Volume 69, 2018
Political Philosophy
Jorge Aguirre Sala
Pages 23-27
Citizenship.com 2.0: a Link to Participative Democracy
[The Evolution of Citizenship in a Project Instrumentalized by New Media]
The alleged legitimacy of democracy is founded on the legislative and executive representative power. But, the voters sometimes are ignored by their representatives. However, with the instrumental possibility of the new media, democracy can evolve into participative citizenship and can overcome the limitations of centralized democracy. While the traditional mass media were kept in the hands of interest groups and suppose that ordinary citizens possessed democracy and seek to find information, the new media (weblogs, email, twitter, facebook, wikis, etc.) grant information and seek democracy. With it, voters can to have an active role in legislation, execution, jurisdiction and audit regarding the acts performed by the government. The limitations (absence of constitutional recognition, inefficient mechanisms of citizenship consultation, criminalization of social protests) are solved by the new media. We proposed to create a mediated citizenship. It is here that the role of the new media takes a higher position in the increment of political communication reciprocity between representatives and their constituents. The importance of the new media, then, lies in the fact that they have the capacity to sustain the rights of the ignored majorities and the oppressed minorities.