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

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  • Manuel Hensmans

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.

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  • Manuel Hensmans, 2021. "Exploring the dark and bright sides of Internet democracy: Ethos-reversing and ethos-renewing digital transformation," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/321232, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/321232
    Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
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    1. Arora, Swapan Deep & Singh, Guninder Pal & Chakraborty, Anirban & Maity, Moutusy, 2022. "Polarization and social media: A systematic review and research agenda," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).

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