Digital Technology and Democratic Theory

Lucy Bernholz is senior research scholar at Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and director of the Digital Civil Society Lab. She is the author of Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets: The Deliberate Evolution and coeditor of Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values. Helene Landemore is tenured associate professor of political science at Yale University. She is the author of Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many and Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century. She is also the co-editor of Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms. Rob Reich is professor of political science at Stanford University, where he also serves as director of the Center for Ethics in Society and codirector of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. He is the author most recently of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better and coeditor of Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values, and Education, Justice, and Democracy.

“At a moment when democracy around the world is being weakened, challenged, and attacked, this volume is a timely and essential addition that will help its audience understand the affordances—but also the very real detrimental effects—of social media in society on our governing principles and institutions. We urgently need this expert realist approach and global perspective if we are to have any chance of effectively engaging with these tech firms and their technologies and any hope of guarding democracy against the outsize impact of both.”

• Introduction Lucy Bernholz, Hélène Landemore, and Rob Reich 1 Democracy and the Digital Public Sphere Joshua Cohen and Archon Fung2 Open Democracy and Digital Technologies Hélène Landemore3 Purpose-Built Digital Associations Lucy Bernholz4 Digital Exclusion: A Politics of Refusal Seeta Peña Gangadharan5 Presence of Absence: Exploring the Democratic Significance of Silence Mike Ananny6 The Artisan and the Decision Factory: The Organizational Dynamics of Private Speech Governance Robyn Caplan7 The Democratic Consequences of the New Public Sphere Henry Farrell and Melissa Schwartzberg8 Democratic Societal Collaboration in a Whitewater World David Lee, Margaret Levi, and John Seely Brown9 From Philanthropy to Democracy: Rethinking Governance and Funding of High-Quality News in the Digital Age Julia Cagé10 Technologizing Democracy or Democratizing Technology? A Layered-Architecture Perspective on Potentials and Challenges Bryan FordAcknowledgmentsIndex