Deliberative Potential Research Articles

Enriching the Conversation: Audience Perspectives on the Deliberative Nature and Potential of User Comments for News Media

While deliberation is regarded as crucial for democracies, research on the deliberative nature of user comments in journalism has so far been inconclusive and somewhat neglected to assess audience views qualitatively. Based on 26 in-depth interviews with German media users, this study therefore explores audience views on the deliberative nature and potential of user comments by examining their reasons for active and passive (non-)use, evaluations of comments and perceived personal and societal importance of comments. While users criticize a lack of deliberative or even non-deliberative elements and this drives them to not participate, to evaluate comments negatively and to not attribute personal value to comments, the findings also show that users recognize deliberative elements and that—when present—this deliberative nature is a reason for participation and positive evaluations. Users especially value the often unfulfilled or impeded deliberative potential of comments for society. Strategies to strengthen deliberation and future avenues of research are discussed.

ANÁLISE DA DINÂMICA DELIBERATIVA DE CONSELHOS MUNICIPAIS DE SAÚDE DA REGIÃO CENTRAL DO BRASIL

Objetivo: avaliar os conselhos municipais de saúde da Região Integrada de Desenvolvimento do Distrito Federal e Entorno quanto à dinâmica deliberativa. Metodologia: Trata-se de um estudo exploratório com abordagem qualitativa. A coleta de dados ocorreu por meio dos documentos de oito conselhos municipais de saúde selecionados, do diário de campo fruto da observação participante das reuniões ordinárias e extraordinárias, bem como das entrevistas em profundidade com os presidentes dos conselhos municipais, cujo tema versou sobre a participação social. Os dados coletados foram organizados e submetidos a análise de conteúdo. Resultados: a síntese dos resultados prediz a existência de uma dinâmica deliberativa nos conselhos municipais de saúde estudados. Contribuições: demonstrou-se que os conselhos municipais estudados têm potencial deliberativo e que podem contribuir para produzir políticas de saúde que atendem aos interesses de atores políticos.

Batalha das biografias na arena midiática da democracia: análise de enquadramento da deliberação mediada jornalística

O objetivo desse artigo é analisar como os enquadramentos noticiosos se relacionam com o potencial deliberativo de uma cobertura jornalística. Como objeto, optou-se pelo debate sobre a publicação de biografias não-autorizadas, em que se estabeleceu uma discussão sobre qual direito deveria prevalecer, a liberdade de expressão do biógrafo ou o direito à intimidade do biografado. O corpus engloba 56 matérias de Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo e O Estado de S. Paulo. Como metodologia, foram adotados enquadramentos genéricos - conflito, interesse humano, consequências econômicas, moralidade e responsabilidade -, associados com categorias de potencial deliberativo - inclusividade, civilidade, provimento de razões, responsividade e orientação para o bem comum. As relações entre enquadramentos apontam que o enquadramento de responsabilidade esteve relacionado com caraterísticas negativas.

Is topic fatigue an international problem?: four theses

Topic fatigue is a potential reaction to news topics that the media covers intensively. Recipients experiencing topic fatigue are annoyed and state that they do not want to hear or see anything about such topics anymore. As potential outcome, they strive to avoid such topics during their future news exposure. In this essay, we discuss the question of whether topic fatigue is an international problem. Based on initial empirical insights obtained via qualitative interviews, we establish four theses that underline the international meaning of the phenomenon. First, we argue that the level of press freedom can shape the intensity of topic fatigue and that fatigue experiences can be extreme in countries with low press freedom. Second, we discuss topic fatigue as a potential threat to political transitions and democratization processes. Third, we propose that topic fatigue may reinforce resentments against western societies. Regarding this point, the role of the international media in particular for English-peaking, non-western countries is addressed. Finally, we introduce the argument that topic fatigue may erode the deliberative potential of social media, which can be particularly problematic for countries in which the traditional news media is (politically) dependent. Ultimately, the key elements of these theses are used to propose a comparative research design for an international study on topic fatigue.

Political hashtag publics and counter-visuality: a case study of #fertilityday in Italy

ABSTRACT In 2016 the Italian health ministry launched the ‘Fertility Day’ campaign, aimed at tackling Italy’s low birth rate. Under the accusation of delivering sexist and racist messages, the campaign became a trending topic on Twitter, and a protest was launched to be held during Fertility Day. By applying a combination of digital methods and visual content analysis to the #fertilityday Twitter stream, this paper contributes to existing research on the deliberative strength of political hashtag publics, with a particular focus on their power structures, communication patterns and visual content use. Findings on gatekeeping dynamics downsize optimistic views on the democratising potential of Twitter’s socio-technical infrastructure as they point to the emergence of online satirical media and ‘tweetstars’ – along with mainstream news media– as main producers of spreadable content, with ordinary users only surfacing when traditional media elites and new satirical actors lack or lose interest in the debate. Results confirm that political hashtag publics follow acute event communication patterns, with users highly engaged in retweeting and referencing external material and visual content playing a key role in these gatewatching practices. The transient counter-visuality – or critical stance – of tweets with user-manipulated images, however, also suggests that the deliberative potential of these publics is not easily sustainable over time.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Ikhwanweb: Deliberative Ethic/Voice in a Counterpublic’s Rhetoric?

Using counterpublic theory as framework and situating the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a counterpublic, counterpublics being alternative, non-dominant publics who voice their oppositional needs and values through diverse discursive practices, the goal of this study is to: (a) Examine, in the context of the years preceding the 2011 Egyptian uprising, whether the Egyptian MB, as a counterpublic, portrays a deliberative ethic/voice in its cyber rhetoric; (b) Explore whether traditional/Western ideas of deliberation are upheld or challenged in the cyber rhetoric of the Egyptian MB; and (c) Comment on the role of Ikhwanweb, as a counterpublic sphere, in providing the Egyptian MB a space to demonstrate its deliberative potential. By looking for traits and evidences of deliberative ethic in the Egyptian MB’s cyber rhetoric—in a ‘text’ produced by an Islamist organization functioning within a secular/authoritarian socio-political ‘context’—the overarching purpose of this analysis is to make sense of : (a) an Islamist organization’s role as a counterpublic and its deliberative potential in a non-democratic setting; (b) the implications of this for thinking about deliberation between diverse groups of social agents in non-democratic cultures; and (c) the role of the Internet in facilitating counterpublics’ deliberative potential in authoritarian contexts. Thus, from a heuristic standpoint, this study is an endeavor towards contributing to a key question that animates public deliberation: how can we engage/engage with voices that hold (or are assumed to hold) anti-deliberative attitudes and/or those that operate within non-democratic socio-political contexts?

The Role of the Local Community in Promoting Discursive Participation: A Reflection on Elderly People’s Meetings in a Small Rural Community in Finland

This paper explores how elderly residents’ discursive participation is promoted through the local community in one Finnish municipality. It introduces the case of the Elderly People’s Forum as an interesting example of a self-initiated, informal participatory forum that has established a role in local governance and continuously inspires the wide discursive participation of elderly residents in public discussions. Drawing on the concept of discursive participation, which includes talk in informal settings about matters of common interest as a measure of civic engagement, I argue that by acknowledging the deliberative potential of self-initiated civil society forums, local governance can enhance residents’ ongoing participation and possibilities to exert influence.

Followers, Spread the Message! Predicting the Success of Swiss Politicians on Facebook and Twitter

Politicians have been criticized for not exploiting the deliberative potential of social media platforms. We complement previous definitions of politicians’ success on social media through the lens of network media logic: Despite the lack of deliberation, some succeed in building large digital followerships, which spread their messages via reactions through the network. Analyzing a data set of personal, structural, and social media characteristics of Swiss politicians, we used path analysis to determine which predict their success on Facebook ( n = 63) and Twitter ( n = 108). Politicians, who are active in parliament, represent urban regions and receive substantial amounts of traditional media coverage also have larger digital followerships on both platforms. Digital followership in turn influences the average number of digital reactions on Facebook, but not on Twitter. Thus, politicians’ success on social media depends on their personal background, political activity, and media coverage, and also their followership and the platform.

The Rise of Measurement-driven Governance: The Case of International Development

Global governance is increasingly about measuring, ranking, and scoring. Focusing on the case of international development, this article suggests that we can learn a great deal about the recent changes in global dynamics by examining the rise of measurement-driven governance. The article engages with the recent scholarship on new governance, particularly the emerging literature on more experimentalist forms of governance. This study finds some evidence of a more experimentalist kind of governance in international development, but suggests that the specific technologies of measurement and accountability through which these new structures of decisionmaking are being facilitated are far from politically neutral. They are instead sources of considerable power that, in many instances, reinforce existing asymmetries and undermine the deliberative potential of these governance practices.

Climate Change and YouTube: Deliberation Potential in Post-video Discussions

ABSTRACTYouTube videos are a ubiquitous source of information but also a venue for users to comment on discussion boards that addend videos. There are no moderators of these discussions, and thus there is a possibility for self-appointed leaders to emerge, responding incessantly and across a genre of videos. These “elites,” as they are labelled here, use the discussion as a personal campaign tool, diminishing the deliberative potential of provocative topics. To determine whether this is happening and to complement existing research analyzing the content of comments, this paper focuses on the structure of the discussions that follow the most popular climate change-related videos. Network analysis confirms that discussions can be elite-driven, appearing in two different network structure types. Among the core group of elite commenters, most are either climate change activists or sceptics, and the most prolific commenters among this core group are activists.

The Deliberative Potential of Facultative Referendums: Procedure and Substance in Direct Democracy

Deliberative democracy theorists have long dismissed direct democratic mechanisms, suspecting them of fundamentally contradicting the deliberative ideal. One reason for this dismissal is that, as aggregative devices, all direct democratic institutions would implement a purely procedural view of democracy deemed undesirable. In this article, I contest this objection to all direct democratic procedures by showing that one of them, namely, the facultative referendum, corresponds to Joshua Cohen’s definition of substantive democracy. Moreover, because it introduces uncertainty in the democratic system and replaces hypothetical with actual acceptance of reasons, the facultative referendum gives political actors strong incentives to think in terms of acceptable justifi cations and can screen outcomes that fit the three principles of Cohen’s deliberative ideal. These findings should encourage deliberative democracy theorists to further develop tools to inform the design and assessment of the growing number of popular votes around the world and ultimately enhance their democratic quality.

Interaction on Instagram?

This paper directs attention to the use of Instagram by political parties in the Swedish national elections in 2014. It investigates how political parties made use of Instagram – a platform centered around images – when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. Therefore, the paper analysis Instagram images including their captions and comments (posts) that Swedish parties have published four weeks prior to Election Day. A particular focus is on the deliberative potential of Instagram. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers and the few interactions taking place on parties Instagram accounts did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics (i.e., deliberation). Interaction and deliberation is also not enhanced by the images.

Inovações participativas, diálogo social e construção de consensos

Resumo Este artigo visa contribuir ao debate sobre os efeitos produzidos pelas instituições participativas na administração pública brasileira. É analisada a experiência do Conselho de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social do estado do Rio Grande do Sul. Verificou-se que o conselho introduziu mudanças na administração pública estadual, tendo contribuído para a transparência e para o acesso à informação. Do ponto de vista do aprendizado democrático, a busca pela convergência sobre a temática do desenvolvimento foi a principal inovação proposta pelo fórum. No entanto, os critérios de composição e capacidade de agendamento minimizaram seu potencial deliberativo.

Hablando con y sobre políticos en Twitter: un análisis de tweets que contienen menciones de candidatos en las elecciones presidenciales brasileñas

While Twitter has become an increasingly important platform for public opinion formation, little is known about its use in recent Latin American election campaigns. We therefore investigate the case of the presidential elections in Brazil in October 2014, in order to analyze communication structures in actual and para-social interactions with presidential candidates. In particular, while Twitter makes it easy for ordinary citizens to express their opinion online, it is maybe even more important that they can also address and communicate with persons who would otherwise not be reachable at all. Politicians are probably the most important group in this regard. Based on N = 1,891,657 tweets containing an @mention of a candidate in the Brazilian elections of 2014, we investigate which actual or para-social interactions with the candidates take place. Furthermore, because framing literature suggests that all actors involved in a discussion on social media will try to highlight specific aspects and interpretations of issues and events, we used techniques of co-word analysis to investigate the ways in which the main candidates were framed by the Twitter users. The results give insight into the deliberative potential of Twitter: they show how the candidates are presented to the social media community and thus how this presentation may be reflected in public opinion.

The deliberative potential of civil society organizations: framing hydraulic fracturing in New York

Civil society organizations play myriad roles in democracies. Scholars are beginning to pay more attention to their deliberative potential, rethinking whether or not and how they may broaden and enrich public deliberation. Drawing on a discursive approach to deliberative democracy that focuses on interpretive practices, this article analyzes the deliberative potential of a range of civil society organizations in the controversy over hydraulic fracturing in New York State in the USA. It finds that civil society organizations compete to frame hydraulic fracturing as environmental risk, landowner rights, economic opportunity and/or clean energy. The lack of a shared frame has resulted in political gridlock. On the surface the gridlock appears dysfunctional, but may have enhanced deliberative democracy by highlighting ‘frontiers of disagreement’ in the case. In addition, two distinct rhetorical spaces have begun to emerge with potential to resolve these conflicts but with different effects: one focusing on negotiating regulations and the other on developing a local vision of economic and energy development. The influence of these spaces – and thus civil society actors – has been uneven affecting who becomes part of the official conversation. This analysis contributes to deliberative democracy scholarship by clarifying what I call a discursive function of deliberative democracy, and how it reveals the relationships between conflict and reflexivity in public deliberation.

Deliberation and protest: strange bedfellows? Revealing the deliberative potential of 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil

Deliberation and protest have usually been understood as two mutually exclusive ways of practicing democracy. It has been argued that protests, due to their adversarial nature, and orientation toward conflict would hinder, rather than enhance, the prospects for deliberation. The recent cycle of protests, including the Arab Spring, Indignados and Occupy Wall Street, has however shown that contentious politics do not necessarily stand in opposition to the idea of deliberative democracy. On the contrary, these protests feature important deliberative qualities. In this article, we seek to identify the deliberative dimension of the recent wave of protests. We do so through a close analysis of theoretical approaches in democratic theory and by drawing on the 2013 protests in Brazil and Turkey. We show that deliberative democracy is not antithetical to conflicts and agonism generated by protests. In fact, protests constitute an integral part of public deliberation, especially when the latter is understood in broader terms, in terms of public conversation that occurs in multiple sites of communication. We argue that the deliberative dimension of the aforementioned protests is manifested in: (i) how they were organized, (ii) how they were carried out and (iii) what they have achieved.

Incivility Online: Affective and Behavioral Reactions to Uncivil Political Posts in a Web-based Experiment

ABSTRACTWith the advances in interpersonal communication of the “Web 2.0” era, questions about the importance of civility are perhaps more important than ever. Mass digital interaction between strangers has become an everyday occurrence, bound by few behavioral norms. I argue that the widespread presence of incivility in online political communication limits the deliberative potential of online interactions. To test this hypothesis, I manipulate exposure to uncivil political discourse in an online discussion forum. I find that exposure to disagreeable uncivil political talk induces feelings of anger and aversion, which in turn reduces satisfaction with the message board discourse. On the other hand, exposure to like-minded incivility increases the use of uncivil behavior in political comments by message board posters. Notably, these effects mainly occur when histrionic, emotional incivility is present. I discuss why like-minded and disagreeable incivility have different effects, and reflect on what the presence of incivility means for online political discourse.

Discussing the News

The provision of online news provides unique opportunities for users to interact with content and with other users. One of the more common forms of interactivity involves commenting on news stories. These interactive features are often heralded for enabling virtual public discussion of current events. Yet there exists a widespread belief that these spaces fail to meet that lofty goal, instead exhibiting hostile and vitriolic discourse, which undermines the deliberative potential of online interaction. At the same time, there is a lack of consensus among researchers regarding the proper conceptualization of hostility, and its more desirable counterpart, civility. This article aims to integrate normative and contextual conceptual definitions of hostility and civility in online interactions with the news. Building on these, we develop operational definitions of the two concepts and analyze the presence of hostile and civil discussion in user comments posted to YouTube news videos. Further, we explore the possibility that the content and source of those news videos, as well as popularity and engagement metrics, may explain the degree of hostility and civility in comments.

Power to the People! But How? the Different Uses of Referendums around the World

Are the voters capable of making complex decisions and informed choices in referendums? Do referendums and other forms of direct democracy provide mechanisms for citizen deliberation? Why do dictators like Hitler and Pinochet use referendums? Are referendum campaigns ultimately decided by who has got the deepest pockets and the best campaign advisors? These are the questions discussed and investigated in the books under review. The conclusion that emerges is that voters are able to make informed choices which broadly reflect their political preferences and they are generally not swayed by spin and campaigns. In the light of these findings, there is reason to be cautiously optimistic as regards the deliberative potential of referendums.

Deciding without deliberating

Advocates of judicial review often take for granted the deliberative potential of courts and their role as representatives of public reason, whereas the critics of judicial review usually argue that deliberation in courts, if relevant at all, tends to be very poor. This debate is characterized by a monolithic view of courts (as well as of legislatures). I argue that internal rules and practices—variables that are almost never taken into consideration in the debate on judicial review—may, by fostering or hindering deliberation, strongly affect, in a positive or negative way, the legitimacy of a court. Based on a case study (of the Brazilian Supreme Court), I show how these variables work. Despite using as example a court with poor deliberative performance, I argue that this should not lead to the conclusion that the thesis of courts as institutions with a distinctive deliberative potential must be rejected. What I argue is rather that each disincentive to a true deliberation is caused by a particular rule or by a particular practice. Other rules and other practices may lead to completely different outcomes.