乔·阿尼

When his mother was elected president of her neighborhood gardening club, it prompted 内森•施奈德 以不同的方式思考他的作品.

No, 他不是园艺家, and while he has a wall-sized painting of a nature scene on display in his office, 他的研究并不关注自然界. Instead, he studies democracy and governance as they play out online.

“I was running a large online community and having problems managing the behavior that takes place in those spaces,施耐德说, 助理教授 媒体研究 at the 传媒、传播与信息学院 at the 博彩平台推荐. ”与此同时, 我母亲的园艺俱乐部有章程, 解决问题的工具, 选举出来的官员，都是些普通的东西, 没有什么神秘或实验性的. Why is it that our online spaces haven’t caught up even to my mother’s garden club?”

Schneider’s work in this area—which looks back to the earliest online communities—has resulted in a new book, 可治理空间:网络生活的民主设计 二月到期. 27. The book explores what Schneider calls “implicit feudalism”—the logic of how online spaces have been organized, from the amateur-run digital bulletin boards to modern social networks. The typical online community, he said, has become “a kind of mini autocracy.”

“当你创建一个脸谱网群组时, 没有选择的余地, “我想要民主的版本,’”他说。. “它假设所有的权力都来自于组织的发起人. 只有那个人有绝对的能力审查和流放他人. 其他人没有发言权.”

这个问题的根源在于互联网的基本设计. “Whoever owns the server, and can plug it in and take it out, has all the power,施耐德说. But the problem is also cultural: “This is not only a configuration issue with the internet, 但问题是博彩平台推荐, 用户, 接受. Together, these are contributing to the worldwide rise of authoritarianism.”

没有“民主版本”选项

在书中, Schneider explores ways to change the internet—from regulation to design—to build democratic online spaces that reinforce democracy in everyday culture and practice. He also presents experimental projects he and his students have developed, 包括一个为社区设计规则的网站, a mod for online games and an art exhibit that appeared at the UN Internet Governance Forum.

Questions of online governance and democracy have long fascinated Schneider. 除了教学和研究外，他还是CMCI的主任 媒体经济设计实验室 他是学院的研究员 媒体考古实验室, where much of his 研究 on the origins of the tools and platforms that shaped the internet as we know it live. 他也帮助了 发展本地科技生态会议 通过医学实验室, which has examined how to bring local ownership to social media platforms to improve the level of discourse.

That idea of democracy being about the everyday as well as the major election is key to both governance and how Schneider believes technology should operate. 一本他在研究过程中翻阅的书, 虚拟社区:电子前沿的家园, 从20世纪90年代中期的角度审视互联网的民主逻辑.

“It presented a vision that by enabling widespread access to the internet, 你会产生民主,他说. “There was this idea that you could build democracies out of little autocracies through the conquest of virtual space. But those autocratic notions are so built into the platforms we use that you have to work against the defaults to practice democracy.”

自上而下的民主

His book explores different strategies to encourage democratic practices online. 例如, when the Senate Judiciary Committee excoriated a group of big tech CEOs earlier this month for how platforms like 脸谱网 and TikTok are harmful to children—presaging a legislative fix—it was likely the first step in companies demanding even more aggressive data collection and policing of what kinds of content can be seen by different audiences.

换句话说, we continue to reinforce the top-down power dynamic that’s built our autocratic online communities.

“What if instead of imposing democracy, we used it as a tool to solve these problems?施耐德说. “例如, 当涉及到社交媒体用户之间的冲突时, what if we had more accountable judiciaries and ways to address problems together at the community level?”

它可以模仿博彩平台推荐的法院系统, 他补充说, 你可以在哪里表达不满, 争论并寻求适当的补救, 但在网上, “博彩平台推荐没有办法更合作地解决博彩平台推荐的问题, 强化了唯一的选择是群氓选择的理念.”

He also encourages online communities to be more intentional about choosing technologies—a practice he’s brought to the MED Lab, which runs its own servers and governs the tools available to students—and advocates for blockchain. 虽然到目前为止，这项技术主要与诈骗联系在一起, “it is a reminder that we could design our networks differently—for more collective ownership, rather than the assumption that every service is somebody’s server plugged into a wall,施耐德说.

互联网和民主之间“没有分离”

One of the biggest takeaways in the book is the notion that we can no longer consider what the internet is doing to democracy—we should also think about democracy on the internet.

施耐德说:“这两者之间没有区别. “如果博彩平台推荐的大部分生活都要在网上度过, 博彩平台推荐在那里如何组织真的很重要. If we’re serious about a democratic society, we need to be serious about a democratic internet.”

Even as the mainstream media have beat a steady drum of doom about the general election, the course of his work has made Schneider more hopeful about the less-told stories of people working to influence democracy in their everyday lives.

正如他很快指出的那样, that’s been a bedrock of democracy since Alexis de Tocqueville visited in the 1800s.

“I’ve taken a lot of hope from focusing my attention on what people are doing at other levels, 专注于推进民主, 而不是仅仅为它辩护,他说. “That’s something Tocqueville saw—that this cannot be a static practice. 博彩平台推荐在网上的生活和互动也是如此.”