Open AccessDigital Library Platforms’ Democracy Building Between Instrumental Education and Web 2.0 Sharing: A Swedish Case Study
Author(s) -
Arwid Lund,
Pamela Schultz Nybacka
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
triplec
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1726-670X
DOI - 10.31269/triplec.v19i2.1275
Subject(s) - democracy , hierarchy , citizen journalism , sociology , sociality , e democracy , political science , decentralization , knowledge management , pedagogy , public relations , world wide web , computer science , politics , ecology , law , biology
Digital platforms are a primary means of communication in society. Public libraries play an empowering role in these processes, strengthening citizens’ digital competences. This raises questions about what democratic processes the digital technology is made to enable. The study investigates how a Swedish Digital Library (DL) is envisioned and organised within a national digitalisation strategy. Qualitative methods are used, and a theoretical democracy framework is developed and used together with the concepts of education and Bildung in the analysis. Four empirical themes are identified. The analysis centres on tensions related to horizontality and hierarchy, and Bildung and sociality. The DL vision is dominated by a hierarchical and instrumental educational vision that connects to representative democracy. A subordinated social and pedagogical vision of inner motivational drives and partial forms of sharing, connected to deliberative and semi-participatory democracy forms, exists, mostly in the form of some cherry-picked Web 2.0 discourses.