Democracy as Communication: Towards a Normative Framework for Evaluating Digital Technologies

Are current digital technologies supporting democracy? Answering that question depends, among other things, on what is meant by democracy. This article mobilizes a communicative conception of democracy. While it is generally accepted that communication is important for democracy, there are directions in democracy theory that understand communication as not merely instrumental but as central to what democracy is and should be. Inspired by Dewey, Habermas, and Young, this paper articulates a conception of democracy as communication. It is then argued that this “deep-communicative” ideal of democracy, together with the usual ethical and epistemic norms of communication as sketched by O’Neill, offer a tentative normative framework for evaluating digital technologies in relation to democracy.