Democracy in the Digital Age
Democracy in the digital age mainly includes a concept called E-democracy: this is the integration of information and communication technology in governance and political systems. This is one of the major concepts how democracy has evolved in the digital age. The integration of technology in governance is mainly to strengthen and enhance democratic systems in an organization, country or region. This integration of technologies in the digital age and democracy has helped reduce some of the barriers to democracy such as lack of public awareness on governance issues and also lack of public scrutiny on government affairs.
In many third world countries the politicians used to take advantage of lack of public awareness on how the government was run to wrongly get elected in office. For example, some incumbent presidents used to lie to the electorate that they had a good development record simply because there was no easy way of the electorate confirming whether this was true. The digital age has however changed this as the electorate is now well informed with increasing penetration of digital mass media such as radio and television to most rural areas.
The digital age has also helped increase public scrutiny on government affairs. Since most governments have websites, information about most operations is readily available online. Hence the government is now more cautious in what it does as any wrong action is easily noticeable. For example, past mistakes in budgetary calculations would take a couple of days for the public to notice due to inaccessibility of government documents, however it now takes just a click of a button for one to access all these documents and identify any mistake.
The digital age has helped enhance the democratic process by reducing barriers to the process. The digital age has helped increase public scrutiny on government affairs and also increased public awareness on governance issues. Concepts such as E-democracy have also helped enhance democracy globally.
