2 The communication and information offers of ICT: Potential aids to citizen participation
This is a layperson's guide to the citizen participation-potential of ICT, written by an ICT layperson.
2.1 Electronic mail
"e-mail" allows faster and so more intensive communication in modes of one to one, and one to many (multiple recipients may be addressed in one message). Thus in principle human written communication (other modes are possible too, e.g. graphic, audio) has been increased by ICT, and will increase further. Exchange of opinions and knowledge, friendships, enmities, group formation, group communication, group identities, social and political movements, can be built and dissolved over longer distances and more rapidly than ever before. Collective processes may more easily involve more people, may allow more time-efficient communication and decision-making, arguably may promote qualitatively "wiser" decisions. Also, by increasing feed-back between those affected by and those taking decisions or enacting policy it is theoretically possible to increase such things as constituent satisfaction and integrity of the physical environment. Compare a WWW article based on his recent book, NetActivism (Schwartz 1996).
Learning to use e-mail is arguably the best and most fundamental way to "jump" into the global electronic network system (See Rand group report on community Internet access (Anderson 1995)). It allows the new user to obtain rapid "human" feed-back to a "letter" sent in an otherwise perhaps hostile new environment of the global networks and computer systems known as "cyberspace". Skills required for use of more complicated systems such as World Wide Web, newgroups, conferencing or Internet Relay Chat can be acquired by using e-mail, which may often be integrated as part of these systems. People and groups encountered in real life or in any of the "virtual" rooms and fields of cyberspace can be contacted rapidly and reliably by e-mail.
2.2 "Newsgroup" electronic discussion fora.
The system of "Newsgroup" electronic discussion fora allows informal and formal groups to "come together" (form) and communicate across the world. The user must be able to connect her computer directly or indirectly to newsgroup host computers, e.g.via MODEM linking to a server computer (often owned by a third party "provider"). Anyone with access to the system can view all newsgroups which have been "subcribed to" by her provider, then select by topic which Newsgroup or groups she wishes to "visit". Then she can read recent messages sent by others and can send messages to the group. Messages appear listed by e.g. topic or date. A series of messages on a single topic, usually from two or more authors, is referred to as a "thread". Graphical and "audio" files may be "posted". Sometimes messages are archived, providing a historical record and information resource. There are thousands (1000s) of Newsgroups on almost every subject imaginable. Obviously, there is huge potential for communication of many sorts, including that related to politics and towards increasing the contribution of citizens to collective decisions. Reportedly, many advances in computer programming were assisted by specialist newsgroup discussions. Expected (and unexpected) dyadic and group dynamics are seen, including a readiness to give free help and advice, admittedly also some aggression, often across boundaries of background and country.
The Usenet system, which offers many newsgroups, deserves a special mention in relation to democratic decision-making and ICT. The Usenet system pre-dates the Internet. It consists only of a set of rules and is run by a group of volunteers. (Krol 1994). Anyone (in principle, anywhere in the world) can propose a new Usenet discussion topic. This proposal is then publicly posted in an "announcement" Newsgroup. After a certain time has elapsed and discussion has occurred, assuming that a number of users are interested, there is an open vote for or against the establishment of a new discussion topic.
Newgroups, or the computer programmes which enable access to them, usually require that the user actively "dials in" to discussions, whereas in other systems such as "Lists" (see below 2.3) messages arrive automatically in the subscriber's electronic mailbox.
A classification system for Newsgroups contains branching and further branching "domains" such as "soc" (social issues), soc. culture., soc.culture.german, soc.culture.bosnia, "sci" (scientific research), "rec" (hobbies, arts etc.). A proposal has been made to establish a "gov" domain, which will contain information provided by international organisations, national, regional and local governments. Citizens will be able to initiate discussions groups on political themes, and government institutions and workers will be able to communicate laterally too. If this system works well, and is not abused, then it holds great promise for improved function of government, and for citizen participation in politics. One of the founders of this proposal, Carl Sage writes: "In November 1994 and May 1995, the US government hosted a pair of electronic town hall meetings, which made use of email lists, WWW servers, and alt newsgroups. Because no gov newsgroups existed, alt ("alternative") newsgroups were created for the conference, but since the alt newsgroups are not within the "official" organized set of newsgroups, many news sites did not have these conference groups available. As a result, many people used the email and WWW to access the discussions. The email and WWW servers quickly overloaded due to the large number of participants. Having a reserved set of official newsgroups which are widely supported will permit even larger conferences without the problem of backlogged central servers. (GOVNEWS Archive, Hage 1996).
2.3 mailing list servers, bulletin boards and similar systems
A list-server is a computer programmed to "organise" exchange and discussion among, or announcements to, groups of users. The server computer is commonly "on-line" (plugged into the Internet) most of the time. Server programmes may perform numerous automatic functions, e.g. accept new users and arrange to cancel subscriptions, send an explanation of functions, supply list of users, provide data from archives. Content which is distributed to users may be moderated by automatic means or by a human being i.e. censorship and control may be built in to the system or not. According to Krol, (p.128) "system administrator privileges" are required in order for a person, group or institution to be allowed to set up a "mail reflector" such as a mailing list server (Krol 1994).
2.4 WWW and similar "publication", interaction with other ICT systems.
World Wide Web is a system which allows a computer to be telematically linked to another, if suitable fitted out with WWW or similar software and "on-line", anywhere in the world. Documents and files on another computer may be contacted by entering their URL (universal resource location, a sort of unique address) in an appropriate computer programme, usually called a "browser". Data may then be transferred, viewed or read and optionally "loaded down" onto own computer hard-disc.
WWW commonly applies a system known as "hypertext" which allows the URL of another document (even on a distant computer) to be reached by "clicking" with a "mouse" or otherwise activating an icon, word or phrase on the own computer screen. Hypertext may thus be used for rapid cross-referencing (also within a single document).
Computer users who are linked to the Internet may be able to install a "home-page" on their local server computer. A document which has been produced in or converted to a special form (known as HTML, hypertext mark-up language) may be "sent" online from a personal computer to a server, commonly using FTP (file transfer protocoll). Depending on the amount of disc space on the server which is available to the user, and maybe upon the cost of renting this electronic space, a user may install several or many files and documents, linked to her homepage, on the server. This data, which may be text, graphic, audio or video material, is then in theory accessible to all Internet users possessing a WWW browser, estimated to be many millions, across the world. Search programmes allow key words, parts of words, names and phrases to be used in seeking desired information from WWW sites. Tens of millions of documents are currently available. Cross linking into other data systems such as Gopher (data banks) and Telnet (e.g. to search library catalogues online) increases the total amount of and types of data available.
Whereas e-mail, newsgroups and mailing list servers are mainly used for communication and exchange, WWW's main function is to provide information. See for example the application of WWW by California Online Voter Guide (CVF) and by the UK-online project to provide information about politics and candidates for election, and the work of TAN+N which offers an e-zine (online magazine) about teledemocracy via WWW (links to these sources provided below).
Technical progress in Internet systems is blurring distinctions. For example, WWW browsers may allow a user to send mail directly to the "owner" of a home-page. Search systems allow seeking a topic or "string" of symbols in newsgroup correspondence as well as in WWW. Some service-providers combine functions of WWW and mailing lists, so offering back-up information for on-going or forthcoming e-discussions. (E.g. British politics-on-line project 3.2)
2.5 IRC (chatting), conferencing and related systems, interviews (e.g. citizens interview politician or official)
A number of ICT/Internet systems allow multiple users to participate on-line in a discussion or game. e.g. IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Access to the system allows the user to seek others who are simultaneously online. Lists of existing discussion-topics may be browsed to help the user find a group with similar interest to her own, and any user may propose a new topic. Remarks and sentences may then be typed online and are readable by all in the group, who may all reply if they wish. IRC has been used by political groups to permit discussion of members who may be geographically far apart. Other related systems may bring in visual experience, have been used for group game playing, and may have social or political applicability e.g. MUD (multiple user dungeon), MUSH (multiple user shared hallucination (!)), MOO (object orientated MUD).
Software exists which can allow private on-line conferencing (for public conferencing see 2.6), via local networks or via wide area networks such as Internet. Of course, these systems may be used for political work.
Communication between politicians and voters, constituents and public has been carried out via Internet, the politician (or perhaps one of her assistants) typing answers to questions. On these occasions it has sometimes been necessary to mark the computer keyboard with a few easily understandable symbols, to help the politician, a computer illiterate, through his initiation into cyberspace.
2.6 Mass meetings, electronic town halls, opinion gathering.
ICT may facilitate or allow "one to many" and "many to many" communication in novel ways.
Projects and proposals described below illustrate that on-line meetings and discussions involving hundreds of people are technically feasible, see for instance the Town Meeting project "Choosing Our Future" (3.3) and the "popular" democratic innovations of the Reform Party of Canada. (3.4 and 3.5).
The Decision-Maker/Teledemocracy proposals, from the Netherlands (3.6), present a sophisticated ICT system for opinion gathering and evaluation as well as increased participation of citizens in parliamentary decision-making, and the possibility that all citizens may vote electronically on many parliamentary issues.
An experiment in mass-participation was recently organised by workers of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The authors write: (quote) An asynchronous collaboration system was developed for Vice President AL Gore's Open Meeting on the National Performance Review. The system supported a large online meeting with over 4000 participants and successfully achieved all its design goals. A theory for managing wide-area collaboration guided the implementation as it extended an earlier system developed to publish electronic documents. (...) The users participated in policy planning as they discussed, evaluated, and critiqued recommendations by linking their comments to points in the evolving policy hypertext. (unquote) (Hurwitz and Mallery 1995)
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