Abstract
El artículo examina el valor democrático de los comentarios ciudadanos en los perfiles de Facebook de tres candidatos políticos españoles durante la campaña de las Elecciones Generales 2011 a través de una operacionalización de la democracia deliberativa. Los resultados reflejan que las conversaciones no cumplen los criterios deliberativos, pero que aun así revisten beneficios democráticos, como la autoexpresión ciudadana, la socialización democrática y el refuerzo de la cohesión social entre activistas y simpatizantes. Además, reflejan que el valor democrático varía ligeramente en función del tamaño del partido donde se produce. La conversación en los muros de candidatos que pertenecen a partidos mayoritarios está orientada hacia la autoexpresión, pero también confronta a los hablantes esporádicamente con la diversidad. Por su parte, la discusión en el muro de la candidata de un partido minoritario es ideológicamente homogénea, pero incluye más interacción discursiva, permitiendo desarrollar argumentario y cultivar la cohesión social en condiciones discursivas favorables.
Highlights
Internet and politics: a theoretical schismThe emergence and expansion of digital technologies has attracted significant academic interest in terms of their impact on the public sphere and, more generally, on politics and democracy itself
This article constitutes an effort to assess the democratic value of online political talk during the Spanish General Election of 2011
Our findings clearly demonstrate that online political discussions on this social network do not meet the normative standards proposed by deliberative theorists, insofar as the essential conditions for deliberation score very poorly
Summary
Internet and politics: a theoretical schismThe emergence and expansion of digital technologies has attracted significant academic interest in terms of their impact on the public sphere and, more generally, on politics and democracy itself. Cyber-optimists contended that the Internet would contribute to improving democracy by offering new channels of direct communication with political elites, increasing public transparency and allowing citizens to self-organize and participate in both conventional and non-conventional politics (Rheingold 2002; Lévy 2002; Jenkins 2006). Some authors even claimed the rebirth of direct democracy thanks to digital technologies, which would strengthen social capital, increase self-government practices and provide the material infrastructure for direct decision making (Lévy 2002). This view of communication technologies as a driving force of political and social progress is nothing new. In an article in News Republic, he wonders: What if some limits to democratic participation in the preWikipedia era were not just a consequence of high communication costs but stemmed from a deliberate effort to root out populism, prevent cooptation, or protect expert decision making? In other words, if some public institutions eschewed wider participation for reasons that have nothing to do with the ease of connectivity, isn’t the Internet a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist?1
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