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16. From media politics to networkedpolitics: the Internet and the politicalprocessAraba Sey and Manuel CastellsTHE INTERNET AND DEMOCRACY: UTOPIAS ANDDYSTOPIASNever in history has democracy been more pervasive throughout the world.Yet, available evidence points to a growing, widespread crisis of legitimacy ofgovernments, parliaments, political parties, and politicians in most countries,including the United States and Western Europe (Castells, 2004: ch. 6).Because the Internet is seen as the ultimate technology of freedom, its diffusionamong citizens has been hailed as a potential savior for the political illsof representation and participation. At the same time, critics have sounded analert on the dangers of electronic democracy, not the least being the potentialfragmentation of citizenship and the capture of public attention by elites anddemagogues (Anderson and Cornfield, 2003).A symbolic manifestation of both utopian and dystopian views is apparentin the work of one of the world’s leading political theorists, Benjamin Barber.In 1984, in his pioneering essay Strong Democracy, he foresaw the possibilityof using new information and communication technologies to energize citizeninformation and political participation. Fourteen years later, having observedthe actual practice of democracy under the new technological paradigm,Barber himself called attention to the deteriorating quality of public debateand democratic decision-making in the biased space of the new media (Barber,1998). In principle, both of his arguments are plausible and not contradictory.The Internet can, indeed, be an appropriate platform for informed, interactivepolitics, stimulating political participation and opening up possible avenuesfor enlarging decision-making beyond the closed doors of political institutions.On the other hand, any technology – and this is particularly true of theInternet – is shaped by its uses and its users. Thus, bureaucratic politics willtend to use the Internet as a billboard for one-way communication. Cynicismand individualism from disaffected individuals will translate into the use of the363