The informed citizen : technology and responsibility in the information age

Abstract

This thesis explores the justification and possibility of informed citizenship in the affluent liberal-democratic states.The approach is interdisciplinary, drawing upon literature in communication studies, the philosophy of technology, and political theory.The study focuses on how modem science and technology, and information technology in particular, affect the citizen's parameters of knowledge and action in unprecedented ways.It is argued that the main difficulty for i ~r m e d citizenship is not the lack of availability of information as such, but rather the pattern of citizen attention to it, and this pattern is itself an outcome of specific social relations of information.In the affluent liberal-democratic states the social relations of information are primarily geared to privatism, i.e. an orientation to intensive commodity consumption, as a way of life.In this context, information procured through advanced technology serves not only to disclose the problems and suffering of a common world, but also to insulate citizens from these same problems.The thesis argues that as a first step toward a deeper understanding of the prospects for informed citizenship, the concept of information should be reformulated to reflecrits ambiguous status within contemporary technological civilization.The study first of that the number of people who have contributed to its completion is scarcely less than that for a major motion picture.

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