Digital Democracy: Political Communications in the Era of New Information and Communication Technologies

Exordium: About The Concept Of Democracy

At the beginning, a brief enunciative incursion on different democratic systems seems necessary, in order to offer an overview of them and thus be able to later place the influence of the new information and communication technologies, well understood that most of the essay is it will refer to the generically most widespread system: representative democracy. But, perhaps, the media themselves tend to modify the system to some extent, an idea that we take, for the moment, as a mere working hypothesis.

When we refer to 'democracy' we refer to a system of political organization in which power resides in the entire citizenry. Decisions acquire legitimacy precisely when they are made by the majority, either directly or indirectly - through representatives elected by the people. We are going to refer, first of all, to pure democracy (or direct democracy), where political power is developed in assembly interaction. Classical Greece is a recurring example of such a system and to some extent we could also include the cantonal mechanism practiced in some areas of Switzerland. Obviously, this system becomes little applicable when the volume of people to participate is excessively large, then direct interaction is replaced by consultative mechanisms, such as plebiscites or binding referendums (Fraguas, 1985).

Sometimes various procedures are used that lead to a semi-direct democracy, with a representative government and reserving certain decisions to some kind of direct democracy. As we will see later, this being one of the nuclei of our reflection, the extension of the Internet makes possible, at least in theory, a possible direct democratic application: digital democracy, technically already possible. It is true that, although it is used to weigh certain tendencies of the voters, it can be said that, currently, it is not used mainly for decisions of wide scope nor, of course, for the direct election of parliamentary representatives.

The most widespread formula in democratic nations, at least in the West, is the so-called liberal democracy. Here the representatives elected by the citizens They are subject to the laws, they must limit their political action and they can never circumvent certain individual or collective rights established in the constitution. In this system, typical of the rule of law, elections for representatives are combined with a plural political offer, respecting a series of fundamental rights of the people and attending to the classic division of powers of the modern rule of law, increasing with political globalization. and its effects, as explained by Azcona (2019):

Representative democracy is usually considered, regardless of its specific types (parliamentary monarchy, parliamentary republic, federal republic), the most effective form when it comes to politically organizing demographically very large nations. It goes hand in hand with the so-called representative government that was installed since the 18th century after the American and French revolutions. The idea of ​​representation demands the expression of the will, germinating a concept of the rule of law “that links and weaves together the three premises of modern democracy: human rights, the supremacy of the law (and the constitution) and the separation of powers.” (Olivan and Fernando, 2021). Political interaction in this model implies that voters decide who will be their political representatives, but it is true that sometimes this issue is given - or wants to be given - less importance; the representatives must be responsible and accountable for their political decisions to those who have placed in them the power that, it should not be forgotten, resides in the people. This assumption, undoubtedly, sometimes allows its questioning, as Olivan and Fernando (2017) illustrated: