The Internet and the Democratization of Civic Culture

The starting point for my reflections here is a schematic distinction within a democracy between the formal political system, with its institutional structures, laws, parties, elections, etc., and a complex, multi-dimensional civic culture, anchored in everyday life and its horizons. Civic culture both reflects and makes possible this democratic system, while at the same time it is dependent upon the system for its institutional guarantees and parameters. In Habermasian terms, this notion of civic culture can thus be seen as an important region of the life-world, with its negotiation of norms and values. As such, it is certainly vulnerable to colonization from the system of politics and, yet can potentially also impact on the norms and values that guide those spheres. The political system (but to a lesser degree the economic system) and a civic culture are in principle mutually dependent; both evolve in relation to each other. A civic culture is thus both strong and vulnerable: it generates the normative and cultural resources required for a functioning democracy, yet it sits precariously in the face of political and economic power. It can be shaped by citizens, but can also shape them, since various ‘technologies of citizenship’, as Cruishank (1999) calls them, such as government and education – and I would add the media – can serve to empower or disempower citizens via the civic culture. My intent here is to air a (renewed) concept of civic culture, consider its utility, and then relate this to the