Participatory Democracy Thesis

This chapter follows Yin’s (2009) advice that literature reviews should be less about realizing the known results regarding a particular research interest. Instead it should be more about appraising past studies towards informing better thought-out and perceptive questions about the topic. Hence, this is a thematic review of texts, debates and past empirical studies that provide context for the research topic and establishes narrative credence for the resulting explorative study. It incorporates a conceptual frame by connecting a number of concepts, ideas and philosophies to guide different aspects of the study and the eventual interpretation of the research data. Empirical elements like values and identity (Dahlgren, 2003 and 2000) define

The origin of the theory is however attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau who postulated in the year 1762 (Rousseau, Dunn and May, 2002) that democracy as a political system is legitimate only when the people take advantage of readily available opportunities in their everyday lives to participate in shaping the laws that guide their social and political lives. Pateman, citing empirical evidence, argues that participatory democracy beyond the normative is a practically feasible process of “democratizing democracy” (2012, pp.10). In explicating this, one may argue that there are no perfect democracies, and so all democracies are in evolution, essentially in a continuous process of becoming more democratic. This is because there is always an ongoing strive to strengthen civic culture, the institutions, laws and practices that make democracies function and functional (Hauss, 2003) even in mature democracies like the United States or the

This links to knowledge, skills, and values of the individual as consumers gain the agency to simultaneously become producers of content. Communication skills and media literacy are central to most civic practices; to be able to read, write, use a computer and negotiate the Internet are vital aptitudes for civic practices (Erstad and Amdam, 2013) that forge social meaning and coalesces civic identities, which can be oriented to different/multiple public realities that might not necessarily be national (Ong and Cabañes, 2011). Beyond technical capacities and formal education, media literacy refers to the ability to critically reflect on one’s own life world anchored in democratic agency (Dahlgren and Alvares, 2013). So much so, that the individual citizen possesses a sense of political