Social Media Really Portray Democracy As A New Voice?

A paper for Seminar Conducted on Social Media A New Voice for Democracy at
Visva Bharati University by Centre for Journalism and Mass Communication
Under the sub theme Challenges to social media in democracy Joint paper by
Archan Mitra, Shashi Subba. Research Scholars, Centre of Journalism and
Mass Communication Visva Bharati University

Paper entitled "Does Social Media Really Portray Democracy As A New Voice?"
jointly presented in a Seminar on "Role of Social Media: A New Voice In
Democracy" organized by the Centre for Journalism & Mass Communication,
Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan in collaboration with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
(FES), Germany published as Chapter Contribution in book entitled "Voice of
Social Media In Democracy: An Anthology" (ISBN-978-81-7522-584-8, January
2014), edited by Dr. Mausumi Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor and present
In-Charge, Centre for Journalism & Mass Communication, Visva-Bharati,
Santiniketan. (Joint Authorship).

Title: Does Social Media really portray Democracy as a New Voice? - An
answer that we all seek

"Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society; they are a
challenge to it." 
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing
Without Organizations

Abstract: This paper tries to portray different aspects of democracy, the
meaning of which has been changing drastically over the complexion of time,
technology and terminology, whereas in case of social media, the dark side
of the media has been discussed. With the advancement of social media there
has been a drastic change in way people used media. Social media which has
been treated as a boon to the society and was seen as a tool for democracy
is been confined to the elite section of the society whereas the
marginalized section has always been deprived from proper flow and access
of information which lead to the imbalance of information flow and is still
posing a threat to the integrity of the world as a whole. Hence this paper
is an attempt to bring out the reality about use of social media and its
extent in democracy from the people of a developing nation like India. The
paper revolves around the concept that whether "social media can be a new
voice for democracy?"

Keywords: Democracy, Social Media, Challenges, Egypt Revolutions, Arab
Spring, US Presidential Election, Political Promotion.




Introduction:
"The World is Changing, much that was is lost for there is few who
remembers it, history has become legend and legend has become myth"- JRR
Tolkein

Through the advent of time it has been the quest for mankind to search for
the truth for its own existence. Throughout the timeline there have been
people, who have come really close to discovering the truth, but instead
they have stumbled upon discoveries and inventions that have helped human
beings to evolve, still today the search is on. Standing on the brink of
this era if we all ask ourselves a question, are we really evolving? Or
it's just a mirage that even fools our own conscience. The answer to this
question lies deeply buried in us; some day when we get our answers it will
be the start of an Utopian era, an era foreseen by many great and powerful
people who have shaped the very foundations of mankind. The people who were
the most influential among them were the diplomats, strategist and people
with political knowhow. Do you know why? – Because. "They were not kings
rather they were king makers". Politicians and diplomats have a great power
over the people they show the light and guide the people to their destiny.
This light is flickering, it's high time now to stand up and put our hands
together around it because we are the people who constitute our own
democracies for our own development it is time now to assess what we can
give to the media rather what we get from it as explained in the uses and
gratification theory.
Kingdoms have fallen and from its ashes have given rise to democracies. We
cannot deny the law of existence Ying and Yang, good and evil, where there
is good there is evil. There will always be people motivated by greed and
power. There will also be people who will think of others before himself.
It is for us to choose who we want to become.
The opportunity is there in front of us! Yes! I am talking about Social
media. The power is on us with great power comes great responsibility it is
for us how we are going to use this form of media for upholding our voice
so that it can be heard. But still it remains a media whose full
potentiality has not been tapped into yet. This media is definitely a
democratic media no doubt but being the users, It is time for us now to
lead from the front and guide each other and help those who have wandered
away, to motivate them and try to strike a chord of harmony and balance
that will bind us all not because we are mass, users, audience, listeners,
readers. But because we have one and only one identity we are all human
beings. As every great discovery and invention have started from the core
of a question I too present a question in front of you all
Is social Media really a new voice for democracy- an answer that we all
seek

Objectives:
The objective of this research is thus five fold
i) To focus on impact of social media on rural and marginalised
people of the soiety and are they democratcally represented by
Social media.
ii) To find out what the teenage collage going students think about
using social media for democratic participation purpose.
iii) To find out what the respondents think about social media
portraying the social image.
iv) To find out what according to the respondents should be the goal
of the government pertaining to the use of social media for
democracy.
v) To find out if Social media can represent the political process
and agenda setting of our nation.


Research Methodology: It's a Three Phase Methodology
Research design
Phase I: Literature Survey and Review of Articles, Journals, Books etc
pertaining to the aspects of Challenges to Social Media. Thus Descriptive
Research Design has been used
Data Collection: Secondary
Phase II: Primary Data Survey has been done on Students of Collages as
they are the largest percentage of social media users, so as t understand
their views on social media for democracy. Thus Survey Research Design has
been used
Data Collection: Primary
Sample Size: 120 Respondents Age Group (17-25) Gender (Girls 56% &
Boys 44%)
Sample Area: Hooghly District Colleges: Serampore College,
Chandernagore
College, Mahosin College.
Sampling Method: Simple Random Sampling (Questionnaire)
Phase III: Primary Data Survey has been done on a Village. The survey was a
First Information Survey to understand the status of communication,
Technology, economy in the villages so as to bring if democratic
participation is possible through new media in the village based on their
need Heiarchy and what does democracy mean to them. Thus Survey and
Observational Research design has been used
Data Collection: Primary
Sample Size: 200 Villagers 50 Houses
Sample Area: Pir Gram Hooghly District
Sampling Method: Simple Random Sampling (Schedule)





Literature Review:
Professor Tim Unwin's article " Social media and democracy: Critical
reflections" which is a background paper given during the 2012 Commonwealth
Parliamentary Conference, has given emphasis on the use of social media
for political purpose and its various aspect, particularly with respect to
democracies, which somehow reflects the challenges faced by social media.
In the article on one hand, he states the significance of social media in
today's political scenario by coating the example of Arab Spring
Revolutions, which is popularly termed as "Facebook Revolution" or "Twitter
Revolution" but again on the other hand he also talks about the
marginalized section of society who are most often deprived of political-
economical- social information due to the lack of accessibility.

In the article, the author has used three different terminologies which are
space - time liberty, which speaks about the importance of mobile
technologies, sharing liberty states about the change in the flow of
information and distributional power and access liberty, a dramatic
reduction in the cost of information device and making it accessible to the
poorer section
The article states "In essence, it would therefore appear that while social
media have undoubtedly changed the political map, this may not necessarily
have been in the interests of the poorest and most marginalized – or even
of democracy. There has been change, but whether it is for the better
depends very largely on the perspectives of the observer"
In an another article titled as "Social Media and Democracy: Facebook as a
Tool for the Establishment of Democracy in Egypt" which is a Master Thesis
by Sergiy Prokhorov, researcher of Malmo University, is a fine piece to
understand the complex nature behind the term "democracy". The main focus
of the thesis was to analyze the role of Facebook in the political
development, namely in the promotion and establishment of democracy based
upon the case study of Egypt's revolution, 2011.
Different aspect of democracy and social media has been chalked out in this
article. Articles written by eminent authors such as Robert Dahl's
Polyarchy (1971) and Lipset's "Some social requisites of Democracy:
economic development and political legitimacy" (1959) has been reviewed and
for social media, article written by Brian D. Loader and Dan Mercea (eds.)
(2012) "Social media and democracy: innovations in participatory politics"
are discussed extensively.




Problem Formulation:
Every year, various report in and around the world, show the sharp
increment of the usage of internet as well as social media around the
world. The increment in the numbers of users in new media or social media,
does not always proves that all the users and active members, most of the
time majority of the users are engaged in Slacktivism and are passive
members, who just keep scrolling the feedback page of facebook. The high
number of online members most of the time fails to portrays the real
picture of those marginalized section of society, who are far away from the
World Wide Web.
As illustrated by Professor Tim Unwin in his article "Social media and
democracy: critical reflections", which is divided into three broad
categories, the third category talks about the marginalized section.
Hence, through this paper, an attempt has been made to understand the
Social media from the view point of the rural marginalized section, how the
section sees social media as a tool of democracy. The main question of the
paper is "does Social Media really portray democracy as a new voice?"
because by democracy, it means a government by the people, of the people
and for the people , where people are divided into various sections and
segments such as urban and rural people, elite and poor section, literate
and illiterate and so on. Thus both section of the society should be well
scrutinized to understand the role and importance of social media in
democracy. In India the rural people are the backward and marginalised
section of the society so a study has been conducted to understand if
social media can be used as a tool for democray for the rurl people.
The Youth of the society have taken a liking in this format of media and
they are not afraid to share their views in this forum of the virtual. But
sharing in the virtual and the real has a great difference. This difference
is sometimes not understood thus to find out what the youth of the society
think about social media and its alliance with democracy is an area which
has been dealt with in this paper. Answers to certain questions such as

Chapter 1
Democracy-'The Meaning that Transends Time':
The etymological origins of the term democracy dated back in late 16th
Century from the French word "democratie and via late Latin from Greek
"demokratia", where demos stands for "the people" and Kratia as
"power,rule", has eventually changed with the advancement and complexion of
time, technology and terminology. Earlier the term Democracy could be
simply defined as a system of government by the whole population or all the
eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives, as
defined in the Oxford Dictionary. The golden words said by Abraham Lincoln,
United States President, comes in immediately when one needs to describe
democracy as "government of the people, by the people, for the people"
At the present era the word democracy has different faces, sometimes it is
named as modern democracy, participatory democracy, bourgeois democracy,
greek democracy, pure democracy and so on. For this reason and due to the
complexity of terminology, it should be clearly defined which form of
democracy is taken into consideration.
In this paper the term "modern democracy" is worn for discussion, modern
democracy which is also termed as representative democracy is about such
republican Government or democratic republic, where a certain member of
fellow citizens are freely elected, which are based on majority rule, to
represent the country and its people in making decisions about
administration, laws and order and other matters.

Chapter 2
Indian Democracy and Social Media-"A study on the marginalised":
India is the seventh largest (by area) and the second most populous country
in the world, with roughly one-sixth of its population, of about a billion
and a quarter. It is the world's largest democracy. It is one of the
world's oldest civilizations yet, a very young nation. Elections to its
Parliament are held once every 5 years. Currently, Prime minister Dr.
Manmohan Singh is the head of the government, enjoying a majority in the
Parliament, while President Pranab Mukherjee, is the head of state. India
is a constitutional republic governed under the world's longest written
constitution, federally consisting of 28 states and seven centrally
administered union territories, with New Delhi as the nation's capital.
(Ziaur Rahman, Library, Democracy And Sustainable Development:The Role Of
Public Libraries In India, 2013)
In India Where majority of the portion of the people live in the rural
areas. Modern Democracy to them is nothing but means to solve their day to
day problems by approaching elected members from the village panchayat so
as in turn that their pleas are heared.
Data Analaysis from primary survey
In the Village surveyd 87% villagers were marginal farmers and the rest 10%
are farmers with land of their own and 3% villagers go to nearby towns for
work. The total village of 50 household and 200 people have only 1 deep
tube well and is the only source of ground water. There are no schools for
education, no sanitation programmes. Government run 100 Days work programme
which rarely crosses half century to begin with. Death of Mother while
delivery is faced by 25% of the house hold and death of child before 1
month age 36% of the household have faced as there is no hospitals near the
village. Only one dispensary is present in the village which remains cob
webbed and filled with expired medicines. To add to the agony the village
goes into total darkness in the evening, the little flicker that glows is
the remenent of a little portion of kerosene oil they get for ration once a
week. Total Village surveyd and 100% of the people have this problem of
electricity. When asked if electricity is bestowed upon them through
democratic means what are they going to do? 100% villagers have said they
want their children to get the basic education, that they crave for. When
asked about their communication and acess to media well the whole village
have 20 working mobile phones, Which represent the 22% of the people the
rest 78% people do not have any means for access to media. For
communication the village roads are non permanent, 36% of the people have
cycle of their own and others use public transport. When enquired about
social media and made them undrestand about the concept, they were in awe
that even such a magical thing as social media existed. 98% of the people
were unaware about social media 2% people had some broken concepts. 80% of
the people know about internet due to use of mobile phones and its
understanding of several advertismenets campaigns done by service
providers. 20% of the people do not have any idea about it.

Chapter 3: Social Media-"A Sneak Peek":
In the few years, social media websites have become ubiquitous, giving
young people a new way to interact with each other and Omni-dimensional
communication with the world (P ernisco). Social media can be termed as the
online form of communication that any individual can employ, which include
blogs, micro blogs, forums, podcasts, wikis, content communities and micro
blogging and social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter, linkedin
and so on. Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of
online Media, which share most or all of the characteristics such as
participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness. The
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines social media as "forms of electronic
communication (as Web sites for social networking and blogging) through
which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal
messages, and other content (as videos)."
Recently as per a report on a website named "internetworldstats.com" as on
30th June 2012, the percentage of internet users in the world on the basis
of regions was Asia 44.8%, Europe 21.5%, North America 11.4%,Latin America
10.4%, Africa 7.0 ,Middle east 3.7 and Australia/Oceania 1.0, whereas
according to the new eMarketer report on 18th June 2013, "Worldwide Social
Network Users, 2013 Forecast and Comparative estimates, nearly one in four
people worldwide will use social networks in 2013. The number of social
network users around the world will raise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73
billion in 2013, an increase of 18% and by 2017, the global social network
audience will be in total 2.55 billion. 

Chapter 4: Challenges to Social Media:
In March 2012, the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organization together
with several other organizations working in the field of ICT4D9 Information
and Communication Technology for Development), convened a lively debate and
discussion at the ICTD2012 conference in Atlanta (USA), in which the
Concept of "The Dark Side" was also discussed.

The Dark side" is all about the negative purpose of social media and its
usage. As it has always been said that a coin has two sides, similar with
so many positivity, the social media does have some negativity in it.
Problem such as individuals and small group's intent on using social media
for cyber bullying, digital 'monstering', or violent actions, cyber crime,
slacktivism, difficulty in boycotting any unwanted things, sharing one's
personal information with the wrong crowd were the sub themes under the
concept.

The concept such as bullying, slacktivism, cyber crime and so on can be
termed as the risk or negative aspect related to social media, whereas when
it comes to the challenges faced by social media, other aspect are
discussed under the banner. It might be said that the challenges in social
media are mostly faced in developing countries such as compare to developed
countries, the differences apply not only between countries, but also
between urban and rural areas, between those who have more disabilities and
those who have fewer, and very often between men and women, therefore some
of the challenges which are discussed in this article are about the
marginalized section of the society, who are often deprived of political-
economical- social information due to the lack of accessibility, as a
result of under developed infrastructure and electrification, computer
Illiteracy, using internet and social media as a means of surveillance and
maintaining ever-increasing control over citizens and so on.

Social Media an Environmental aspect



Data Analysis:

From the collected primary data from 120 respondents, the following results
appeared:

1) Computer literacy = 95% where computer Illiteracy = 5 %
2) Aquaintance with Social Networking= positive response was 93% ,
negative response was 7 %
3) Facebook users were 87%, most popular among all users
4) Medium of access, mobile = 42%, PC= 50% , Tablets = 5 %
5) Time Spent- 1-5hr = 54%, only 1 Hrs= 33%
6) Reasons of usage= entertainment= 21% , information = 10% Networking 7%
and all = 48%


Findings:
Findings from Phase II of Research
From the survey conducted it is clear that students who are the new
democratic voters of our country do not want social media to be their new
voice for democracy. As they use and gratify the form of media is not for
becoming message producers rather for entertainment and time pass issues or
merely for communication purposes. Students who are addicted to this form
commonly known as Facebook Addiction Disease Syndrome (FAD), is a growing
and groaning issue in several countries of the world. The people need
former education on how to use the media and it will take time to develop,
it is not high time now to give it the trophy of democracy. According to
the research social media is a niche media and it is a young media, too
much dependency on the media can cause serious damage to the future media
prospect social media has.
Findings from Phase III of Research
Considering the rural mass there is very few things to say, we may have
entered into a digital phase where everything is done digitally, entering
into e-governance stage for DSC Development support communication but
according to my survey the people surveyed on have no idea of any
electronic device so they have a digital literacy of zero. Then how is it
possible for the 68% people living in rural India to enforce democracy
through social media platforms. Yes some people may say mobile media is a
powerful tool in today's world through which they can enforce their
democratic rights through social media. But still mobile is used in the
village surveyed, is used for telecommunication purposes only as social
media sites are all in English language and education in the remotest parts
are very low.

Conclusion:
To arrive at a conclusion where social media has been deprived of the
powers of democracy, but as social media a mere bud grows to a full bloom
flower till then the true potentiality of the media is unknown. Before that
is achieved experimentation with the media is too risky an affair for both
the people and the media. More research has to be done and then join the
pieces to get a real answer as to whether democracy can be enforced through
social media. This research is too small portion and just a piece of a
puzzle. The total complete puzzle can give us the answer that we all seek.


Scope for Further Research:
There is lots of scope for research as
How Social Media inclusion in rural India will affect the environment
How Social Media can bring forth Human Development
What should be the governing body of the media be like must be researched
as there are other gate-keeping organizations there should one be developed
for social media as well
A set of models and theories are to be set up to understand the working and
bind the media into the right path rather than scattering away aimlessly.


I Reference
Andreas M. Kaplan, M. H. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges
and opportunities of Social Media. 2.
(2013). People Speaking Back? Media, Empowerment and Democracy in East
Africa (MEDIeA). MEDIeA program presentation.
Prokhorov, S. (2012). Social Media and Democracy:Facebook as a Tool for the
Establishment of Democracy in Egypt.
Suopis, D. C. (2010, November). Can Social Media Spread Democracy. p. 4.
Unwin, P. T. (2012, September). Social media and democracy: critical
reflections.
Ziaur Rahman, D. K. (2013). Library, Democracy And Sustainable
Development:The Role Of Public Libraries In India. Volume-3 (Issue-2), p.
1.
II Webliography
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Social-Networking-Reaches-Nearly-One-Four-
Around-World/1009976
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/democracy