The Internet and the Public Sphere/Cyberdemocracy

Cyber democracy is the move into a digital democracy, in which politcal debates, conventions, and voting will occur online. The goal of this is to bring back power to the people and to form a true "participatory democracy", in which many feel our nation should be based on. The world wide web will then become our newly claimed public sphere. The ideal public sphere and cyber democracy would open up communication amongst the electorate about important issues in the U.S., while allowing a debate forum to begin in an effort to form a consensus about how to solve the problems. Many problems surface when the internet becomes the public sphere.

The economically disadvantaged are left out of the democratic process because they cannot afford internet services. Many minority groups are inclded in those that lack a great socioeconomic status, therefore their thoughts are also neglected in this process. Only 30,000,000 out of almost 300,000,000 people in the United States are online, which counts for only about 10% of the population that can vote. Many people would have to be able to gain access to the web in order to participate in the debate forums, in which do not necessarily work anyhow.

Many of the debates rarely come to a common public opinion, which is the purpose of the debate rooms. The only commonalities occur seem to happen after the members of the chats separate into their respective groups. Quickly the participants form into sects after figuring out what beliefs they have in common. Of course there are the people that sign onto a debate forum, but never really participate and maybe utter a sentence or two, here and there. However, when a politician is identified in the debate forum, the debaters automatically flock to his debate room and hang on to every word that he says. A participatory democracy is supposed to put the formulation of important issues that need to be addressed into the hands of the electorate, but these debate forums only give the government and politicians another pathway to influence more possible voters.

Another problem surrounding a cyber democracy is the growing possibility for corruption of the government. Online conversations are very difficult to monitor, and the federal government will grow nervous about what is being said in these debates and chats on the web. One way they may try to solve the problem would be to create and provide software that gives access to the wealth of information about politics that allows the people to form their opinions. The problem with this is that it is too easy and too tempting to not create biased opinions throughout the materials present in the software. Media's influence will still be there, even though the move to the internet as our public sphere is trying to avoid media bias and conglomerates. On the other hand, the government could begin to figure out ways to control the debate forums, and to monitor conversations of the citizens. With the possibility of anarchists uniting and the open invitations to criminals who will steal identities, or use fake ones to con people, the federal government will be called upon to regulate the internet, which would be a very difficult task. This, however, will lead to violations of our freedom of speech, and an even larger uproar will occur.

The ideals of the cyber democracy and creating a public sphere on the internet are with good intention, but they are unrealistic and, in the end, impractical. The many problems that will occur outweigh the good that will come out of it. Technology such as the internet creates for a vast amount of opportunities, but to revolutionize our entire democratic system according to the internet and online access is not safe or secure for many different reasons.