The Effects of Digitalization as Challenges to the Effectiveness of Democracy and “Mass Policy” at the Present Stage

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the influence of the effects of digitalization on institutions and ideology of democracy in its various modern interpretations, as well as on the very evolution of the formats of participation of the masses in politics. Technological progress and the development of electronic communication systems lead to often unexpected, if not paradoxical, consequences in the relationship between elitism and mass politics. As a result, a new stage in the struggle for the management of public opinion and the main channels of communication is at the same time a consequence of technological changes and the evolution of the “mass” policy’s previously unregulated basic contradictions. The elitist approach is characterized by a priority course of maintaining control over the key digital platforms “for the common good” through agreements with the “digital oligarchy”, which minimizes destructive, from the point of view of the political mainstream, attempts by counter-systemic forces to change the status quo in dominant ideologies, values and power relations. For the extension adepts of mass politics, the new technical possibilities just give a hypothetical chance to correct the status quo, and in this sense, the “progressive” agenda opens the way for the conservative, and for outsider, in relation to the political mainstream, political and intellectual groups.