Social media supporting political deliberation across multiple public spheres

Abstract

This paper reports on a qualitative study of social media use for political deliberation by 21 U.S. citizens. In observing people's interactions in the "sprawling public sphere" across multiple social media tools in both political and nonpolitical spaces, we found that social media supported the interactional dimensions of deliberative democracy-the interaction with media and the interaction between people. People used multiple tools through which they: were serendipitously exposed to diverse political information, constructed diverse information feeds, disseminated diverse information, and engaged in respectful and reasoned political discussions with diverse audiences. When people's civic agency was inhibited when using a tool, they often adopted, or switched to, alternative media that could afford what they were trying to achieve. Contrary to the polarization perspective, we find that people were purposefully seeking diverse information and discussants. Some individuals altered their views as a result of the interactions they were having in the online public sphere.

Social media mixed with news in political candidate judgment: Order effects on knowledge and affect

“…There is considerable discussion about how computer-mediated political discussion might serve as an online "public sphere" in the sense that Habermas [21] described it as an open forum for the rational discussion of diverse views [10,53,54], with considerable attention being paid to whether SNSs narrow or widen political discourse [3,18,28,46,74,[78][79][80][81]87]. More recently, media theorists and sociotechnical researchers have turned their attention to what has been called the "sprawling" public sphere [11] and the hybrid nature of new media [6,29,45,46].…”

“…However, in real life people encounter information about politics in a variety of forms and utilize multiple online tools to navigate and experience political events [45,74] in what Dahlgren [11] refers to as the "sprawling" public sphere. Papacharissi [53] suggests that citizens today encounter civic society as a hybrid environment of overlapping private and public spheres and that citizenship itself is experienced in a highly fluid manner.…”

“…Increasingly, people have more control over their sources of information and they have a greater ability to shape them. Semaan et al [74] studied how people dynamically shape their information environments to best serve their browsing and learning goals, and their research revealed that people utilize a wide range of social media and other socially-enabled information sources. In future research, we intend to look more closely at the browsing behavior of individuals as they study a variety of information sources and make their own independent choices about what to read or contribute.…”

Rethinking civic computing in China

“…Semaan et al reported in a study of U.S. social media users' political discussions that people actively sought diverse information and discussants (Semaan et al, 2014). Some social media users changed their political views after these interactions.…”

“…Researchers have accumulated a systematic body of knowledge of Western, democratic societies. Studies of the West have ranged from the deployment of novel technological systems supporting civic participation (Rheingold, 2007;Kriplean et al, 2012), to empirical studies of online and offline civic activities Semaan et al, 2014). Studies have taken place at different scales, from local communities' civic discussions (Kim et al, 2011;Parker et al, 2012) to presidential elections (Carty, 2010).…”