Post in Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions

Jul 21 08:10 UTC

Hi Mick,

It's interesting to have this discussion across so many territories,
with different experiences of democracy and difficult to do it without
getting caught up in semantics.

However, you have really intrigued me with this line:
"Then again, parliament was once the institutional embodiment of the
public sphere, in direct confrontation with the authorities"

Which parliament are you referring to?
I can't think of a period when the UK parliament has been the
institutional embodiment of the public sphere. (Though at its best is
may have aspired to be). Equally I can't think of a time when the
Parliament did not largely represent the country's various authorities
-whether due to the prevalence of wealthy landowners in both houses or
those with religious power in the Lords.

I'm not really too convinced by the public/mass dichotomy either.
I like the idea of public as it's set out here, but in practice some
people prefer to express their opinions (regardless of quality) and some
prefer to keep their own council or only talk to one or 2 people in
private. I think that's human nature.
I think we should design systems to be useful to both types of people.
Otherwise we are trying to change people to fit the system (which
represents our idea of how they should behave).

-Ella

Ella Taylor-Smith

International Teledemocracy Centre
Napier University
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