Whose voice is heard in online deliberation?: A study of participation and representation in political debates on the internet

Abstract

One of the core elements of the vision of ‘electronic democracy’ is the hope that the Internet permits free and equal access to political debates. However, experiences with online discourse challenge this view. The digital divide being one obstacle to participation, even more interesting is the fact that online communication is constrained in ways similar to the offline world. This paper attempts to reassess the question of whether the Internet makes political debate more open to voices that are normally not heard in the political field. Based on empirical evidence from a large-scale online deliberation, it analyses who participates in political debates on the Internet and whose views are represented. The results challenge both the optimistic and the sceptical view on electronic democracy. A theoretical model is developed that is able to explain the results. It extends current research by including the cultural practices of technology use and the specific effects of large-scale communication in the analysis. Though preliminary this model can help to inform the designers of online deliberations to make the most of their democratic potential.

Keywords:

• electronic democracy
• political participation
• Internet
• deliberation
• public sphere

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Mary F. E. Ebeling, Christoph Humrich, Thomas Malsch, Mike Rankin and the anonymous iCS reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper. Special thanks are owed for numerous discussions about the experiment in Hamburg to Birgit Hohberg, Maren Lübcke and Rolf Lührs. As usual, however, the author alone is responsible for the views expressed and for any errors.

Notes

1. The PRO party is an exception. This can be explained by the peculiarity of the elections in 2002, which resulted in a surprisingly high number of seats for this (marginal) populist party. Opinion polls at the time of the debate gave much lower figures and fit better with the observations made here.

2. For more information, see Lührs et al. (2001, 2003) and the project's website: http://www.demos-project.org.

3. The analysis is based on only this case, and thus cannot claim to provide general or representative results. Although the context of the debate is certainly unique, the volume of messages is so high that it is comparable to broader studies involving more than one forum (e.g. Rojo & Ragsdale 1997; Schneider 1997; Hill & Hughes 1998; Wilhelm 1998).

4. This includes continuous observation of the online debate and regular meetings with the facilitators, as well as offline meetings with participants and politicians on several occasions.

5. This assumption is supported by a contribution from one mother: ‘My twelve year old son David wants to thank you…. The forum reminds him of the “SIMS” – only the “cheats” are missing!’ For her son, participating on the Internet had an entertaining aspect, resembling a computer game.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steffen Albrecht

Steffen Albrecht is a research assistant and PhD candidate in the department of Technology Assessment at Hamburg University of Technology. His current research focuses on the structure and dynamics of political discourse and on the social impacts of the Internet.