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Digital Civil Society

Radical Protocols: Digital Design for Social Solidarity

Project

聽Jessica Feldman (Communication, Media, and Culture) :聽Radical Protocols: Designing Democratic Digital Tools in Social Movements听听

听听

This book project is a study of the ways in which democratic values are (or are not) inscribed in the design of emerging networked communication technologies. The book is the result ethnographic fieldwork with democratic social movements, especially the 鈥渕ovements of the squares,鈥 during which聽Feldman聽studied these movements鈥 communications practices and the alternative digital tools that they designed to serve their political values. This is combined with a 鈥渧alues-in-design鈥 analysis of new decentralized communication, consensus, and trust models, such as mesh networks, blockchain, and algorithmic governance applications, which claim to have democratic values. The book asserts the promise that peer-to-peer tools have for democratic practice in a moment when representative democracy is in decay, while pointing out concerns about the ways in which illegitimate power and control could be inscribed into these communication tools at lower layers.听听