Deliberative Democracy and Political Communication in Uncertain Times: Examining the Role of Social Media

Democracy is concomitant with deliberative politics and independent media, where people engage discursively on political issues through a transparent and inclusive communication medium. People can question and criticize government without any fear, and are able to influence the decision-making processes. But this deliberative nature of democracy has been reduced to an electoral event, transforming people from active deliberating citizens to passive voters who can be manipulated through populist rhetoric.
The decline of deliberative democracy and rise of uncertainties at the global and national level are not isolated events but dialectically related to each other. Whether it is war, pandemic or economic crisis, changes are fast, unpredictable, beyond the control of people and even states, but its effect is often deep and pernicious. One of the reasons is loss of discursive agency of the people to question these developments-how and why they arise, and who is responsible for them. The disconnect between cause and effect is not natural but deliberate, because they are the cumulative effects of various decisions which are never debated but imposed on the stakeholders. It happens essentially because the political communication is often elitist, hierarchical, monological, and exclusivist in nature. Media houses are mostly controlled by economic and political elites. Traditional medias have their own limitations in democratizing the public sphere.
This changed with the advent of social media platforms, where every people got space to express their opinion, hold the government accountable, mobilize themselves around issues and even topple corrupt government. It facilitated civic participation, and democratization of political discourse. On the flip side, social media is also used to propagate fake news, gossips, trolling, abusive language, algorithm-led prejudiced information, echo chambers etc. What is alarming is that state is trying to control social media also, like traditional media by imposing blocking orders in the pretext of national security and public order.
Against this back drop, the panel invites papers critically examining at theoretical and empirical level the role of social media in transforming deliberative and communicative practices, locating them in the wider spectrum of current uncertainties, and its implications for democracy.