Exploring the dark and bright sides of Internet democracy: Ethos-reversing and ethos-renewing digital transformation

Manuel Hensmans

ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: A broad spectrum of public opinion has long portrayed the Internet as a harbinger of liberal-democratic ethos-renewal. Recent empirical evidence, however, points to opposite, ethos-reversing effects. This paper theorizes how liberal polities condition ethos-renewing and ethos-reversing cycles of digital transformation. I advance a number of ideal-typical propositions on Internet-enabled ethos-renewal and ethos-reversal, illustrating my propositions with examples from two liberal polities with leading digital transformation ambitions: Finland and the UK. Ethos-renewal requires paradigm-shifting public investment by representative and direct democracy bodies in five complementary spheres of digital transformation: i) politics: enhance the representativeness of and participation in political decision-making through Internet-enabled direct democracy methods of deliberation, ii) media: invest private (social) media with a public journalism ethos to counter-balance profit-oriented amplification of post-truth phenomena, iii) identity: pro-actively renew emotional belonging to a moral digital community in face of globalization and individualization pressures, iv) education: create Netizens resilient to post-truth phenomena on (social) media, and v) markets: place digital transformation at service of an algorithmic and data commons rather than techno-feudal digital enclosures.

Date: 2021-07-31
Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
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Published in: Technological forecasting & social change (2021) v.168,p.120777

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