The democratic governance of information societies

a critique to the theory of stakeholders

Massimo Durante

pp. 11-32

in: Elizabeth Buchanan, Mariarosaria Taddeo (eds), Information societies, ethical enquiries, Philosophy & Technology 28 (1), 2015.

Abstract

This paper criticizes the tendency to view the extension of the class of social actors, which stems from the process of democratization of data, as also implying the extension of the class of the political actors involved in the process of governance of the Information Society. The paper argues that social actors can upgrade to political actors once they become real interlocutors, namely political actors that can participate in the formation of the political discourse (which underlies political decisions) and that this can happen only once they are able to combine, to a greater or lesser degree, the reduction of information asymmetries with the reduction of power differentials.