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E-Politics: democracy or marketing?
Posted: 5/23/2001. By: Stephen Coleman
This election has seen some brave attempts to put the
Internet at the cutting edge of campaigning, but precious little in
the way of using the net to enrich the texture of democracy. Lots of
digital photos of candidates; not much online policy debate of any
quality or manifest purpose.
When journalists ask - as they
often do - how the net is contributing to this election, they are
usually looking for stories of magical marketing ploys, enabled by
somewhat mystical technologies. In fact, as with e-commerce in
general, online political marketing innovations are scarce, less
than spectacular and rarely more than ways of using the net to do
what is already being done offline.
As in the USA last year,
the e-campaigning hype has far exceeded any real political effects.
In the US much excitement surrounded the McCain online fundraising
story - until it transpired that it was indeed a story: most of the
money raised resulted from conventional phone canvassing and
over-enthusiastic e-strategists then put the donors' names up on the
McCain web site to make the e-campaign look more successful than it
was.
This is not to suggest that either in US 2000 or UK 2001
there have been no online campaign innovations; there have been a
few, as one would expect when a new medium makes its first major
appearance in an election. But the Internet will never realise its
political value as a mere marketing tool.
The great promise
of the Internet has long resided in its capacity to invigorate
democracy by opening up the political communication process to the
voices of the many rather than the few. The tedium of endless
professional commentaries, staged interviews, mediated
pseudo-events, banal soundbites and virtual deliberation (where the
elite speaks for the silent, passive onlookers) has led to massive
alienation and disenchantment. Political junkies thrive on the
incestuous, dated drama of 'current affairs' , while the majority
with lives watch 'reality TV' and wait for policy debate that
resonates with their experience.
The inherent interactivity
of the Internet promised to open the political conversation to
voices that had never been heard before - people talking to each
other, to those who want to represent them and to representative
institutions. Engagement, inclusion, public deliberation and civic
reconnection are the e-democratic opportunities presented by the
digital technologies.
Using the net to sell policies is
fundamentally different from using it to enhance democratic
engagement. Political campaigning is necessarily a low-risk
activity. It is all very well for Ian Kearns (elsewhere on
this
site) to complain that parties' and candidates' web sites
lack discussion forums or chat rooms, but does he really counsel
vote-hungry politicians to place themselves as hostages to fortune
by opening their shop windows to anyone wishing to badmouth their
policies? Election campaigning is about winning votes, not having
chats.
But democracy is about discussion. Mature and healthy
representative democracy calls for openness and connectivity between
representatives and represented which can be facilitated by the
interactivity of the net. Such e-democracy has not been a
conspicuous feature of this election campaign, but could be one of
the outcomes of the election: a Parliament, Government and local
authorities that move towards a more e-democratic approach to
governance.
The real question for e-politics watchers is not
whether party A's web site is slicker, snazzier or more
e-machiavellian than party B's, but whether, after the election,
there will be a return to 'politics as normal', with agendas managed
by the political elite; the language of politics reverting to the
cosy clubbishness of public school tribalism; further descent into
the culture of apathy, disenchantment and civic sullenness - or
whether e-democracy will enable a more mature, engaged, inclusive
and deliberative democracy to take root.
*Stephen Coleman,
the author of this piece, is director of the e-democracy
programme at the Hansard Society. |
