Social Networks and Democracy: Fightbacks and Backlashes in the World Wide Agora
Résumé
This chapter looks at how citizens may be driven to find alternative spaces of expression and participation when traditional channels are perceived to function improperly. The recent development of online social media, which offer interactive, bottom-up peer-to-peer platforms for sharing and exchanging views and data as well as for campaigning, seems to hold the promise of a more connected, more influential and therefore, it is supposed, more engaged, citizenry. Social media may be seen either as offering a channel for the expression of ‘contest’ thereby fostering a more pluralistic polity or, on the contrary, as generating platforms which offer limited scope for real influence and action, ultimately comforting dominant values. This chapter attempts to account for the existing uncertainty about the benefits and harms of social networks for representative democracy.