Trebor Scholz has uploaded a slideshow from his talk on “Democratic Participation in the Technological Design Process.” Also of interest on his always-interesting Journalisms blog is the syllabus for his course on “Democratization and the networked public sphere.”

This course will argue for the potential of sociable media such as weblogs to democratize society through emerging cultures of broad participation. Over the past ten years the public spheres have been dramatically expanded by participatory web-based technologies. ‘Democratization and the networked public sphere’ will focus on various arguments for and against this central claim by examining historical and present-day understandings of the public sphere, ranging from theorists such as J√ºrgen Habermas and Alexander Kluge to Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler.

The course will investigate the democratizing potential of the Internet by examining the political participation of citizens who contribute news reports to weblogs and wikis, knowledge repositories such as the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia or the open source software archive Freshmeat, web-based platforms for artistic expression, and mobile wireless devices that allow for political participation such as the organization of protests.

Trebor Scholz has uploaded a slideshow from his talk on “Democratic Participation in the Technological Design Process.” Also of interest on his always-interesting Journalisms blog is the syllabus for his course on “Democratization and the networked public sphere.”

This course will argue for the potential of sociable media such as weblogs to democratize society through emerging [...]