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

Received: 5 September 2016     Accepted: 16 November 2016     Published: 18 October 2017
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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.

Published in Advances in Sciences and Humanities (Volume 2, Issue 6)
DOI 10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13
Page(s) 70-75
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2017. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Social Media, Public Participation, Deliberative Democracy, Refugee Crisis

References
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[2] Appiah, K. A. Cosmopolitism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: Norton, 2007.
[3] Arnstein, S. A Ladder of Citizen Participation. JAIP, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1969, pp. 216-224.
[4] Butsch, R. The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics and Individuals. London and New York: Routledge, 2008.
[5] Carpentier, N. Media and participation: A Site of Ideological-democratic Struggle. Bristol, 2011.
[6] Couldry, N. Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. London: Sage, 2010.
[7] Couldry, N. The myth of ‘us’: digital networks, political change and the production of collectivity. Information, Communication & Society, 18: 6, 2015, pp. 608-626, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2014.979216.
[8] Creighton, J. L. The Public Participation Handbook. Making better decisions through citizen involvement. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
[9] Dahlgren, P. Media and Political Engagement: Citizens, Communication and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[10] Dahlgren, P. Moral Spectatorship and its Discourses: The ‘Mediapolis’ in the Swedish Refugee Crisis. Forthcoming in Javnost/The Public, 2016.
[11] Greenwood, D. J. and Levin, M. Introduction to action research: social research for social change. SAGE, 2007.
[12] Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. F. Why deliberative democracy. Princeton University Press, 2004.
[13] Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, J. Spreadable Media. New York: New York Press, 2013.
[14] Jose, M. Political Facebook groups: Micro-activism and the digital front stage. First Monday vol 18 no. 12, 2013. Http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4653/3800.
[15] Livingstone, S. The Participation Paradigm in Audience Research. The Communication Review, 2013.
[16] Miller, P., Bobkowski1, P., Maliniak, D. and Rapoport, R. Talking Politics on Facebook: Network Centrality and Political Discussion Practices in Social Media. Political Research Quarterly 2015, Vol. 68(2), 2015, pp. 377 –391, DOI: 10.1177/1065912915580135 prq.sagepub.com.
[17] Vaccari, C., Chadwick, A. and Loughlin, B. Dual Screening the Political: Media Events, Social Media, and Citizen Engagement. Journal of Communication 65, 2015, pp. 1041–1061, ISSN 0021-9916.
[18] Zúñiga, G., Homero, Jung, N. and Valenzuel, S. Social media use for news and individuals’ social capital, civic engagement and political participation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17 (3), 2012, pp. 319–336.
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  • APA Style

    Chuangying Li. (2017). Social Media: An Ideal Tool for Public Participation to Promote Deliberative Democracy —— The Case of Public Participation in Refugee Crisis. Advances in Sciences and Humanities, 2(6), 70-75. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13

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    ACS Style

    Chuangying Li. Social Media: An Ideal Tool for Public Participation to Promote Deliberative Democracy —— The Case of Public Participation in Refugee Crisis. Adv. Sci. Humanit. 2017, 2(6), 70-75. doi: 10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13

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    AMA Style

    Chuangying Li. Social Media: An Ideal Tool for Public Participation to Promote Deliberative Democracy —— The Case of Public Participation in Refugee Crisis. Adv Sci Humanit. 2017;2(6):70-75. doi: 10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13,
      author = {Chuangying Li},
      title = {Social Media: An Ideal Tool for Public Participation to Promote Deliberative Democracy —— The Case of Public Participation in Refugee Crisis},
      journal = {Advances in Sciences and Humanities},
      volume = {2},
      number = {6},
      pages = {70-75},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ash.20160206.13},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ash.20160206.13},
      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.},
     year = {2017}
    }
    

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    AB  - 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.
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Author Information
  • Department of Media and Communication, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

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