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Democratic by Design? On the Difficulties of Creating Open and Free Spaces in the Digital Sphere

Fegert, Jonas ORCID iD icon 1; Reitzer, Pauline 1
1 Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Marketing (IISM), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract:

The web 2.0 started off with a euphoria about what this innovation could mean for democracy and society. However, the resignation that the internet is not a participatory network for everyone came soon. On the one hand, marginalised groups had to experience how digital infrastructures mirror or even intensify discriminative patterns from the offline world. On the other hand, new problems specific to the online world, such as the spread of hate speech and disinformation amplified through recommender systems and filter bubbles, appeared to further threaten the aim of an open public discourse. The answer to the question why the
web 2.0 is failing to serve the common good has been found to lay in the architecture of our digital landscape. Thereby is especially alarming what Srnicek (2017) describes under the term of platform capitalism; platforms are dominated by the idea to generate profit rather than to foster democratic processes in society.
But what digital landscape should we aim for instead and which platform architecture would favour deliberative values the best? There are already alternatives to the commercial platforms; the community led platform Wikipedia for example, which aims to unite and provide free knowledge by letting anyone edit their content. ... mehr


Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Marketing (IISM)
Publikationstyp Vortrag
Publikationsdatum 08.09.2022
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator KITopen-ID: 1000152186
Veranstaltung 4th MANCEPT WORKSHOPS 2022 (2022), Manchester, Vereinigtes Königreich, 07.09.2022 – 09.09.2022
Schlagwörter Digital Democracy, Wikipedia, e-Participation, Digital Citizen Participation
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