Strengthening the Democratic Project: Information as the Foundation of the Fourth Estate

Studies show that citizen dissatisfaction with democracy is on the rise. Equally, trust in public institutions is on the decline, but despite this, citizens desire to shape the future of society is growing. The contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, the varying interpretations of democracy are scrutinised in order to surface the nature of scrutinized liberal democracy. Second, the negative impacts of democracy cycles are highlighted as shaped by the interests of elites in their pursuit of economic gain thus undermining liberal democracy and the adoption of diversity. Third, and through such influence, the independence of the fourth estate is diminished requiring the institutionalisation of the custodiary in order to promote a fourth democratic wave. Thus, the aim of our paper is to surface a free flow of contrasting perspectives from multiple entities and in so doing make the case for regulation which limits undesired monopolistic and oligopolistic interests.