Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
said they were “very concerned” about climate change. In contrast, a poll taken recently
by the highly reliable Pew Center for Research for People and the Press found
that only 35% of USA respondents said that they were very concerned about global
warming, down from 44% of those polled the previous year 10 . This strongly suggests
that arranging opportunities for people to meet and discuss key questions — online
and in person — produces different policy positions and better citizen sensibilities
than would otherwise be the case. There is good reason to expect that the quality of
both the deliberations and eventual decisions would be superior as well.
In sum, I have described two contrasting examples of ways in which institutions
that include a substantial digital, networked component have distinctly different
ways of influencing people’s sense of freedom and citizenship. The challenge, in my
view, is to launch active, creative initiatives to enlarge the informational commons
available to everyday people and to do that in ways that enrich opportunities for
direct involvement in democracy.
Bibliographic references
THOREAU, Henry David. “Chapter1: Economy”. In Walden. 1854. Disponível
em: http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/hdthoreau/bl-hdtho-wald-1.htm.
THUCYDIDES. Pericles Funeral Oration. In The History of the Peloponnesian
War. Translation by Charles Forster Smith. 2008. Available at: http://www.
historywiz.com/primarysources/funeraloration.htm.
10. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press, “Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of
Global Warming,” October 22, 2009: http://people-press.org/report/556/global-warming.
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