A Study of Participation and Representation in Online Deliberation

One of the core elements of the vision of ‘electronic democracy’ is the hope that the Internet permits free and equal access to political debates. Proponents of edemocracy assume that the technology of the Internet can be exploited to make the political process more inclusive and deliberative. However, experiences with online communication made so far raise doubts. The digital divide being one obstacle to participation, even more astonishing is the fact that online discourses are constrained in ways similar to those in the offline world. This paper attempts to reassess the question whether the Internet makes political debate more open to voices that are normally not heard in the political field. It uses evidence from one of the largest experiments in online deliberation, the ‘DEMOS’ project in the city of Hamburg. The results of this experiment are ambiguous. It is found that the online discourse is in some way similar to the political field offline. But it is also found that groups who are not participating by traditional means are indeed represented in the online debate. Furthermore, the discourse shows signs of self-regulation and a rational-critical orientation necessary for free and equal participation. Three groups of factors are identified to explain these results: Socio-economic resources, factors determining the usage of new media, and factors stemming from the mass media character of online communication. The paper concludes that although more research is needed to clarify the interplay between these factors, it can be said that the integration of the online deliberation into the larger political context is crucial for determining which factors are prevailing.