WEB 2.0: Harnessing Democracy’s Potential

Abstract

Democracy shares many of its core principles with Web 2.0: it is participatory, interactive, individual-centered, host to and tolerant of multiple voices and opinions. They even have some common polemics: wisdom of the crowds vs. ignorance of the crowds; and the fact that everyone voicing an opinion may constitute both noise and debate. The emergence of the term e-Democracy 2.0 results from an alliance between Web 2.0 and democracy. This chapter intends to demonstrate that Web 2.0 has the potential to improve democracy. For this purpose, it begins by providing an overview of the core benefits and challenges of e-Democracy 2.0, then focuses on the importance of social technology for citizen participation. More specifically, this chapter conducts a content analysis to assess the role that Facebook plays in terms of encouraging and facilitating citizen participation.