Abstract
Deliberation research is now undergoing two emerging trends: deliberation is shifting from offline to online, as well as from an inherently democratic concept to the one applicable to less competitive regimes (He & Warren, 2011). The goal of this article is to study the peculiarities of deliberative practices in hybrid regimes, taking online discourse on the Russian anti-sanctions policy as a case. We use the Habermasian concept of basic validity claims to assess deliberation quality through the lens of argumentation and interactivity. Our findings suggest that deliberative practices can exist in non-competitive contexts and non-institutionalized digital spaces, in the form of intersubjective solidarities resulting from the everyday political talk among ordinary citizens. Such deliberations can be counted as argumentative discourses, although in a special, casual way—unlike the procedural rule-based debates. Generally, as in established liberal democracies, deliberation in Russia tends to attract like-minded participants. While the argumentative quality does not seem to vary across the discussion threads sample, the level of deliberative interactivity is higher on pro-government media, accompanied with the higher level of incivility. On the other hand, discourses on independent media are distinctively against the government policy of food destruction. The democratic value of such deliberations is unclear and might depend on the political allegiance and ownership of the media. Though some discourses can be considered democratic, their impact on decision-making remains minimal, which is a key constraint of deliberation.
Highlights
Since its emergence, deliberation research has been strongly associated with democracy as a goal of deliberation or at least an object of study
We take the case of Russia, which has a different, hybrid modification of regime known as electoral authoritarianism (Gel’man, 2015), i.e., the one that has certain ‘democratic’ institutions and limited political pluralism
As Russia does not have its official national or local eDemocracy or e-Participation platforms designed to engage citizens in deliberation practices, we focused on choosing among the prominent national media that were actively reporting on food destruction when it started in August 2015 and attracting attention of wide audience within Russia
Summary
Deliberation research has been strongly associated with democracy as a goal of deliberation or at least an object of study. We take the case of Russia, which has a different, hybrid modification of regime known as electoral authoritarianism (Gel’man, 2015), i.e., the one that has certain ‘democratic’ institutions and limited political pluralism. Such pluralism is still visible online, since the RuNet has been for a long time developing relatively freely (Soldatov & Borogan, 2015). It allows us to assess and compare deliberation processes and outcomes depending on the relationship between the government and a certain outlet
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