Putting the democracy into eDemocracy: An investigation into the arguments for the democratic potential of the Internet

Abstract

The Internet has engendered a considerable level of debate in political discourse since its emergence as a tool in everyday life, and this discourse has grown exponentially as the importance of this medium has increased. However, despite the transformational nature of the Internet technologically, the issues around the democratic potential of the Internet are not new . .Far from being a break with the past, the eDemocracy discourse is essentially a continuation of the same theoretical questions that have faced democracy for centuries. The tension between the redemptive and the pragmatic faces of democracy has existed since the age of Athens and will continue to exist in the age of the Internet. Furthermore the discourse is heavily influenced by the appraisive nature of the concept of democracy. The complexity and the value of democracy, and its constellation of concepts, is leveraged to further arguments about the Internet as a democratic technology. This thesis will investigate the political language in the eDemocracy discourse, and argue that the factors that shape our perceptions of the Internet fall outside the technology itself and are influenced by centuries-old political paradigms.