Deliberation, Democracy, and the Digital Landscape
| Author | Simone Chambers,John Gastil |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719901123 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719901123
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(1) 3 –6
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321719901123
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Deliberation, Democracy, and
the Digital Landscape
Simone Chambers1 and John Gastil2
Abstract
Deliberative scholarship is particularly well positioned to offer insight on our new digital reality.
The papers in this Special Issue showcase both the methodological pluralism that flourishes in
deliberative democracy studies and the productive collaborations across methodologies. This
Special Issue shows how deliberative theory can place digital media in a wider theoretical context,
sharpen our understanding of the Internet’s worst features, and show the way forward to a better
design for digital public engagement. Whether online or offline, democracy will always remain a
work in progress, and these essays should help us navigate a course toward a more deliberative
democracy in the digital age.
Keywords
deliberative democracy, public sphere, digital media, social networks, politics online
Accepted: 6 December 2019
Since its inception, the Internet has both intrigued and worried scholars of democracy.
This has grown into a sense of urgency amid the present perils of democracy (Levitsky
and Ziblatt, 2018) and the calamitous role that social media played in the 2016 American
election, the Brexit referendum campaign, and other instances of “computational propa-
ganda” (Woolley and Howard, 2018). Beyond the obvious threats to election integrity and
public discourse posed by foreign hackers, digital media present more subtle hazards,
challenges, and opportunities for public discourse.
Deliberative democratic theorists and researchers have particular concern about the
health of the digital public sphere—its structure, denizens, business models, influences,
regulations, and logic. Technological changes are reshaping public life more quickly than
theorists are amending their conceptions of deliberative democracy, and in its own mod-
est way, we hope this Special Issue advances deliberative theory.
Deliberative scholarship is particularly well positioned to offer insight on our new
digital reality. First, the deliberative paradigm focuses on the heart of the digital
1University of California–Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
2 Department of Communication Arts and Science, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Corresponding author:
Simone Chambers, University of California–Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Email: sechambe@uci.edu
901123PSX0010.1177/0032321719901123Political StudiesChambers and Gastil
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
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