Deliberation or De-Liberation?

There is a certain sense of optimism permeating the readings for today in Rebooting Democracy. Much the literature is concerned with how to make the internet, blogs and "echo chambers" work in such a way to increase the democratic potential of the medium.

I hesitate to be so optimistic, however. The democratic potential of the internet is there, to be sure, but it rests on control being in the hands of the people. So far, that has not been the case. While D. Travers Scott, in "Tempests of the Blogosphere," from Digital Media and Democracy says that blogflops can be attributed to a lack of a sense of storytelling, is that really all there is at play? He says that "Communicative agency, expanded through technology, allows more individuals to better join the mediated public sphere and thereby participate in civic deliberation." The question, then, becomes how to define deliberation.

While David Weinberger, in "Echo Chambers = Democracy," says that echo chambers actually increase deliberation and reasoned discussion, Scott notes that "participation in the mere proliferation of messages is by no means necessarily engaging others in antagonistic, productive, political debate." It may be true that most people will not put their ethics aside to sit down and have a reasoned conversation with those who hold diametrically opposed viewpoints, this does not mean that the answer is to continue this trend online. Perhaps the answer, instead, is to encourage exactly the kind of reasoned discussion that Weinberger discounts as unrealistic. If we believe that our representative democracy works because of deliberation, it makes very little sense to say that real deliberation is impractical.

The liberation of online discussion and the "freedom" it offers - is this real or perceived? Are we simply substituting passive participation online for actual participation in politics? Is our liberty to have a hand in how our government works gaining ground - or is the ground itself crumbling?