Lucas Walsh

A Case Study of Public Servants Engaged in E-Consultation in Australia

This article examines some of the challenges faced by local government during the development and implementation of a relatively new area of e-democratic innovation in Australia: e-consultation. E-consultation is seen as a valuable way through which a two-way relationship can be developed and enhanced between citizens and elected representatives. It involves the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), such as the Internet, to extend and/or enhance political democracy through access to information, and to facilitate participation in democratic communities, processes, and institutions. Drawing on a case study of the Darebin eForum in Victoria, Australia, this article focuses on the role of public servants as moderators of this local form of e-consultation. The discussion has three parts: online policy consultation is defined within the context of e-democracy; some of the ways that e-consultation challenges the roles of the public service, elected representatives, and citizens are outlined; and the author then argues for an e-consultation strategy that is situated within a continuum of citizen engagement that is ongoing, deliberative, educative, and inclusive.

Book Review: Lacy, M. J., & Wilkin, P. (2006). Global Politics in the Information Age. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press

In a time of ubiquitous media, there is scarcely an area of life that is not touched in some way by these technologies. By extension, information and communication technologies (ICTs) permeate political life, from cybercampaigning to complex dynamics of global finance and hegemonic domination and counterhegemonic possibilities. This subject provides a broad canvas area on which this rich anthology of cross-disciplinary perspectives reflects. This book presents a range of subject areas and case studies that provide insight into certain key tensions of global politics in the information age, namely, tensions between control and resistance and how these become manifest across the often complex political landscape of contemporary history. This landscape is characterized by flows of ideas, capital, ideologies, and informational goods and services that open possibilities for the democratization of media while also enabling conditions for unprecedented domination and power. Editors Mark J. Lacy and Peter Wilkin have collected an interesting series of essays that elucidate the dynamic and complex ways by which ICTs enable both hegemony and resistance in contemporary global politics. In his introduction, coeditor Mark J. Lacy outlines a range of theoretical perspectives of media in the 20th century, ranging from the Frankfurt school and its contemporaries, such as Jürgen Habermas, to the poststructural critiques of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. Lacy explores some of the paradoxes and tensions arising from global information flows. For example, with the rise of instantaneous, global, 24-hour news coverage in which boundaries between entertainment and news become blurred, the moral proximity between people and the global events witnessed instantaneously via mass media becomes distended and distorted. Lacy suggests that these by-products of technological development are linked to broader phenomena, such as deterritorialization, insecurity, and neoliberalism. (This book is, if nothing else, a series of cautionary tales about the dangers of neoliberalism and global capitalism.) Possibilities for resistance are also proposed, which are explored throughout the following chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 survey the role of media in global politics post-September 11. Timothy W. Luke explores the discourse of global security adopted by the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks. In particular, Luke analyzes George W. Bush’s strategic use of rhetoric in his speeches to restate America’s superpower status. One technique discussed was the effective evocation by Bush of a “war on terror” taking place everywhere but against an ill-defined enemy to enable what international relations scholars refer to as the “securitization” of threats. Analysis of the role of media in this kind of mobilization continues in James R. Compton’s chapter on the convergence of military and media discourse. Using vivid and memorable examples from popular news, Compton demonstrates the semantic, visual, and linguistic techniques used by mass media as a willing assistant to U.S. military intervention and economic imperialism in tragedies such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As with Bush’s speeches calling Western allies and others to arms, war coverage has been used by states to construct transnational security threats as a basis for interventionist foreign policy. Stuart Allan then directs our attention to the impact of the democratization of media, such as through online citizen journalism. Allan argues that this democratization extends possibilities for the journalistic presentation of alternative views and countermeasures against the mass media semantic and linguistic techniques discussed by Compton in the previous chapter. Drawing from Castells (perhaps a little uncritically), Allan explores the “contested terrain” of informational politics in cyberspace evident in the development of online reporting after September 11. Notably, Allan cites Dan Gilmour’s observation that with the rush of personal (and predominantly Western) responses to the

E-Democracy: Media-Liminal Space in the Era of Age Compression

In this chapter, the authors will look at the ideas of e-government and e-governance and practical examples of how new media are being used to enhance decision-making in democratic societies. The authors argue that the learning environments that have emerged from interactive entertainment and other contexts signal a change in the nature and role of liminality-the transition to citizen and civic engagement-in modern society.