| FT-265418-19 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Jennifer Forestal | The Shape of Democracy: Building Political Spaces in a Digital Age | 6/1/2019 - 7/31/2019 | $6,000.00 | Jennifer | | Forestal | | | | Richard Stockton College of New Jersey | Galloway | NJ | 08205-9441 | USA | 2019 | Political Theory | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Writing and revising a book for
publication about the challenges that digital technologies such as social media
pose for fostering democratic practice.
The Shape of Democracy is a book that deals directly with a pressing contemporary problem: how have digital technologies changed, or challenged, the traditional practices of democracy? Using examples from Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter, I show how the problems often associated with digital technologies exemplify three enduring challenges of democratic politics--the problems of 1) an expanding population, 2) self-segregation, and 3) instability. Ultimately, I argue that these three problems can be overcome, in whole or in part, by building digital spaces that meet three criteria: 1) they must have clearly marked and relatively limited boundaries, 2) those boundaries must be flexible, and 3) the resulting spaces must be stable over time. |