As part of our first-ever OpenNet Initiative conference in May, we are participating in a debate at the Oxford Union. The resolution is: “This House believes that the Internet is the greatest force for Democratisation in the World.”
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John Palfrey 
What the heck is Web 2.0 anyway?…
Later this week I’ll be on a panel at the CRV Ladership Summit in Phoenix. The session title is “Web 2.0: The Opportunities and Challenges of the Next Generation Internet” and will be moderated by John Palfrey. The other panelists are: Mike Arringto…
About the topic: This House believes that the Internet is the greatest force for Democratisation in the World.
I was once told by Edwy Plenel (Le Monde, French newspaper) that journalism was the greatest force for democratisation. Has the internet replaced journalism or is it just a more widely shared and powerful tool for achieving this task?
In response to Mr. Guillaume Beauverd’s comments –
Internet didn’t replaced journalism at all, it just a more widely shared and powerful tool for achieving this task.
It depends upon what county one is talking about. If we are talking about Western countries, then the internet is a great tool for becoming more politically informed. Many conservatives on the internet would argue that it was the revolution of the internet that allowed them to quickly mobilize conservatives to bring down the last attempt at allowing the “earned path to citizenship.” Regardless of whether one thinks it’s a good or bad thing, it did make the politicians more accountable to voters.
In China, it’s different since the Chinese can ban search terms like “democracy” and they have internet police which seem little different than the state agents in 1984.
The internet should theoretically make people more involved in politics, in Western free societies.
george