Open docket design can counter the Internet’s affinity for like-minded echo chambers

Evidence

Sunstein (2001) argues that the Internet enables people to pay attention to other, like-minded people, and ignore those who are unlike them or disagree with their positions on issues. The Web, for Sunstein, diminishes exposure to heterogeneity and is far from the ideal of a real public forum. Yet the structure of e-rulemaking, in particular the open docket system, enables citizens to engage the positions of others, including those with whom they disagree. In other words, the open docket architecture of e-rulemaking may mitigate some of the antideliberative dangers engendered by the Web. — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 739

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes e-rulemaking architecture as a structural means of forcing genuine cross-difference engagement, unlike free-web discourse.
• XREF: The ‘architecture enables deliberation across difference’ point maps to how Soundscape and EJ readings treat institutional structure determining whether recognition actually happens. — connects to: Rulemaking is the only online deliberation form that regularly yields actual policy change — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 740; Algorithmic feeds convert the open Internet into personalized echo chambers — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 192