Madison and the Smart Mob: The Promise and Limitations of the Internet for Democracy

From the Internet & Democracy blog...

Kicking off the release of a number of Internet and democracy publications this fall is the recently published paper by Robert Faris and Bruce Etling: “Madison and the Smart Mob: The Promise and Limitations of the Internet for Democracy.” From the Fletcher Forum summary:

“Color revolutions” in countries as disparate as Burma and the Ukraine demonstrate the potential of the Internet and text messaging for disseminating democratic ideals. These new technologies have no doubt revolutionized peer-to-peer relationships, but they remain limited in improving processes among government institutions.

This piece builds off our thinking about the Internet and democracy over the last year, and is informed by the ideas and work of many here at the Berkman Center including Faculty Directors John Palfrey (Born Digital), Yochai Benkler (Wealth of Networks) and Jonathan Zittrain (The Future of the Internet), among many other staff and fellows.

You can read the full post and comment on it here.