Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: It is now received wisdom that a properly functioning democracy requires transparency and accountability-information shared with the public that allows the public to know what its government is doing.It is equally uncontroversial to say that social media allow for an unprecedented amount of informal but structured dissemination and analysis of information.Despite these two basic points, U.S. freedom of information law has failed to harness the power of these new social media networks and, more importantly, formats in a way that amplifies public knowledge of government information.This harsh reality impedes a modern transparent democracy.The focus of this Article is a general lack of appreciation, from both a theoretical and practical perspective, for the public's need and desire for optimally formatted, socially ready information.This defect is unfortunately found in the Freedom of Information Act ("FQIA"), the major U.S. sunshine law that suffers from a related but greater statutory deficiency.FOIA requires that an agency provide a "record" in "any form or format requested by the person if the record is readily reproducible by that agency in that form or format."Thus, FOIA allows agencies to produce information in less-than-optimal formats, resulting in
Author: David S. Levine
Institutions: Elon University, Stanford University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1922669597