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Social Media and the Quest for Democracy

Faking the Re-awakening

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Handbook of Theory and Research in Cultural Studies and Education

Abstract

The widespread usage, consumption, and production of social media have sparked serious debate about its role in stimulating, cultivating, and influencing the shape, depth, and impact of democracy. How does and can engagement in and with social media lead to citizen participation in seeking to address issues that significantly affect people, notably social inequalities, racism, sexism, classism, poverty, war and conflict, the environment, and other local as well as global concerns? Does (or can) open-ended social media access, beyond the tightly controlled normative, hegemonic structures and strictures of democracy that frame, to a great deal, how people live, work, and even think, lead to new, alternative, and innovative forms of (critical) engagement? This chapter seeks to make connections between the intricacies of using social media and the reconceptualization of democracy, linking the two in an attempt to underscore how participation and engagement are changing. Using social media involves multilevel configurations of not only communicating with others but also in developing content, responding, sharing, critiquing, and reimagining the “Other” as well as reinterpreting contexts, political spaces, and cultures. This chapter also examines and critiques the potential for tangible, counter-hegemonic change within and outside of the mainstream, representative, electoralist model of democracy, which is increasingly being rejected by large numbers of citizens around the world. A significant piece of this equation is the filter of education, attempting to understand its role, impact, and meaning for social media usage/engagement in relation to democracy. The backdrop of fake news, and a brief case study of the 2018 Brazilian election, is interwoven and problematized throughout the chapter.

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Acknowledgments

The research related to, and the drafting of, this text was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant (#435-2017-0745) entitled Social Media, Citizen Participation and Education. Paul R. Carr is the Principal Investigator of this grant along with Michael Hoechsmann and Gina Thésée, who are Co-Investigators. Sandra Cuervo is a postdoctoral student and Michelli Daros recently completed her doctorate, and both are research assistants with and members of the UNESCO Chair DCMÉT (Paul R, Carr is the Chair-holder and Gina Thésée is the Co-Chair).

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Correspondence to Paul R. Carr .

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Carr, P.R., Daros, M.A., Cuervo, S.L., Thésée, G. (2020). Social Media and the Quest for Democracy. In: Trifonas, P. (eds) Handbook of Theory and Research in Cultural Studies and Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56988-8_31

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