A new citizenship?
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this year’s Reith lectures on Radio 4 – if you don’t already know, they’re being given by Harvard professor Michael Sandel on the theme of ‘A New Citizenship’. The latest lecture was entitled ‘Morality in Politics’ – now, I don’t want to reduce everything to a function of work, and the bulk of his talk was about making a case for acknowledging moral and spiritual concerns in the ‘objective’ evaluation of policy, but a question came up about politics and the internet and I just couldn’t help myself (plus it’s a good chance to share the lecture love). After each (brilliantly pithy) lecture, he fields a few questions from the floor. The first question after ‘Morality in Politics’ led to a brief discussion on the merits of the internet in enhancing public debate. The transcript of this section follows:
BRENNAN: You’ve spoken of the problem with public debate. Many of the traditional forums for debate such as political meetings have been in steep decline for decades. How then in a globalised world do you envisage this new public debate taking place?
MICHAEL SANDEL: What I think we need to try to do is to try to build institutions of civil society that cut across national boundaries and provide ways of debating questions that spill across borders. And also to build up those forms of civil society that may be closer to citizens than national assemblies are, or national newspapers, so that more local particular sites within civil society can contribute to a rejuvenation of democratic discourse.
SUE LAWLEY: What do you feel about that, Kate? I mean it sounds to me as if you’re not acknowledging the existence of the Internet there.
BRENNAN: I think when you talk about bringing these kind of debates closer to people, then the Internet probably plays a role in that. So I’d be interested to hear what role you think the Internet with its new media could play in that type of process and how will it affect democracy?
MICHAEL SANDEL: My hunch is – and I don’t know the answer to this – my hunch is that the prospect is mixed. The good news of the Internet is that it provides a cheap way to communicate. The not so good news is that the Internet can’t possibly hope to replace direct personal engagement. So even as we take advantage of more universal forms of political communication such as the Internet, I think there’s going to be a growing demand and hunger for more particular forms of political identity and communication and association.
Interesting to hear the internet being so strongly taken as a given – it still feels sometimes like there’s a kind of prejudicial wariness or aura of novelty around online as a communications channel in some quarters and I think as long as that is the case, it’ll be hard to sensibly answer questions about options, benefits, appropriateness and value (as Prof Sandel is trying to do above).
Anyway, what do we reckon? Internet: useful, valuable, an improvement… but no substitute for personal engagement – agree, disagree?
I agree that the internet could be a useful forum for this kind of debate; however there are a number of mitigating factors which would now conclude me to say that this medium is also flawed, not least of which the recent announcement from Germany.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/17/german_block_list/
If you add this to what is happening in Iran right now, in the wake of the recent election results and the way China, Russia, North Korea and many other nations control what their citizens are and are not allowed to read, view or post, the Internet has also becomes a tool of manipulation to the morality thought process in much the same way as many other state run institutions.
To expand on this thought process just a little further I would like to ask a simple question, and I know a number of the reason given by these institutions to justify it, however; “how many publicly accessible news sites can you openly, without moderation, post a reply to?”
My answer would be very few if any.
18 Jun 2009 at 11:47 am
Just to add that I’ve also found this year’s Reith lectures have been fascinating and compelling.
19 Jun 2009 at 6:50 am
Seems to me Michael Sandel is making a false dichotomy when he says the Internet can’t hope to replace personal engagement. I’d say the best discussion forums, blogs, email lists, or whatever do create personal engagement. But perhaps he perceives “the Internet” as just meaning websites that perpetuate the mass-media model of one-way communication. He goes on to identify “the Internet” as a universal rather than a particular form of communication, which to me just confirms that he hasn’t recognised all the possibilities.
29 Jun 2009 at 10:04 am