27: Regulation Proposals

Published on 2024-04-25

Preparatory Readings:

Sunstein: Regulation Ideas

In this chapter, Sunstein offers some examples of regulations that he thinks would help to improve the conditions for deliberative democracy in the digital age.

Please consider these proposals with your own paper and regulation proposal in mind.

Did any of these proposals strike you as particularly promising or useful for the proposal paper you’re writing? How so? How might it apply to the case you are considering?

Did any of these proposals seem particularly un-promising, problematic, or ineffective? How so? Why?

Course Exam Review

Exam Format

The final exam format will consist of two parts. (1) A question section composed primarily of multiple choice, quotation identification, and/or short answer questions and (2) then two essay questions asking you to explore and articulate some of the big ideas we’ve been discussing throughout the semester. You’ll have 2 hours to complete the exam.

In preparation for class and our review session, consider the following bullet points. Please annotate any ideas you would like to discuss, review, or clarify during our class review session.

Big Course Ideas

How do the big ideas of our previous units connect/relate to our discussion of media and deliberative democracy?
For example, ideas like:
- The Medium is the Message
- The Living (oral culture) vs. the Dead (literary culture)
  - What were some of the pros and cons, strengths and weakness of each culture according to Ong?
  - McLuhan sometimes refers to the electronic age as the second age of orality. Why?
  - How does the dynamism of oral culture re-emerge in the digital age?
  - Do we see some of the strengths of oral culture noted by Ong re-occurring?
  - Are we losing some of the strengths of literary culture noted by Ong?
- Shannon’s theory of information.
  - How does Shannon’s theory of information make possible the kind of communication dynamism, speed, and scale that creates new “Latent Ambiguities” for us in the digital age?
- Hyperlinks, Interconnectivity, Multi-sequence
  - To what extent are these features of the text in digital age contributing to the “Latent Ambiguities” we face in the digital public sphere?

Deliberative Democracy in the Digital Age

Rousseau’s unique political aspiration.
The difficulty Rousseau has in achieving this aspiration.
Kant’s ideas about the conditions necessary for the “will of the people” to emerge.
Mill’s argument for why “more speech generally means better deliberation”.
- There at least four distinct arguments here.
Why Brandeis’s protection of “free speech” shows agreement with the previous arguments of Kant and Mill.
Why Holmes argument for the same protection of speech is based on a different principle or value.
What is a Latent Ambiguity and why is the Brandeis/Holmes decision a good example of such an ambiguity.
Habermas’ idea of the “Public Forum” and the “Ideal Speech Situation”
- Why does democracy need the public forum?
- Why does the speech situation of the late 18th and early 19th century come close to resembling this ideal speech situation?
- What is Neo-Feudalism and why does it threaten the public forum and simultaneously hide the fact that this threat exists?
- Why did the Internet initially look like a chance to restore the “Ideal Speech Situation” and recapture the public forum?
- In what ways might the Internet of the 21st century be said to be at risk of returning to “Neo-Feudalism”?
The nature of regulation
- Why does the Internet seem “less” regulable according to Lessig?
- WHy is the Internet actually (or potentially) quite regulable, and perhaps the most regulable communication system ever invented?
- What are the four modalities of regulation identified by Lessig?
- How does regulation (in these different forms) function both as a constraint and as protection?
  - Consider here why Habermas would say the pursuit of consumer sovereignty alone is self-defeating. Why is consumer freedom/choice lost if it is not also regulated?
  - How does Hobbes express this idea?
The Daily Me: Filtering as a threat to deliberative democracy
- What does Sunstein mean when he refers to the “Daily Me”?
- Why is filtering information necessary and important?
  - (In fact, why does Shapiro think the Internet offers democracy better ways of filtering?)
- How did old code constrain “filtering” in ways that were seemingly good for deliberative democracy?
- Why might these constraints seem like “bugs”, when they could actually be “features”?
  - What are som examples?
- How have changes in the code removed the “bugs” or “friction” in the old code and thereby created potentially new problems for democracy?
- What is the difference between polarization and a deliberative enclave?
  - Why can the Internet’s ability to foster group formation be seen as both a good and bad thing for deliberative democracy?
  - What other factors determine when group formation is a benefit for deliberative democracy and when it is a threat?
    - What impact does the medium have on group polarization?
    - How might the medium contribute to cybercascades or “illusions of preponderance”?
    - How do the Podcast about Youtube illustrate this?
- How can regulation be used to protect these features that were previously protected by the “imperfections” of the old code?
  - Why must a regulator be extra careful when regulating political speech? How would Habermas explain this concern?
  - What are the different forms of neutrality that regulation can take with respect to speech? What are the pros and cons of these different approaches?