Young Citizen's Political Engagement in India

Social media has emerged as a dominant digital medium platform in contemporary society. The quick development of social media has instigated changes concerning the way publics to interact with a group of people with similar ideologies, the quality of information they share, or the opportunity to acquire and share ideas. Social media use has a major influence on public relations, marketing, and political communication. Therefore, politicians are formulating their strategies to reach increasingly networked individuals. The chapter defines political engagement concept, focuses on excessive use of social media to understand how the emergence of digital citizenship is changing political engagement. In addition to this, the chapter also examines whether the use of social media exercise any effect on 2014 and 2019. General elections outcome or not and discuss the proposed conceptual framework for future empirical testing. The chapter highlights the various concerns needed to be taken care of while using social media as a marketing tool for promoting political participation and engagement.

A Study of Politicians in a Hybrid Media Setting During the 2014 Swedish Elections

This chapter attends to the interactions between campaigning politicians and traditional news media in an online space of social networking. Studying campaigning Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Swedish election, traditional news media and their online presences represented a form of authority. The interactions were often charged with emotions and could be understood as a way to negotiate status and group (party) belonging, something that is particularly important for campaigning politicians in a party-based democracy like Sweden. By studying the interactions between Parliamentarians and traditional news media, the study concludes that Parliamentarians were expected to be angry and upset with political opponents in front of their party comrades. Hence the mass media logic of conflict is transferred online and also with network media logic, favouring attention-maximising, witty one-liners. This foregrounds polarisation and dissent at the expense of discussion and debate.

Democracy, Technology, and Human Irresponsibility

With the current development of information and communication technology, it must be a good time for democracy. Democracy depends on deliberation and good information. Most people of modern society are ubiquitously connected to the Internet through their smartphones, they can anytime engage in public discourse, express their views without the help of any representative, or search information to make a good decision. The technology is supposed to make people more connected with each other and more knowledgeable than their predecessors. However, rather than raising the quality of democracy, the same technology is now considered to have threatened democracy. The technology makes it easy for irresponsible people to spread disinformation and hate speech. And the technology also makes people unable to deal with the abundant irresponsible information. To mitigate the problem, it is necessary for social media platform to be able to trace the true identities of its users, just like what has already been done in ecommerce or “sharing economy” platforms.

Role of IT and Social Media in Democratic Change

In the last decade or so there have been plenty of innovations pertaining to information technology and social media that has taken place. This has brought in a tremendous amount of change in the society and the quality of life. The chapter explores the various aspect of change that has happened due to information technology and social media in a democratic setup. The chapter highlights how social change has occurred due to innovation in information technology and social media. This chapter explores how information technology and social media have supported the various elements of social change which have improved social wellbeing and quality of life such as education, healthcare, personal safety, transport, predictive tool, and the economics around social change.

Social Media as Disruptive Technologies in an Era of Fake News

Since the Arab Spring (2010-2012), there has been a growing interest in the transformative power of social media, with a number of studies looking at its power to mobilize hitherto silent majority of the people, its ability to spread information at a lightning speed or to shape government-citizen relationship. This chapter is part of that trend, and it focuses specifically on Sub-Saharan Africa. It borrows Christensen's concept of “disruptive technologies” and uses it as a framework to analyze the processes of social media appropriation in the political field in that part of the continent. The chapter articulates ways in which social media are transforming the political landscape in the region and wonders about the outcome of these processes in the backdrop of the emerging and spreading of fake news.

Direct Benefit Transfer Using Aadhaar

This chapter illustrates how Aadhaar, India's unique identity number, has been used to develop applications such as direct benefit transfer and micro payment solutions that improve existing governmental processes and lead to economic development. This chapter details the Aadhaar success stories of Direct Benefit Transfer in removing corruption and implementing transparency. Successful applications include Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVJ), State Health Society (Bihar), Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), Nutrition and Health Tracking System (NHTS), Aadhaar Enabled Public Distribution System (AePDS), and Adhaar Enabled Fertilizer Distribution System (AeFDS). Specific process improvement case studies illustrate purchasing new SIM cards and land transfer to support the authentication and removing fake entries. The chapter addresses administrative technology and legal challenges, which the initiative faced during its implementation.

Constructing the Internet Panoptic-Fortification

This chapter investigates China's Internet regulatory mechanism through the systematical analysis on Internet law in China. It argues that China has developed a hybrid Internet regulatory model, which values both external defense and internal control of in pursuit of the cybersecurity, and which combines hierarchical regulation with horizontal monitoring to address challenges brought by contemporary network society. Based on Michel Foucault's governmentality theory, the Internet panoptic-fortification model is developed to illuminate China's Internet regulatory mechanism. The model is featured by the centralized control, the establishment of Chinese sovereign cyberspace, the implementation of the network real-name system and the Internet-surfing record backup system, and the tight ideological control. This chapter suggests that China's Internet law has become a state instrument to promote the social discipline in the sovereign cyberspace, and the Internet regulatory mechanism serves for the national security and social stability in a broader context.

Role of Social Media in Environmental Democracy

Environmental democracy sets a standard for how decisions should be made. At its core, environmental democracy involves three mutually reinforcing rights that, while independently important, operate best in combination: the ability for people to freely access information on environmental quality and problems, to participate meaningfully in decision-making, and to seek enforcement of environmental laws or compensation for damages. There are three fundamental rights: Access to Information, Citizen Participation, and Access to Justice. Social media can certainly play a vital role in all three fundamental rights. This chapter identifies the role of social media in these three fundamental rights with respect to environmental democracy. The chapter introduces environmental democracy and associated challenges. It then builds a model based on social media to lead to successful environmental democracy campaigns.

Will Microblogs Shape China's Civil Society Under President's Xi's Surveillance State?

Western scholars have previously predicted Weibo and social media will provide Chinese netizens with an opportunity to foster its nascent civil society. However, the growing applications of surveillance technologies have challenged this rosy, yet deterministic prediction. This chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas's concept of public sphere is less likely to function properly, given the pervasive applications of surveillance technologies in China, which has fundamentally challenge its many assumptions. Using Habermas's analytical framework that is used to better comprehend the role of social media in Chinese politics, the authors argue that information technologies turn out to deteriorate the formation and maintenance of a public sphere for Chinese civil society. The authors employ a case study to examine the interrelations among social media, surveillance technologies, civil society, state power, economic development, political process, and democratization in China as demonstrated in Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Protests.

Social Networks, Media, and the Egyptian Revolution

The utilisation of social media in Egypt has irrevocably changed the nature of the traditional Egyptian public sphere. One can see the Egyptian online society as a multiplicity of networks. These networks have developed, transformed, and expanded over time, operating across all areas of life. Audiences started to utilise social media platforms providing detailed descriptions of Egyptian street politics, generating public interest and reinforcing citizen democracy. This trend changed the way audiences consumed news, with media organisations starting to expand their presence online so that, as well as providing news content, they also provided audience a ‘space' to interact. This chapter establishes understanding on the role of social media in developing an Egyptian networked public sphere. Further, the chapter discusses the role social media plays in post 2011 revolution democratisation process. This study employed qualitative ethnography (nethnography) and network analysis on 20 Egyptian news and social media newspapers and websites to monitor online deliberation.