Digital Democracy: Constructing a Citizens’ History on Cyberspace

Abstract

It has been argued that “... the digital text, with its democratic architecture, allows for the possibility of constructing a citizen’s history that is inclusive and diverse, where a multiplicity of viewpoints becomes relevant” (Anon., cited in Perera, 2015, P.1). This suggests that cyberspace with its potential to enable multiple stories from various subjectivities has become a site of cultural agency and citizenship (Goode, 2010), radical collaboration, convergence and a tool of democratizing the construction of knowledge. Thus, the digital becomes a new political space which in turn politically charges the ‘real’ practices and spaces that become the subject of digital narratives. In the light of these observations, this paper critically analyses the construction and content of a Wikipedia entry on 2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka. A critical reading of the content indicates that user-generated content of a platform such as Wikipedia which is known for community participation and radical collaboration indicates the possibility of web-based texts being rather hegemonic ‘citizen’s’ histories/ stories rather than democratic and that of ‘citizens’’. Therefore, with a view to elucidating the intersections between various ideologies, power, strategies of storytelling and the digital in its fluidity as well as rigidity, this paper also discusses possible tools and strategies to produce alternative digital texts that interrupt existing hegemonic narratives in an attempt to harness the strengths of cyberspace for the purpose of activism and consciousness-raising.