creation of an Internet public sphere by South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission and Elections Canada

A prerequisite for a healthy, sustainable democracy is an informed citizenry that participates inthe democratic process (see Habermas, 1989:49). In recent years much discourse on the mediaand democracy correlation has focused on the potential role of the Internet in facilitating politicalcommunication by establishing a virtual public sphere.This article investigates the extent to which the South African (IEC) and Canadian electoralcommissions’ websites have succeeded in establishing a virtual public sphere. The ElectionsCanada web site (representing an established democracy) has succeeded better at resemblingsome of the normative principles of the public sphere theory than has the IEC.