political systems, week01 07 2008

Digital Democracy: Political Systems

Kathy E. Gill

7 October 2008

Agenda

• Preliminaries

• Guest Lecture, Becky Bogard

• Lecture

• Discussion

• Next Week

Preliminaries

• 3x5 cards – jot down a question or two that might be used to focus small group discussion. Please put your name on the card, but I won’t reveal your name if I use your question.

• After Becky’s talk, some more discussion about digital democracy and technologies before discussing issues raised in our readings

• After lecture/discussion, focus on discussion leaders and projects

Warm Up! How A Bill Becomes Law

More Schoolhouse Rock

Lecture/Discussion

• Some Framing Statistics

• Digital Democracy (revisit)

• Technologies/Terms

• Politics (or government) as “business”

• Message Customization

• Policy Issues

• Summary

Then And Now: Web Site Growth

See LivingInternet.com. Source: Internet Systems Consortium

Then And Now: Who’s Online, 2001

Source: Vint Cerf, 20 May 2002

Then And Now: Who’s Online, 2008

Source: Internet World Stats

Why These Data Are Relevant:

• “The fragmentation of culture and the recurrent circularity of the hypertext leads to the individualization of cultural meaning in the communication networks. The … decentring of power, and the individualization of experience, are reflected, amplified, and codified by the fragmentation of meaning in the broken mirror of the electronic hypertext—where the only shared meaning is the meaning of sharing the network…”

Manuel Castells as quoted in A new agenda for e-democracy, Oxford Internet Institute, Forum Discussion Paper No. 4, January 2005

In Moving Pictures:

Digital Democracy

• “Digital democracy is a kind of political culture, a political variant that must be treated as a complexly coded system for organizing and acting on public and private preferences.” – Howard, p 71

“Coded System”

• Social code

• Software code

• Legal code

Another Take:

• Democracy is defined by Webster’s as ‘a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation.’ Electronic democracy is simply the use of technology tools to facilitate democratic activities.

• Source: A new agenda for e-democracy, Oxford Internet Institute, Forum Discussion Paper No. 4, January 2005

Electronic Democracy

• “E-democracy (…) covers those arrangements by which electronic communications are used by those with power and the citizens they serve to interact with each other in order to inform and modify the way that power is used. e-Democracy is NOT about paying speeding fines over the Internet (that is e-government); it IS about consulting on whether the speed limit on a particular stretch of road should be raised, lowered or left as it is. It may, one day, be used as a way of empowering citizens in the process of making major national decisions.”

• Source: A new agenda for e-democracy, Oxford Internet Institute, Forum Discussion Paper No. 4, January 2005

DD: Other Phrases

• Politics Online

• Virtual State

Why These Issues Are Important

“The new art or science which the electronic or post-mechanical age has to invent concerns the alchemy of social change…When information moves instantly to all parts of the globe it is chemically explosive.”

- Marshall McLuhan

Technologies/Terms

• Relational Database

• Data Mining

• Hypermedia

• Viral

• Gatekeeper

• Technological Determinism

Politics As A “Business”

• Discuss:What comes to mind when you hear this phrase? What judgments are you making?

Accenture/Arthur Anderson

• My-Democracy.com (Howard, p38) “Scam”

• Current Homepage

• “Public Service” Industry

• Begs the question: proprietary v open source

Howard: Customized Web Sites

• How many folks were disturbed by the concept of web site customization: e.g., different views for a woman from Georgia than a woman from Washington?

Customization, Privacy

• Discuss:When and under what conditions should a commercial, private or governmental organization be allowed to gather electronic information about an individual? How can they use that information? What digital rights should reside with the individual?

• Let’s look at McCain and Obama 2008

McCain: Splash = Video

Obama: Spash = $

McCain: Post-Sign Up

Obama: Post-Sign Up

McCain: One-Step Sign Up

Obama: Two-Step Sign Up

Obama: Now See Dashboard

McCain: Not Logged In

McCain: Logged In

McCain: Not Logged In

McCain: Logged In

Obama: First Page, Not Logged In

Obama: First Page (Initial Account)

Obama: First Page After Logged In

Policy Issues

• Last week we talked about Net Neutrality

• Other issues:– Privacy/Security/Digital Signatures

– Cryptography (export)

– Trademarks, Copyright, Domain Names

– Regulatory Framework

– Censorship/Filtering

• See InterPlanetary Internet, Internet Society

Summary

• “Digital Democracy” is an evolving concept – elaborate to make sure you’re being understood

• Technology matters. So does law. Disruptive technologies lead to pushback from the powerful.

• Don’t Be Evil should be our motto and the rubric we use to measure others’ efforts.

Going Forward

• Discussion Leader Sign Up

• Remember: three weekly essays – you should have the first one done no later than week 4 (to pace yourself)

• Project Ideas (example, Christy & Margery)

Blog Action Day: Poverty

• Consider becoming part of Blog Action Day on 15 October.

• It’s the second annual nonprofit event designed to unite the world's bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to discuss the same issue on the same day. Currently participating: 5,498 sites

• Promo on Vimeo