Social Media: An Ideal Tool for Public Participation to Promote Deliberative Democracy —— The Case of Public Participation in Refugee Crisis

Abstract

On social media, the images of a drowned child on the beach continue to spark public’s sympathy toward refugees and evoke international outcry over the governments’ inability to adequately address the refugee crisis. These photos and refugee crisis can be seen as catalysts that have promoted the chain of political events. It has promoted civic engagement and inspired people to participate in this event. By analyzing this case, we can see the relationships between social media, public participation and deliberative democracy quite clearly; analyze why social media is an ideal tool for public participation; discover how powerful voluntary participation is; explore how the level of citizen participation varied during this process; and understand how public participation promote deliberative democracy by social media comprehensively.