Mediated democracy – Linking digital technology to political agency

Abstract

Although the relationship between digitalisation and democracy is subject of growing public attention, the nature of this relationship is rarely addressed in a systematic manner. The common understanding is that digital media are the driver of the political change we are facing today. This paper argues against such a causal approach und proposes a co-evolutionary perspective instead. Inspired by Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities" and recent research on mediatisation, it introduces the concept of mediated democracy. This concept reflects the simple idea that representative democracy requires technical mediation, and that the rise of modern democracy and of communication media are therefore closely intertwined. Hence, mediated democracy denotes a research perspective, not a type of democracy. It explores the changing interplay of democratic organisation and communication media as a contingent constellation, which could have evolved differently. Specific forms of communication media emerge in tandem with larger societal formations and mutually enable each other. Following this argument, the current constellation reflects a transformation of representative democracy and the spread of digital media. The latter is interpreted as a "training ground" for experimenting with new forms of democratic agency.

Auf den Spuren eines Politikfeldes: Die Institutionalisierung von Internetpolitik in der Ministerialverwaltung

“…Dazu gehört z. B. etwa der Streit um Netz-Standards in den 1980er-Jahren (Werle 2000;Hofmann 2019). Dazu gehören aber auch die Dauerkonflikte zwischen diversen zivilgesellschaftlichen Akteuren und den IT-und Internet-Konzernen.…”

Digital democracy

“…Understood as media, the appropriation and use of technologies change our world views, our experiences, interpretations and expectations. However, how digital technologies are perceived and integrated into a democracy's texture of political institutions, how we shape them and how they shape us, cannot be understood without taking into account the broader constellation of social, cultural and economic change (Hofmann, 2019). Digital democracy, then, is to be perceived as a reintermediation rather than a disintermediation, ultimately resulting in new or changing institutions and infrastructural logics (Epstein, Katzenbach, Musiani, 2016;see Bolter & Grusin, 1999).…”

“…Notions of monitory democracy (Keane, 2013) or "counter democracy" (Rosanvallon, 2008) represent one way of making sense of the digital constellation. "Networked publics" emphasises the horizontal links within a more active audience (Ito, 2008), with repercussions for our understanding of democratic agency and the democratic subject (Hofmann, 2019). In sum, there is a strong interdependence between shifting interpretations of the public sphere, changing democratic practices and the appropriation of digital technologies by citizens.…”

Political Agonism for Indonesian Cyberpolitic: Critical Cyberculture to Political Campaign of 2019 Indonesian Presidential Election in Twitter

“…To the extent that the public is critical and enriched by agonistic narratives, the issues of deception, racial intolerance, and provocation milling about on social media will not affect them. Through implementation of cyberpolitical agonism, cyberdemocracy and cyberpolitics in Indonesian will be better as democracy in the era of new media (Hofmann, 2019). Moreover, if agonistic can be created in online reality, offline real reality will follow it, because citizens are also citizens who are real-world people.…”