Review of Cass Sunstein, Republic.com, Princeton University Press, (2000). ISBN: 0691070253.
Republic.com seeks to explore the often unreflected idea that the Internet is a boon for democracy, the logic being that the explosion of ideas readily accessible has all that is necessary for a genuinely democratic society. Such free speech purists have found in Cass Suntein a significant naysayer. Sunstein's criticism is against what he has labelled "the Daily Me", or more academically the synonymity of consumer sovereignty with democratic freedom. A good example of this idea of consumer sovereignty can be found in the prophetic words-spoken in 1999 - of Bill Gates, cited at regular intervals throughout Sunstein's book:
When you turn on DirectTV and you step through every channel - well, there's three minutes of your life. When you walk into your living room six years from now, you'll be able to say what you're interested in, and have the screen help you pick out a video that you care about. It's not going to be "let's look at channels 4, 5, and 7."
As Sunstein points out, Gates' vision is a vision of "consumer sovereignty in action" (p. 44). It is this trend to consumer sovereignty that Sunstein argues endangers the democratic project. Absolute freedom to filter out news-stations, opinions, political and religious viewpoints etc with which we are not enamoured with threatens democracy because by this way the internet morphs from being the free marketplace of ideas that its defenders claim to becoming an ideological cul-de-sac. This is not just a matter of like attracting like, Sunstein's argument develops the thesis the dynamics of groups is toward extremism, a phenomenon Sunstein backs up with social scientific research.
Therefore, the internet rather than being a force for democratisation is, paradoxically, an inhibiting factor in democratic praxis. In short, freedom of speech is not synonymous with consumer sovereignty and its key idea that "customers" can filter the information that comes their way. A robust theory of citizenship by contrast requires that the citizen cannot discriminate (at least not the the extent of the consumer sovereignty model - although even Locke required filtering of political views - ) from those they disagree with, the term used to describe this process is deliberative democracy. In response Sunstein offers ways in which the negative aspects of internet ideological polarisation can be minimised, with ideas ranging from voluntary agreements to governmental legislation and censorship.
To be sure Sunstein has offered an interesting thesis on the relationship of new media and democracy, particularly in relation to the deliberative democratic model. It is not however the last word on the subject. For my part its major failing is Sunstein's lack of concern to which all media has been dominated by ideological polarisation. More pertinently the media, as Chomsky has shown, has always been in the pay of the government and, more importantly, the conglomerate. My reason for highlighting this is that however valid Sunstein's argument may be, it is only replacing one anti-democratic force with another (although with the staggering commercialisation of the internet perhaps in time it will be the same powers merely working in a different medium).
Finally, it strikes me that Sunstein is living in a different world to me. If Sunstein's thesis were accepted in toto, - and I think he has overstated his argument - it still remains the fact that every day people go to work with people from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, religions, and political opinion. Maybe the Daily Me phenomenon has reduced the scope for ideological challenge, however, it has certainly not obliterated it.
