Democracy Online: The Prospects for Political Renewal Through the Internet.

• Author: Srader, Doyle
• Position: Book review

Democracy Online: The Prospects for Political Renewal Through the Internet. Edited by Peter M. Shane. New York: Routledge, 2004; pp. xx + 279. $125.00 cloth; $34.95 paper.

Far from amplifying the "cacophony of criticism and cynicism" (Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles 158) that characterizes much contemporary scholarship on the prospects for public participation in politics, Peter M. Shane's edited collection of essays on information and communication technology (ICT) falls prey to neither excessive pessimism nor optimism. None of the introduction's four framing questions mentions argumentation, rhetoric, or communication; instead, Shane promises a rich, detailed profile of the arc flowing between the anode, technology and the cathode, democracy. But as Weger and Aakhus observe, "a radical change ... in the media available to ordinary citizens for interactive communication at a distance, [is] reinventing the possibilities for engaging in public discourse" (23) and "an important issue for the argumentation critic lies in rendering these new media accessible to argumentation criticism" (24). Shane's assemblage of authors, including three communication scholars, tackles the ambitious project of separating facilitative technological arrangements from stumbling blocks, distinguishing squandered potential from wishful thinking, and explaining the larger lessons taught by both success and failure, often within the same arrangement.

The book's four sections address potential applications of ICT to public deliberation, the prospects that ICT-sped deliberative practice might resuscitate participatory democracy, case studies of ICT usage ranging in complexity from informational websites to highly structured online discussion programs, and lessons learned. In a depiction of politics that is familiar and frustrating to any argumentation researcher who has gone hunting in political science journals, many chapters emphasize issues of political theory and dense questions of an ideal framework of legitimacy that justifies the exercise of power, while omitting discussion of communicative dynamics or reason-giving. A few chapters, and sections of others, however, contribute significantly to our understanding of the radical changes in the way images, ideas, and messages are disseminated that have erupted in the past generation.

Of greatest interest to argumentation scholars will be Tamara Witschge's "Online Deliberation: Possibilities of the Internet for...