European Public Sphere and e-Participation in the Middle of an Economic and Political Crisis

Thursday, July 9, 2015
S10 (13 rue de l'Université)
Dora Papadopoulou , Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover
 

One of the most important discussions that it is taken place in Europe is the way in which the public sphere is structured and what issues arise when someone want to define the so- called European public sphere. It is important to realize that the European public sphere has a positive impact on the EU not only in terms of legitimacy but also regarding the space that it creates. It's about the space where the institutions and the EU's leaders can be not only transparent but also “predictable”. For this reason, it is important to create an overlapping public sphere. As citizens we are part of a society with so many problems of political configuration. Political ideas, political theories they seem to be ignored in our societies. Our priorities are different. We have lost our faith in political ideologies. Our aim should be the redefinition of ideas like “participation” as well as an attempt to see in which way it can be translated into reality. I am convinced that is not the end of political ideologies. We should use the impact of new technologies in order to understand the dimension of participation. So the goal of this paper is to declare the requirement of new technologies on democracy and my study will focus on Greece and the way that the citizens understood, understand and use the meaning of “e-participation”. I deal with Internet as a solution of rehabilitation of ideologies and not as a utopia.