Cyberdemocracy Revisited: Power and Inequality in Online Deliberation

Early discussions about the democratic potentials of online communication in the 1990s characterised cyberspace as a potential public sphere free from domination. Online anonymity inspired postmodern thinkers to conceptualise online communication in terms of identity deconstruction. These ideas are criticised as naïve in hindsight. They are confronted with two charges. First, cyberdemocratic thought is charged with neglecting economic and state power. Economic and state actors are currently engaging in surveillance and data collection. The alleged public sphere degenerates to a government surveilled economic market place. The second criticism addresses the lack of attention to inequalities tied to social identities. Current cyberfeminists and digital democratic theorists point out that online anonymity cannot simply do away with inequalities tied to identity markers by concealing them. Rather unequal power relations are replicated and potentially amplified online. This paper shows that the first criticism regarding the neglect of economic and state power is unjustified as cyberdemocrats extensively elaborated these dangers. The second criticism holds true, however. A growing strand of literature addresses the problem of digital inequalities not only in form of the digital divide but also within online communications.