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The Fifth Estate: Canaries in the Institutions of Liberal Democracies

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Politische Komplexität, Governance von Innovationen und Policy-Netzwerke

Zusammenfassung

The popular story of coal miners bringing a canary deep into the coal mines to warn of dangerous levels of poisonous gases might have a modern day parallel. Liberal democracies across the world saw the diffusion of the Internet in the twenty-first century giving rise to a Fifth Estate – a collectivity of networked individuals who could use the Internet to hold institutions across all sectors of society more accountable (Dutton 2009). Might the rise of a Fifth Estate have been a sign of the vitality and openness of liberal democratic institutions to the Internet? Likewise, might the demise of the Fifth Estate signal dangerous risks to open access to information and to freedom of expression and assembly so central to liberal democracies? If so, can its vitality be empirically monitored?

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California and Oxford, Oxford, UK

    William H. Dutton

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  1. William H. Dutton
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Correspondence to William H. Dutton .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tübingen, Germany

    Melanie Nagel

  2. Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Patrick Kenis

  3. Colchester, UK

    Philip Leifeld

  4. Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Hans-Jörg Schmedes

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© 2020 Der/die Herausgeber bzw. der/die Autor(en), exklusiv lizenziert durch Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature

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Dutton, W.H. (2020). The Fifth Estate: Canaries in the Institutions of Liberal Democracies. In: Nagel, M., Kenis, P., Leifeld, P., Schmedes, HJ. (eds) Politische Komplexität, Governance von Innovationen und Policy-Netzwerke. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30914-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30914-5_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-658-30913-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-658-30914-5

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