Contemporary models of a social dialogue: the regional dimension

Abstract

The radical transformations caused by the Internet have affected primarily the sphere of social communication. E-technologies have become not only the foundation for production, storage, distribution, and management of information, but also a means of maintaining social connections, and thus radically changed the basic structure of communications within the modern media space and caused a technological inversion of public processes and phenomenon. The Internet provided population with an opportunity not only to receive information, but also to be an active participant of numerous social processes, including political power relations. The research actualizes the problem of improving a mechanism of digital democracy based on the formation of a new model of social dialogue between power structures and society. The aim of this article is to reveal the indicators representing the convergence level of power and population by means of e-communication channels. The analysis of practice of the online communication of the officials and population was carried out within the research. Based on accessible online content, the feedback tools between power and society were analyzed as well as goals and motivation of social networking practices of Saratov regional and municipal administrations. The research shows that the realization of the social dialogue potential is impeded by a number of institutional, legal, and socio-communicative barriers. Received data gives evidence of low spread of innovative forms of open social and political interaction between public authorities and population, which can be described as insufficient and passive. The authos concludes that public governance should take into account the expectations, interests, and opinions of different communities. The scientific novelty of the presented study lies in drawing attention to the previously insufficiently studied aspects of the problem of improving the partnership between the authorities and the population, in raising the question of the need to increase the level of communicative competence of subjects of social dialogue as a condition for the effective use of electronic communications in the process of implementing democracy, and in strengthening the civil society institutions.