Words that Shape Online Participatory Democracy: the Implicit Representations of Civic Tech Tools.
This paper focuses on the online consultations called ‘Estates General
of Bioethics’ that took place in France in 2018. It examines the words
that configure and structure the consultations’ website. Our aim is to
show what impact ready-to-use platforms for democratic consultations
have on people’s representation of democracy. We will first discuss the
enunciative responsibility shared by the three entities involved in the
organisation of the consultations: the government, the CCNE and the
start-up firm Cap Collectif. Then, within the framework of the Semantics
of Argumentative Possibilities, we will describe the implicit
representation of democracy that emerges from the consultations’ website
and compare it to the meaning potential of the word ‘democracy’. This
will lead us to a series of conclusions, regarding the aspects of
democracy that the website favours, the non-coincidence of the words
used by the CCNE and by Cap Collectif, and the consequences of the
semantic choices of online consultations.