Miami Is IT Helpful or Harmful to Public Participation & Democracy Discussion

Is information technology helpful or harmful to public participation and democracy? 

Learning Objective

* Identify the basic principles of public management and service delivery using IT

* Identify how IT influences public governance and policy process

Internet-based technologies offer both prospects and problems for people to participate in public decision-making processes and democracy. Social media offers additional venues of people to voice their opinions. The Internet is the digital market square for everyone to participate. However, do public managers pay attention to these voices? Is the participation representative of the people at large? The recent elections have shown how foreign powers can hack into the voting systems, bots can reproduce fake news. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also shown how social media is being used to advance different points of view about the war, and also as propaganda. Politicians have taken advantage to argue any news inconvenient to them to be fake news. Trust in media has gone down considerably. Conspiracy theories have amplified as a result. Which side of the spectrum do you fall on? Make a cogent argument and