The relationship between democracy and digital technology has, for obvious reasons, moved to the forefront of public discourse over recent months. This past year began with the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, an event organized online and inspired by falsehoods about the presidential election shared widely over social media. Public discourse on the continuing pandemic has been characterized by a strong degree of polarization, exacerbated through the online spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Pervasive concerns about the actions of monopolistic social media companies have reached new heights as whistleblowers have revealed the extent to which private data have been used to pursue profit. Developments like these have increased public concern over the ways in which democratic institutions that were devised for analog forms of participation are coping with the demands of the digital age. It seems that everybody knows that the internet, social media, and new technologies are potentially harmful to democratic life, even if there is widespread endorsement of the gains that increased connectivity can bring to the public sphere. And so, although the implications of emergent technologies are practical in the sense that they raise questions about institutional design, regulation, and access to digital platforms, they are also theoretical—demanding nothing less than a radical reconsideration of the ways in which democracy is understood in the digital era.

In this context, the contributions in this new book, edited by Lucy Bernholz, Hélène Landemore, and Rob Reich, may now be even more relevant than their authors must have imagined. Drawing a necessarily wide scope, the volume includes theoretical work alongside the kind of novel empirical input necessary to give a full account of the ways in which democracy and digital technology intersect. Indeed, a strength of the book is that it does not focus solely on contributions from “traditional” democratic theorists but includes researchers working in fields as diverse as communications, economics, and computer science. (However, a minor gripe with the presentation of the book is that there is no summary of contributors’ affiliations and areas of expertise.) As is made clear in the opening pages, this breadth is both a strength and a necessity, because the kinds of challenges presented to democratic theory by the structural changes brought by new technologies are unlikely to be resolved through conventional means.

Democratic theorists were relatively quick to spot the potential significance of digital forms of participation. Much of the early literature hailed the potential for online participation to allow democratic practices to be decoupled from concerns of time, place, and, potentially, material inequality. By creating and opening up new opportunities for political participation, digital technologies were felt to have several distinctive democratic benefits, such as engendering more discursive participatory spaces and encouraging the development of a tolerant public sphere (see Lincoln Dahlberg, “Re-Constructing Digital Democracy: An Outline of Four ‘Positions,’” New Media & Society, 13 [6], 2011). Crucially, theoretical discussion of the relationship between democracy and technology has also tended to focus on the benefits of engagement in online democratic practices as “an addition, not a replacement for traditional ‘analogue’ participation” (Kenneth Hacker and Jan van Dijk, Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice, 2000, p. 1)—suggesting that some of the problems that have been identified by empirical work on existing democratic institutions such as a lack of trust, declining participation, or inequalities in democratic knowledge might be rectified through digital means.

To say the least, things have not developed in the way early theorists had hoped, and one immediate question is whether we ought to think about digital technology as a positive force for democracy at all. In a startling chapter early in the book, Joshua Cohen and Archon Fung lay bare the failings of digital activity as a conduit for democratic engagement, calling out social media as a source of “insufferable self-display, and politically malignant deceit” (p. 23); and casting the internet itself as “a vast, soul-sapping wasteland of sexual depravity and medical malpractice” (p. 23). Cohen and Fung conclude, however, that there is cause for optimism and indeed outline a convincing argument that the possibilities of deliberative democracy might be enhanced in this environment. Nonetheless, it must be clear that the tone of debate has shifted somewhat in the interim.

The solution provided throughout this excellent book is to consider the opportunities provided by digital technology to fundamentally alter the terms of democratic theory. In doing so, the contributors understand what much of the early work in this area failed to grasp: the central position that digital technology has taken in our everyday lives. For instance, Landemore’s chapter outlines the conceptual problems with an understanding of democracy that has its roots in the eighteenth century, contrasting these with the potential of a new form of “open democracy” that is specifically enabled by the everyday use of digital technology. The relationship between citizens and technology is at the heart of this new democratic model, and the chapter makes no vague claims of the benefits of a digital public sphere. Instead, it puts forward a nuanced consideration of the kinds of institutional design problems that are faced by proponents of digital democracy. In particular, an account of the potential of what Landemore calls “Lottocratic” representation, based on sortition, provides an immediate and engaging means for readers to understand the ways in which such an approach might work.

Thinking about digital technology in this way—that is, critically considering the terms on which it materially affects both the theory of democracy and the design of democratic institutions—provides an opportunity to address concerns about how democratic life is playing out in practice. Key questions exist over who exactly engages in digital political spaces, and in particular whether these spaces favor existing elites, simply replicating the inequalities already present in democratic participation, or whether they provide a genuine means of addressing participatory inequalities (see Matthew Hindman, The Myth of Digital Democracy, 2008). Chapters by Seeta Pena Gangadharan on digital exclusion and Mike Ananny on the democratic power of silence and absence provide new insights into the ways in which these issues might be overcome; they address questions that, until relatively recently, have been neglected by democratic theory (see Hans Asenbaum, “Anonymity and Democracy: Absence as Presence in the Public Sphere,” American Political Science Review, 112 [3], 2018). Similarly, the later chapters provide novel insights into possible strategies for overcoming some of the problems created by, for instance, fake news, hate speech, and polarization in online democratic spaces.

That the chapters toward the end of the book fit so neatly with the theoretical explorations at the outset is testament to its overall coherence: given the breadth of subject matter included, an edited volume like this might easily have lost its focus. Here, however, the interplay between the different chapters is explicit, and indeed, some chapters appear in dialogue with each other, with the authors noting the different ways in which their contribution connects with others in the book. The resulting insights will be of wide scholarly interest. For sure, there is plenty here for established researchers interested in technology and democratic theory. However, each of the chapters is written in a clear and engaging manner and will not exclude students, nonspecialists, and, indeed, a wider interested and informed audience. This is to the editors’ credit.

The drawback of tackling questions related to new technologies in book form is, as the authors admit, that the speed of events in the digital world means the arguments made here might be left behind very quickly. However, the timing of this book’s publication leaves it feeling instead rather prescient, in the sense that much of its content is now of a far wider interest than might otherwise have been the case. The call made by the contributors to this collection is now urgent, rather than just timely, and the arguments made here will be of significant influence on the theoretical reimagination of democracy that must surely follow.