Social media and deliberation in the period of COVID-19 crisis

transforming political interaction between citizens and Russian authorities in the digital sphere

Abstract

Deliberation is a basic term about reaching a decision through balanced discussion, which openly raises the issues of consensus and its achievement through communication. The current article aims at studying the quality of online deliberation between citizens and Russian authorities on social media in the conditions of global health crisis COVID-19. Indeed, the quality of online deliberation between citizens and authorities on public policy issues is traditionally explored in periods of social certainty and mainly in democratic contexts. However, when this problem is considered in times of crisis and out of democratic societies, there is a huge gap in political science. Indeed, studying the quality of deliberation in online sphere becomes more significant and simultaneously complicated in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To evaluate the quality of deliberation, we propose a methodology of content analysis based on the theories of democratic deliberation and cumulative deliberation as well. Also, we employ a medium-size case dedicated to discussing state measures of quarantine and self-isolation in the social network VK.com during March-May 2020 in Russia. These conversations were conducted on the state VK.com platform Stopcoronavirus.rf, which is the official information resource of the Russian Government on coronavirus control issues. In total, 5215 comments of both citizens and authorities were analyzed. As a result, the quality of social media deliberation between Russian authorities and citizens is described and assessed in such categories as participatory activity, (ir)rationality, argumentation, constructive politics, interactivity, (in)civility, (dis)agreement and striving for consensus. Generally, the paper contributes to a better understanding the phenomenon of deliberation in non-democratic societies like Russia, going beyond the Western liberal democracies where deliberation is investigated as one of the most important components in the process of making legitimate decisions. Also, our work shows how the digital interaction can be implemented in the conditions of COVID-19 crisis and whether the results of political dialogue between state officials and people on social media can be taken into consideration in the real process of public policymaking in non-democratic societies.