which it is increasingly difficult to bring legitimate yet conflicting interests to a common denominator. Particular clear this becomes in the increasing tension between the civic right to individual freedom and the state claim on interventions to safeguard social order. If one asks for how the today situation and the prospects for democratic decision making present themselves in the light of Buchstein's pure types, it will be recognizable that comprehensive and profound changes are in the making, but the contours of a future democracy are not yet discernible.2 arise in all parts of the world, where basic social functions are shifted to electronic networks. Given the breadth and complexity of the research subject at hand, it is understood that such an investigation can only discover fundamental connections and trends. The basis of the considerations is a literature study enriched by Internet research, in which, in addition to specialist publications, non-scientific publications have been included for reasons of being up-todate. THE OPTIMISTIC POSITION Core StatementsThe net-optimistic position [3] assumes that the distribution of digital information technologies involves improvements in the area of democratic decision-making already because of its specific nature. It is insinuated here that network communication allows a universal access to politicallyrelevant information and processes, that it meets the one-way communication of mass media with two-way communication and that it is largely immune to authoritarian interventions.With such a situational assessment, however, different versions of net-optimism are associated with different perspectives, whereby among others a market-oriented and civil society-oriented variety is distinguished between. In the market-oriented version, the optimistic situational assessment implies that the development of the Internet should largely be left to the market competition, which is attributed the capability of not only being able to best develop the economic, but also the political potentials of web communication. The civil society-oriented reading, like the market-oriented version, advises an avoidance of public authorities making direct interventions in the design of the web world, but does not assume a primarily marketshaped, but rather a primarily civic filling of the free spaces resulting there as the best way to develop the democratic potentials of ...

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Section: Relevance From Today's Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

The Perspectives of Democratic Decision Making in the Information Society

Winkel¹

2016

IJCSIT

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“…Looking briefly at the contemporary German social science literature, for example, shows that academia also -at least partly -shares the Brechtian idea of the empowering potential of (now) digital media: Whether it is "Democracy 3.0" (Meisselbach 2009), "E-Participation" (Sarcinelli 2012) or "NETIZENS" (Leggewie 2010), political scientists often suggest the positive effect that digital media technologies might have for democracy and civil society. Here, the barely 20-year-old assumption of individuals' separation from community matters (Putnam 1995) seems rather outdated, having been replaced by the notion of a new civic mobilisation, which, in turn, has been enabled through a new type of media technology.…”

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confidence: 99%

Virtual Im/mobilities: Three Ethnographic Examples of Socialised Media Usage, Civic Empowerment and Coded Publics

Kunzelmann¹

2016

Kultur Und Soziale Praxis

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Berthold Brecht seems to intriguingly anticipate the reality of today's social media-be it Twitter, Instagram or Facebook-where every user receiving a message is just one click away from socially sharing its content with a good many "others". At the beginning of the 1930s when Brecht developed his radio theory, he did not think of a radio as just a nice little gadget, but envisioned a truly revolutionary potential that this media technology might bear: [T]he radio has only one side where it should have two. It is an apparatus of distribution, it merely allocates. Now, in order to become positive-that is, to find out about the positive side of radio broadcasts-here is a suggestion for changing the function of the radio: transform it from an apparatus of distribution into an apparatus of communication. The radio could inarguably be the best apparatus of communication in public life, an enormous system of channels-provided it saw itself as not only a sender but also a receiver. This means making the listener not only listen but also speak; not to isolate him but to place him in relation to others. (Brecht 1967, 129; emphasis mine) 1 If we consider the public to be an important part of any democratic society, one can easily imagine that such a "conception-come-true" would indeed bring along tremendous political consequences. Brecht's model of broadcasting would revolutionise the texture of medialized politics: externally governed subjects metamorphosing into self-determined citizens. What had at that time been a monolithic, centralised and state-controlled monopoly of mass communication-Brecht called media usage "propaganda" (132)-could become a pluralistic, decentralised and democratic net of competing political thoughts and opinions. In 1932, this idea of a technology that places people "in relation to others" instead of "isolating" them seemed very Utopian.

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