Week 9-Civic Hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy

According to the Webster’s defines democracy as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation.” Putting an ‘e’ in front of democracy means nothing more than using information technology tools to facilitate, improve and ultimately extend the exercise of democracy. E-democracy has both a tactical side and a strategic side. On the tactical side, information technology has advanced communication and the access to information arguably better than any known medium (Caldow, 2004)

 Although internet is the most popular communication tool in global, but when it collocation with the e-democracy, it will show low-effectiveness when the peoples are interested in the politics. The British government had paid effort in the networking to find more citizens pay attention and participate in the politics but in the article state that it seems to be the wrong assumption as people who are not interested in the politics, the electronic democracy will not help to grab their attention although it is in the internet form.

However, if reciprocity online is distributed, it will work better and benefit to the e-democracy as in the article said that reciprocity means helping someone because, at some unspecified point in the future, you will need someone else to help you out too. It is rational realization of ‘do unto others as you would have done to yourself’.

Due to the reason of popularization of social networking in internet, even politics others also spend many times and money to develop the applications which can meet the teenagers and also the social goal. Nowadays, the companies spend lots on the broadcasting area like radio and TV as these kinds of broadcasting had large popularity and it has the most effectiveness to the audiences in the ways sharing the information by using the medium. This is applied in the application too. Many creators find any ways to expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

So, the e-democracy should not be target on the peoples who had the qualification that can involved in the politics but also the ordinary peoples as this group of peoples had closed connection with the internet and they also had the highest possibility change from ordinary people to the people who can participate in the politics. It can create the electronic free spaces for the peoples to exchange their ideas and opinion to create the communication’s relation.