How to read and treat online public discussions among ordinary citizens beyond political mobilisation. Empirical evidence from the Russian-language online forums

Online debates among ordinary people discussing current affairs are typically viewed through the lens of political mobilisation and dismissed on various grounds - due to their unintelligibility, incivility, lack of argument or polarisation and fragmentation effects. It is believed that conversational discourses cannot meet the Habermasian conditions of delib- erative democracy and therefore have little value, either for decision-makers or political de- mocratisation. By providing empirical data from the analysis and comparison of three cases of real-life public debates that occurred on Russian-language online forums, this paper at- tempts to dispute the assumption that such discussions are non-deliberative. It is argued that the very conversational nature of online discussions might be their main value as a manifesta- tion of active citizenship from below.

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