A Digital Humanities Database: A Tool for Accessible Democracy

The ideas in this paper merge the pre-computer era ethnographic use of information systems with emerging ideas in cloud-resident, very large database design. The need for this revolutionary information system has arisen in the author’s field of governance and public administration due to the problems faced by both mature and emerging democracies. In today’s climate, global and organizational elites are using powerful lobbyists to push an agenda of dangerous deregulation that exclusively favours their interests. Worse yet, as citations in this paper hope to demonstrate, there is cause to believe that their money, and their de facto ownership of mainstream media outlets, has been successful in skewing the outcomes of policymaking decisions and elections because of their ability to use propaganda that specifically targets uninformed and naïve citizens. In the current era of a shrinking middle-class and increasing inequalities, public unrest aimed at countering the trends of the past four decades is mounting, but several recent elections in Mediterranean nations, Europe, and the United States are pointing to the fact that even massive protest movements are going to be ineffective in altering election and policymaking outcomes, exposing the age-old truth that for minorities and already marginalized populations, voting alone is not an effective tool of democracy. This paper outlines an emerging information system that is already in development. As an integral part of an ambitious virtual governing institution, the project is creating an open, self-supporting socio-technical system that promises to mitigate all of these concerns by being free of barriers for participation (even for marginalized and oppressed populations), structured without a hierarchy (so that it cannot be corrupted by power), and based on free association (so that no group becomes a captive of the system). The literature review supports how each of the elements within the proposed system is grounded in the theory of contemporary academicians and respected authors.