I recently finished teaching a seminar at the Department for Communication Science at the University of Bonn in Germany on the admittedly broad topic of the Internet and Democracy. This postgraduate seminar ran over five sessions with a total of more than 20 hours. Given that this was the first time I have taught the subject it really was a lot of work but I enjoyed it very much. This was aided by a small seminar which allowed for a lot of interaction which also seems to have caught on with the students.
So what was it about? The focus of the course was to highlight ways in which digital technologies can be used in order for citizens to take part in the political process – both formally and informally. Given that the students had little background in the academic study of the Internet I started with highlighting the features arising from the shift towards a networked public sphere, the new activities it enables (e.g. citizen journalism) and possible problems associated with it (e.g. think cyberbalkanization).
Having laid the foundations in this way we would subsequently move on to discuss ways in which governments encourage participation via online means (e.g. online petitions and online consultations) as well as initiatives by non-governmental actors (e.g. mySociety or abgeordnetenwatch.de). Emphasis was laid on an empirical examination of those efforts and a comparative perspective mainly between the UK and Germany.
Judging from the discussions during the seminar I would argue we reached its aim as I stated it originally in the lecture list:
“At the end of this course you should have a good overview about the opportunities offered by the Internet to re-invigorate democracy and civil society as well as the current state of the art in digital democracy together with an understanding of current research that should enable you to critically evaluate claims about the promise of the Internet for a more participative democracy.”
The material is still being developed and having taught the seminar there are already a number of issues I plan on revising. Nevertheless I thought it might be a good idea to post the slides below as to give others some inspiration but mainly to get your comments.
Internet and Democracy – I Introduction
Internet and Democracy – II Networked Public Sphere
Internet and Democracy – III Networked Public Sphere
The seminar was greatly contributed to by a number of people that agreed to share their expertise with the class, in particular Oliver Märker of Zebralog and Markus Beckedahl of netzpolitik.org. Thank you very much!
PS: I use eParticipation to denote governmental efforts to utilise the Internet for increased political participation while I refer to eDemocracy as applications and initiatives that are built by non-governmental actors. This terminology is somewhat in contrast to other people’s usage of these terms. For one visualization of the different typologies see e-demokratie.org.
