Untitled - socium.ge

370 Araba Sey and Manuel Castellsswapping (Browning, 2001; Coleman and Hall, 2001; Pew Internet andAmerican Life Project, 2003). The question, then, is whether such politicaltendencies can be turned to more formal political activity, such as deliberatingon policy and supporting candidates for office, which seems to be receptiveto activists online.While some critics have warned of the tendency for citizen participationto excessively quicken the political process (for example, Levin, 2002),evidence from various initiatives suggests that citizens can make carefulchoices under the right conditions. Experiments in the US, Britain,Denmark, Australia, and Bulgaria brought together a few hundred ordinaryvoters to question experts on an issue and then debate among themselves.Polling before and after the debates showed that citizens could deliberate oncomplex issues and make difficult trade-offs. Such juries, convened andmonitored by the public with Internet technology, may be an adequatesubstitution for professional politicians (The Economist, 2003). Similarprojects in Japan have yielded positive results, especially showing that“Japanese voters have a great deal of appetite for engagement in policydiscourse with politicians” (Ishikawa, 2002: 342).Conversely, Internet politics may be rejected by people who want stronglinks with the formal organizations of the political system, such as partychapters. In the UK, Gibson and Ward (2003) found that many grassrootsparty members preferred a structure that fostered more member-to-partyrather than member-to-member communication. This may explain why only17 percent of the UK online population are politically active, compared to30 percent of the US online population (Gibson and Ward, 2003). The differencein the type of political engagement that citizens want may be a criticalfactor contributing to the shape of politics on- and off-line. People who wantautonomous political activity may turn to the Internet because it facilitatesautonomous participation. However, whether this will influence formal politicsor foster alternative politics depends on the willingness of politicians togive citizens full access to the political infrastructure.In sum, it is not that the Internet makes people want autonomy. It is thatpeople searching for autonomy turn to the Internet as their medium ofchoice. If the political system is based on subordination to the party structure,the Internet becomes simply a billboard to post messages and processrequests. If citizens are either disaffected from politics or find themselvessearching for autonomy within an unresponsive political system, then theInternet is used by political activists without directly aiming at the processof political representation. It is only under the conditions of an autonomouscitizenship and an open, participatory, formal political channel that theInternet may innovate the practice of politics. Let us examine one such politicalexperience that appears to yield interesting analytical lessons.