Tecnociencias de la información y participación ciudadana

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICT) must be viewed as components of a new technological system which transforms and increases human capabilities for action, including capabilities for citizens’ participation. Two types of participation are distinguished: passives (radio, television) and actives (Internet, video-games, multimedia technologies). After analyzing several examples of active participation with the aid of ICT (electronic vote, associationism, virtual demonstrations, technological cooperativism, electronic games and sports, etc.), we conclude that the technological system ICT produces a new social domain, the third environment or electronic domain. It has its own specific structure and contributes to the emergence of a new form of power: the Lords of the Air or Lords of the Networks, that is, the transnational enterprises which control the access and the functioning of the electronic domain. To promote citizens’ participation in the new electronic domain, it should be democratized, so that users of ICT would be considered as citizens of this electronic and transnational domain, not only as consumers of electronic goods within a great global tele-market.