Over the past few decades, researchers have attempted to unravel the puzzle of whether or not democracy exists online. According to recent evaluations (Norris, 2001; Hindman, 2009), while we find that the ‘Net may have the potential to help spread democracy through its open-endeddiscussions and mass appeal, it has deteriorated into an elite-level discourse due to what is commonly referred to as the “Long Tail” effect (Anderson, 2006) by researchers. This chapter reevaluates the popular theories of democracy online and calls into question the relevance of the question “does digital democracy exist?” Instead, I propose that digital democracy should be evaluated in terms of the sustainability of democratic tendencies within a given site, rather than its mere existence. I argue that scholars have jumped to the conclusion that the potential for democracy online has withered because they have focused too heavily on how a few key websites function to control the majority of traffic on the Web, and have not looked deeper into the infrastructure that is built within these websites and others to evaluate whether or not at a micro-level these sites act and public forums for the open deliberation of ideas and common questions. Instead of viewing democracy through a democratic lens based on liberal proceduralism, we should think of digital democracy existing in “pockets” – self-contained, community-based, democracy based on small, semi-autonomous, group dynamics.
Semantic Interoperability on the Web