Democracia algorítmica: ¿un nuevo cambio estructural de la opinión pública?

Domingo  García Marzá; Patrici  Calvo

doi:10.3989/isegoria.2022.67.17

Authors

Domingo García Marzá Universitat Jaume I https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9605-1771
Patrici Calvo Universitat Jaume I https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3228-9019

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2022.67.17

Keywords:

Algorithmic democracy, Public opinion, Big data, Social bots, Artificial intelligence, Participation spaces

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to confront the concept of public opinion with the reality and expectations of a digitalised society in order to analyse whether the current algorithmic colonisation calls for a new structural change of public opinion or rather the withdrawal of this concept. Massive data and metadata have become a double-edged sword for the digitally hyper-connected democratic society. While, on the one hand, the incredible potential of big data and its different techniques and technologies of data and metadata exploitation make it a coveted product for the system of institutions that make up both the state and civil society; on the other hand, the high negative impacts that its instrumental and irresponsible use is producing and may produce, make big data a controversial and highly criticised tool that distances us from any attempt to build a digital citizenship. Although algorithmic democracy does not rely solely on public opinion, the aim is to show the incompatibility between artificial public opinion and democracy. Our guiding thread is the Habermasian concept of public opinion, since it is precisely the strength of civil society, through the design of spaces for participation within it, from which we can extract the necessary potential to confront the current algorithmic colonisation, to recover an autonomous and critical deliberation without which there is no public opinion and, therefore, no democracy.

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