Abstract

The article proposes some reflections about the new Ict (Information and Communication Technologies) and their relationship with the transformations of democracy, politics, and participation. In particular, it analyzes a widespread view that ascribes to the new Ict a peculiar credit: to overcome all the traditional forms of mediation and representation and thus make possible again, in our time, a form of direct democracy. But this is both an ideological and (from a normative point of view) unacceptable vision. The article argues that the best approach consists in considering the new Ict as one of the new channels of the "public sphere" and one of the moments of a "deliberative system", in the sense proposed by some recent developments of the theoretical research on deliberative democracy.