The link above will take you to the article, there's a photo below, and if your Portuguese is as bad as mine, the English original is below.
The Demands of Digital Democracy
Lucy Bernholz
Digital
data and infrastructure are changing business, government, and the ways that
people help each other out. We now shop, vote, and donate money and time using
networked digital connections. In twenty years mobile phone access has risen
from 1% of the world’s population to more than 70%. This is the year that
analysts predict there will be more mobile phone accounts than people on the
planet.
In the
United States most of the discussion these digital tools are often described as
democratizing. As more people gain network access, more voices can be heard,
more engagement can be created, and more participation is possible. The
democratizing potential of digital tools is one of their greatest selling
points.
Since we’ve
now been using these digital tools for almost two decades, we should be able to
answer the question of when and how they are democracy enhancing. There is a
great deal of data – from political protests to community organizing based on
mobile phones to civic technology efforts focused on helping governments be
more responsive and engaged with their electorates.
But all the
data do not point in one direction. Despite promises of digital democracy,
voting rates are still low and protestors are easily tracked. And with every
step forward, to bring more people into the digital conversation, the digital
divide moves as well – it doesn’t close, it simply shifts from being about
access, to being about skills, to be about voice, to being about power and
influence. As people better understand the surveilled nature of digital spaces
that knowledge has tempered the enthusiasm of community associations to rely on
these low cost tools. Two decades into the digital revolution we are excited
and cautious, dependent upon and tired of being always connected, always
available.
How to use
digital tools to engage citizens safely, to encourage participation, and to
involve and listen to the many new voices now ready to be heard remains a
challenge. It is not as simple as just making the technology available. Left to
their own devices, people with digital access do not automatically seek greater
learning opportunities, take more active roles in their communities, or take
part in the public life of their nations. But we know they can’t and won’t take
these steps without the tools to do so.
Digital tools and infrastructure are not
innately democratizing. As they’ve become common, the thing they’ve created is
a need for more equitable access to them. They will not counteract apathy or
powerlessness or structural exclusion. The lesson of the last twenty years is
that the tools and the skills to use digital tools well have become a
necessity, but access is not sufficient. Greater democratic participation in
the digital age depends on a commitment not to digital tools, but to the values
of democracy itself.
