Theorising Onlife Democracy: beyond Information Pathologies and Epistemic Vices?

Abstract

During the last decade, political theorists have been paying attention to the informational, discursive and epistemic aspects which characterise the democratic public sphere, aiming at explaining their impact on democratic politics. Among the topics at the centre of the debate, there is the large-scale diffusion of disinformation, which – especially after 2016 – has been considered an obstacle for the development of a fair and open public debate as well as for the formation of public opinion, negatively affecting decision-making processes and possibly leading to exclusionary policies. As Floridi (2015) has argued, the recent changes of information and communication technologies and their intensive uses for production, education, recreation and control purposes have affected the human condition and especially the political dimension: citizens live in-between the digital and physical dimensions, in the so-called onlife-world. Though there is a widespread consensus among political theorists on the fact that technological innovations have changed the structure as well as the dynamics of the democratic public sphere and of democratic processes in general, bringing about new forms of democracy characterised by the simultaneous compresence of digital and physical interactions, the discussion on how technological advances interact with discursive and epistemic factors and affect individual and collective understanding of politics is still open. The speakers will investigate the crucial nexus technology-information-democracy from different but complementary perspectives, reflecting on the risks and opportunities that the ongoing transformation entail for liberal democratic politics and looking at alternative theoretical paradigms to recast democracy as a viable solution for the onlife-world.

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