This empirical paper draws on the author‘s experience serving in Iceland‘s Constitutional Council in the spring and summer of 2011. The Council was entrusted with the task of revising Iceland‘s constitution in the wake of the country‘s economic collapse in 2008. Coming out of an atmosphere of distrust and skepticism of authority, the COuncil‘s members felt it necessary to perform their task in an environment that would be as open and representative as possible. One of the steps taken to achieve this was to use a continuous feedback loop via social media, whereby the public could give constant feedback on the development of the document as a whole and/or specific clauses or chapters. Hailed by many in the media as an innovative tool of democratization, some even going so far as to claim that the document had been crowdsourced, the paper asks to what extent this is true, attempts to analyze the impact of citizens‘ contributions on the document, and what lessons can be drawn from the process and applied to legislative and policy processes in general.
