The transformative potential of digital media technologies and open data platforms such as Policy Compass. Deepening Democracy:

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1 Deepening Democracy: The transformative potential of digital media technologies and open data platforms such as Policy Compass The research leading to the results presented in the paper at hand has been supported by the EC FP7 under the project Policy Compass, Grant Agreement , Panel P389 In the paper I am going to present today, I would like to forge a theoretical connection between digital - sometimes also referred to as new - media technologies and democracy. In particular I want to present the currently emerging software-driven platform called Policy Compass 1 as an example of how democratic affordances of digital media technologies are being mobilized to articulate what I would like to construe as a more radical democratic imaginary. Policy Compass is an online platform whose aim is to develop methods and tools that facilitate more factual, evidence-based, transparent and accountable policy evaluation and analysis (Policy Compass, 2015a). I want to argue that Policy Compass contributes to the discursive conditions and imaginary framework with the help of which we can challenge and rethink contemporary democratic systems and democratic practices. The underlying assumption is that digital media technologies collaboratively exploited by Policy Compass - such as liquid democracy deliberation software, the possibility to upload, analyse, visualise and operationalize open data - allow us reimagine the way we practice democracy. It is through this imaginary framework of the perceivable democratic affordances of digital media technologies that we attain a vantage point for rethinking contemporary democracies and democratic practices, striving toward more political transparency and accountability. It is through this framework provided by digital media technologies and platforms such as Policy 1 Policycompass.eu 1

2 Compass, that a deepening and change of our democratic systems could be achieved. My aim with this presentation is therefore to encourage political theorists to take into account the impact that digital media technologies can have on our (theoretical) understanding and perception of politics, democracy and political theory and to turn towards theories of technology to understand their political impact on our societies. This is an ambitious undertaking, which is why with my work, I am seeking to develop a theoretical and methodological framework that allows a fruitful analysis of the intersection of political theory and digital (media) technology with the help of the concept of democratic affordances of digital media technologies (Dahlberg, 2013), which I will present shortly. To start, I will briefly outline the Policy Compass platform and how it mobilises democratic affordances of digital media technologies, before going into more detail about how the platform contributes to a changing, arguably more radical, democratic imaginary. We will see that democratic affordances of digital media technologies can be inflected according to various democratic imaginaries. I will argue that the digital media technologies combined by Policy Compass afford to realise more progressive, even radical democratic politics. Policy Compass So what exactly is Policy Compass and how can an online platform contribute to a changing understanding, perception and possibly even practice of democracy? Let me briefly articulate and thereby construct some possible interpretations of the Policy Compass platform. Initially, Policy Compass (policycompass.eu) is an online platform whose aim is to develop methods and tools that facilitate more factual, evidence-based, transparent and accountable policy evaluation and analysis (Policy Compass, 2015a) by enabling citizens and public officials to easily create, apply, share, embed, annotate and discuss causal models, charts and graphs of historical data from trusted open data sources (Policy Compass, 2014, p.8) online, with the help of digital media 2

3 technologies. The explicit research goal being addressed by the SaaS platform 2 is whether and how open public data, social media, e-participation platforms, fuzzy cognitive maps and argumentation technology can be integrated and applied to provide better tools on the World-Wide Web for constructing, sharing, visualising and debating progress metrics and causal models of policies (ibid.). To these ends, the Policy Compass platform combines various software modules to facilitate certain political actions (Policy Compass, 2015a). Let me very briefly present some of these modules and the actions they afford their users. The combination and integration of the software modules dataset manager, metrics manager, and historical events manager allows citizens to upload, rearrange, analyse and annotate open data according to their interests online (Kokkinakos et al., 2014). This means that the software affords citizens various actions. From initiating data-based and arguably factual discussions about e.g. particular policies or topics present in current political discourses, to publicly comprehending and examining already implemented or planned policies. This is also one of Policy Compass s explicit goals, namely to [ ] make better use of Europe's open public data resources and empower policy-makers and citizens (especially the younger generation) to better assess government policies in the policy analysis and monitoring phases of the policy cycle (Policy Compass, 2014, p.8). By comparing resulting datasets with historical events, citizens can further articulate alternative narratives and reasons for the policies under their investigation. With the help of the visualisation service citizens have the possibility to visualise the datasets that they created or analysed in order to make them more accessible for others and to share their gained insights with others, e.g. through social networks. In this case the software might help citizens understand various datasets and be able to fully comprehend and communicate the implications of particular policies. Another service offered by Policy Compass, called fuzzy cognitive 2 SaaS stands for software as a service, which in the case of Policy Compass means that various software components affording different services (such as online argumentation, visualisation of graphs, etc.) are integrated together in one platform but are developed and work independently of each other. 3

4 maps, allows citizens explore the (causal) context and possible connections of various different explanations of datasets. By putting various factors in fuzzy relations to each other, citizens can explore, discuss and visualise various competing explanations for (causal) relations. The deliberation service ensures that the output of all services, all results, graphs etc. is discussable, so that citizens can initiate conversations about the results they received, the metrics they created or the fuzzy values they assigned to their explanation. Summarising this very short introduction to the platform, we can say that theoretically and technically Policy Compass has been designed to or affords a plethora of political actions, which already bear witness to a more liberal, arguably even more radical understanding of democratic action. The underlying assumptions of why the services offered by Policy Compass are valuable are about notions of transparency, accountability, civic participation and arguably also self-determination and autonomy (Kokkinakos et al., 2015). Given that the platform is online and freely accessible through the internet, it can be put to use by anyone connected to the internet, time and space independently, across various national boarders and languages, and independently of the social status of the users. I therefore want to argue, that the political actions afforded by Policy Compass contribute to a changing, arguably even radicalising, democratic imaginary, one where citizens have the tools to check on their elected representatives, propose alternative policies and metrics on which policies are build, where citizens can participate in discussing the datasets on the basis of which new policies are generated, and so forth. The platform could be read as a combination of scepticism about the regulatory capacities of national governments and concerns about the capacity of conventional democracies to engage the energies of ordinary citizens (Cohen & Fung, 2004, p.23). With the help of digital media technologies it could be argued that Policy Compass seeks to address what Joshua Cohen and Archon Fung (2004) have termed the 4

5 failures of competitive representation where citizens are only endowed with political rights, to voice their interests and grievances by voting in elections through competing parties who after electoral victory have the control over government, public policy and administration (Cohen & Fung, 2004). As my reading of the platform suggests, there are thus a couple of normative assumptions and intentions encoded in and translated into the platform through the various digital media technologies which show an alternative imagination of what it means to politically and democratically engage. It is arguably through the various affordances of the software components that Policy Compass suggests a transformation in the exercise of political actions. Let me explain how exactly I think the features of a software and online platform play a part in constructing and articulating an alternative democratic imaginary. Digital democratic affordances of digital media technologies Articulating Policy Compass as providing the means for an alternative democratic imaginary depends in parts on the contingency of the perceived affordances of digital media technologies. The underlying assumption of the relationship between digital media technologies and theories and practices of democracy, which is also the approach of my research, is that the meaning as well as the use of digital media technologies is radically contingent on our pre-conceptions about democracy, democratic subjectivity and political participation amongst other things. In other words, our perception of what we can do with digital media technologies, our perception of their actionable properties, how we can implement them e.g. for political participation, depends on the culture and discourses we are embedded in. Conversely, I would like to argue that what we understand as democracy, political participation and so on, increasingly depends on our understanding of and on the mediation through digital media technologies. In other words, our understanding of democracy influences how we implement digital media technologies for political ends and our conceptions about how we can put digital media technologies to work in democratic processes influences our imagination of what democracy is. 5

6 A key concept that pays attention to this vicissitude of digital media technologies as being both material and theoretical is the concept of affordances (Gibson, 1977, 1979; Normann, 1999). According to Donald A. Norman (2002), who introduced the concept to design theory, affordances are, the perceived and actual properties of (a) thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used... A chair affords ( is for ) support, and, therefore, affords sitting. A chair can also be carried. Glass is for seeing through, and for breaking. (p.9) Whereas Norman s (2002) conception of affordances still implies that the perceived affordances of an object are primarily determined by the properties of the object itself Lister et al. (2009) translate the concept into the study of digital media technologies: As a concept it goes beyond the assumption that technologies in everyday life circulate primarily as meanings. Technologies are symbolic, but they also allow us to do things, make things, change things. They facilitate. A device s affordances are the range of uses to which it can be put. (p.261) From a post-structural vantage point this is precisely where I would like to add that both the symbolic as well as the material dimension of digital media technologies are discursively constructed, in that our perception of their affordances in a political context depends on our underlying conception of that very political context. Equally, the democratic affordances of digital media technology suggest alternative democratic practices, which call into question the current forms of political participation and democracy. I follow Lincoln Dahlberg (2011) in terming the possible ways in which digital media technologies can be used in the political context democratic digital affordances. We can thus articulate various democratic imaginaries according to which digital democratic affordances are discursively constructed. Here a democratic imaginary could be described as a function that inflects the affordances we believe certain digital technologies to have in line with a set of believes we have about 6

7 democracy. Various inflections of digital democratic affordances are therefore closely related to normative accounts of (digital) democracy, where the use of technologies is evaluated against the backdrop of specific theories of democracy. Advocates of liberal-individualist conceptions of democracy for instance might inflect digital technologies according to competitive-aggregative conceptions of democracy, according to which digital media technologies afford self-sufficient, rational strategic individuals to aggregate their preferences. Other possible logics would be for instance deliberative, which implicate deliberative-consensual conceptions of democracy, where digital media technologies might be understood to afford intersubjectively rational individuals to deliberate, form their opinion etc. Let me illustrate the importance that I believe underlying conceptions about democracy play in perceiving the democratic affordances of digital media technologies. For example: as presented with the Policy Compass platform from a radical democratic perspective we could propose that online policy-analysis software could be implemented as one way to directly engage all citizens in all parliamentary policies. This would imply that we believe that more direct democratic elements are valuable and should be technologically realized, since it arguably strives for more political equality. The tools that Policy Compass provides could however also be used in a consultative/advisory context, where citizens are only allowed to voice their opinion on some matter, which then only serves the ruling politicians as nonbinding indicator for a decision only they are entitled to make. This implementation of technology implies a more representative democratic logic, which suggests that all final decision-making power should still rest with the elected politicians and the respective institutions. With the concept of affordances we can thus draw out and characterize the ontological struggle over the meaning and implementation of various digital media technologies. As Andrew Feenberg (2002) points out quite convincingly What human beings are and will become is decided in the shape of our tools no less than in the action of statesmen and political movements. 7

8 The design of technology is thus an ontological decision fraught with political consequences. (P.3) There is thus a broad range of different normative positions or logics according to which we can inflect the democratic affordances of digital media technologies in line with various beliefs about democratic values. The point that I would like to make today is that the Policy Compass platform, as well as its realization, in concrete software applications inflects affordances of digital media technologies according to more progressive, even radical democratic assumptions about democracy, construing digital media technologies as affording radical equality and participation in the policy making cycle. Arguably Policy Compass introduces an imaginary framework form which we can problematize, criticize and re-imagine current democratic systems and practices. As Aletta Norval (1996) points out quite pertinently in this respect: Imaginary horizons, far from being merely superstructural phenomena, serve to delimit the sphere of the thinkable, setting the boundaries within which all social practices, [ ] have to find their place (p.27). Pure technological optimism? However, as Dahlberg (2013) points out correctly, digital media technology must not be assumed to be unquestionably positive for advancing radical democracy (p.2) or democracy in general for that matter. It would be naïve to believe that digital media technology will automatically democratize and politicize current democracies especially in light of the recent revelations that disclosed the breadth and depth of technology-based public surveillance. My point is therefore not to argue that we simply have to implement some software and all contemporary political problems will be solved. Rather my point is that the technological feasibility of online participation, voting, deliberating and so on, call into question the current forms of political participation and political equality. The democratic affordances of digital media technologies can thus help constructing an alternative radical democratic imaginary with the help of which we can articulate our speculations of current 8

9 democratic systems. In other words technologies afford cultural possibilities, not all of which are exploited or actualised (Lister et al.,2009, xv). Interestingly then from a theoretical perspective, the tools provided by Policy Compass are not necessarily depending on digital media technologies but rather on the knowledge that democratic principles (such as transparency, accountability, deliberation, etc.) are practically feasible today with the help of digital media technologies. Conclusion Let me draw some conclusions. Today I have argued that the meaning and use of digital media technologies in the political context are contingent on our preconceptions about democracy. Accordingly, I submitted that the democratic affordances of digital media technologies can be interpellated or inflected according to various normative positions and beliefs about democracy. In particular, I tried to show that the softwaredriven platform Policy Compass demonstrates how the democratic affordances of digital media technologies can be mobilized to articulate and actualize principles of a more progressive, even radical democratic project. Rather than being the solution to all political and social problems, I argue that the affordances of digital media technologies allow us construct an alternative democratic imaginary with the help of which we can problematize and re-imagine current democratic systems and practices. Today, I submit that the democratic affordances of digital media technologies provide us with the means to re-imagine democracy, to construct a perhaps novel democratic imaginary and to threaten and subvert the ways in which we currently conceive of and practice democracy. 9

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