ABSTRACT
It is suggested, by Shirky (2008) among others, that interactive technologies are transforming audiences into participants. The ability to interact publicly with a potentially unlimited group of peers in real time while watching television means anyone can be a critic, and so anyone can be a content creator and contribute to a more granular, co-produced media experience. Rheingold (2000) suggests technologies have created a virtual architecture of participation within which a multitude of communities can form. Conversation can be had with everyone in a virtual community, with everyone else communicating back, linking to the ideals and philosophy of Web 2.0, where the Internet houses a big, perhaps global, conversation. Cyber-optimists argue this not only impacts upon culture through introducing new networked forms of socialisation or changing attitudes to self-disclosure, ‘rebuild[ing] structures of sociability from the bottom up’ (Castells 2001: 131), but also on our sense of empowerment. The connectedness facilitated within online digital environments potentiates having influence. The question is whether this also promises to reshape democracy.
