Perspective Chapter: The Effects of Social Media on Local Democracy

Abstract

This chapter discusses social media impact on local democracy and aims to provide knowledge about how social media impact politicians and political communication in local democracies. It discusses the special characteristics of social media, provides a brief overview of deliberative democracy values, and identifies what makes social media special in local politics. The empirical section examines Norwegian local politicians’ perceptions about social media impacts on some core deliberative values. It finds that social media is not a very good arena for reason-giving communicative practices, largely because discussions tend to be shallow and emotional, and that social media has impacted the relationship between politicians and citizens both negatively and positively. On one hand the hate speech and negative posts seem to have open a new divide in the relationship and on the other social media have developed to be arenes that enable increased two-way communication. Social media also provides information about local concerns and what is going on in the community.