That is, government should not be totalitarian, and should not dictate the laws and consequences of the people without the peoples consent. This is why democracy is founded on effective public debate and the open transference of information and opinions. In John Dewey's terms, democracy is where people control their government, because it is theirs to control. His view was that democracy is not an end in itself, it's a means by which people discover and extend and manifest their fundamental human nature and human rights. These rights are rooted in freedom, solidarity and a choice of both work and other forms of participation in a social order and free individual existence.
Democracy allows the individual to contribute to society through debate, speech, writing, etc.
This allows for each persons ideas and opinions to be heard and distributed. The advent of the media in the 1930' and 1950's which eventually became private, shifted their motives towards a spectator democracy rather than one of participance. This shift changed our society in many ways, but the rise of the internet has arguably been a saving power to this content controlling media. Our hopes are that this will remain true. Media, in its true essence, allows the exchange of these ideas and opinions through various mediums openly and free from control.