Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe three-tenet model, which focuses on 'distributional justice', 'procedural justice', and 'justice as recognition', has emerged as the most influential framework in the field of energy justice. Based on critical reviews of the three-tenet model, we identify three challenges that the model currently still faces: (i) a normative challenge on the grounding of the three-tenet model in philosophical theories; (ii) an 'elite' challenge on the justification of the use of power in energy-related decision; and (iii) a practical challenge on the application of the three tenets in situations of conflicting justice demands. In this article, we provide the basic contours of a three-step pluralist and pragmatic dialogue model for questions of energy justice that addresses the three challenges, based on the 'commonwealth model' of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. The model proposes to create moral legitimacy in the face of plural demands for energy justice by engaging actors in an inclusive dialogue based on an explicit recognition of Boltanski and Thévenot's commonwealth model. We thereby make three contributions to the existing literature on energy justice. First, the commonwealth model's rootedness in normative political theory provides a stronger philosophical underpinning than was available up till now in the literature (challenge 1). Second, it allows one to go beyond the (almost exclusive) focus on injustices perpetrated on disempowered or marginalised groups, to include questions on the justified exercise of power (challenge 2). Third, the commonwealth model shows us practical ways out of situations where conflicting demands for justice are being made (challenge 3).

Recent discussions on voter fraud of the 2020 U.S. elections and ongoing discussions on the COVID-19 pandemic on social media platforms demonstrate how disruptive technologies can threaten democratic values. Free speech that is hateful, misleading or blatantly false, oftentimes conflicts with values such as equality, freedom, truth and consensus. This has amounted to public pressure to better regulate and design social media platforms. In response to this pressure, platform owners are making changes to their news feed, tweaking algorithms, installing third-party fact-checkers and writing new policies to democratize social media engagement.The question is how democratic these design changes and policies are and which alterations can make social media platforms even more democratic. In this article, we offer responses to the question 'what does a democratic regulation and design of social media entail?' Building on the work of Bozdag and van den Hoven (2015), we present a systematic evaluation of the current design choices and policies of social media platforms utilizing theories of democracy as defended by John Stuart Mill, Jürgen Habermas and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. As all theories offer different outlooks on democracy, all theories present alternative implications for regulating and designing social media platforms. To make this explicit, we translate each theory of democracy into several normative design rules, explicate the design implications of these rules and finally exemplify which design choices and policies fit these rules and implications. By systematically reviewing social media platforms as a whole, rather than specific tools or aspects, we underline the need for designers and policymakers alike to become (more) aware of the varying democratic norms and implications these can or potentially should have for the infrastructural design of social media platforms.