Who governs? The digital demos at its limits

Abstract

While digital technologies are increasingly deployed in a variety of political contexts, their effects on the demos remain largely unexplored. The article shows how the dominant notion of the digital demos entails a flawed liberal-technocratic understanding that obscures important questions of organized collective power and identity. Responding to these limitations, it contrasts the liberal-technocratic framework with a radical democratic view. The argument is that such a view can help reconceptualizing the digital demos from an aggregate of networked individuals with stable identities to one that opens opportunities for ongoing identity construction and transformation. This analysis has implications for the growing use of digital tools in democracy experiments.