9. Rethinking Democracy with Social Media

Rethinking Democracy Support

L democracy, and its promotion, are now facing a set of serious challenges.1 On the one hand, as the Arab Spring demonstrates, democratic aspirations are intensifying, which opens up significant new opportunities for democracy support. On the other hand, in the context of the financial crisis and austerity, levels of funding for democracy aid are being reconsidered, and the credibility and effe...

Rethinking democracy promotion

Despite the fact that democracy promotion is a major part of liberal foreign policies, the discipline of International Relations has not paid much systematic attention to it. Conversely, the study of democracy promotion is dominated by comparative politics and pays hardly any attention to the international system. This mutual neglect signifies a core weakness in the theory and practice of democ...

Social Media and Counter-Democracy: The Contingences of Participation

As democracy goes through various crisis and citizens increasingly disengage with traditional party politics, extra-parliamentarian, alternative modes of democratic politics emerge on many fronts; manifesting a development towards what is called counter-democracy. Debates on the role of the internet in democracy have been with us since its inception; today the discussions focus on social media,...

Rethinking web content distribution in the social media era

We are witnessing the beginnings of a shift in the patterns of content creation and exchange over the web. Previously, web content—including web pages, images, audio, and video—was primarily created by a small set of entities and was delivered to a large audience of web users. However, recent trends such as the rise in popularity of online social networking; the ease of content creation using d...

Organ Donation Awareness: Rethinking Media Campaigns