Social media doesn’t create democracy, but no doubt democracies do inspire participation on social media.

1. Digital Democracy: It’s not for everybody
April 10, 2012
Lindsey Fair
Cape Breton University

2. Social media and the use of it for accelerating democratic agendas has become a hot topic as of late; in
fact a new term has been coined for it – digital democracy. There is no doubt that the world has seen
some major shifts from authoritarian regimes to democratic-hybrid regimes in the last 5 years, and that
at same time the Internet has exploded with participation on social networking sites such as Facebook.
The question is whether the two are as closely related as some argue.
The Freedom of the Press index is indicative of current social media participation [Table 1]; so why
then is the democratic agenda progressing faster now than it did before social media existed but other
disruptive channels such as radio did exist. According to popular belief the difference is with the nature
of the communication tool. Originally, political information was disseminated via telephone or mail
which is considered one-to-one communication channels. Then it moved to one-to-many
communication channels with the likes of television and radio. Social media on the other hand is many-
to-many, creating more voices, more listeners and more talkers on every issue.
Table 1: Facebook Penetration and Freedom of the Press Index
Freedom of Press
Freedom of Press
Penetration
Penetration
Facebook
Facebook
ranking
ranking
Country
Denmark 51.6 2 8 1
Norway 55.82 1 9 2
Canada 51.13 3 15 3
South Africa 9.89 9 24 4
Uruguay 43.4 4 26 5
Greece 34.66 5 28 6
South Korea 13.77 6 29 7
India 3.91 11 41 8
Zambia 1.78 12 63 9
Algeria 9.98 8 63 10
Egypt 13.34 7 76 11
China 0.03 14 80 12
Somalia 0.79 13 80 13
Libya 7.33 10 94 14
*Social Media Data (Socialbakers, 2012), Other Data (World Resource Institute, 2005)

3. Social media has inherent democratic capacities (Loader, 2011). It’s a tool used for mass collaboration
that leads to new innovations and discussions for democratic practices (Leadbeater, 2008). It is
centripetal in nature in that it connects and globalizes very easily. Its low cost of access and ability to
empower ordinary citizens are two of the main arguments supporting the idea that social media has the
ability to change democracy where other media channels have failed to do so in the past (Chokoshvili,
2011).
Democracy is about the rights of the individual; however, inherently social media is about collectivism
(Dahlberg, 2011). The collective voice on social media does not represent all, instead it has with
skewed participation of people (Starr, 2010) already engaged in political reform, not those most
impacted by authoritarian regimes (Loader, 2011) that supporters of digital democracy often speak of.
There is validity in the argument that social networking does increasing social capital and civic
participation through developing public spheres (Habermas, 1962); but the concrete evidence of
changing democratic authority is unsubstantiated (Chokoshvili, 2011).
Table 2: Fourteen Country Comparison showing the Top 5 Democracies ranking high in all categories
Penetration
Freedom of
Democracy
Corruption
Perception
Facebook
Ranking `
Ranking
Ranking
Ranking
ranking
Access
Digital
Press
Index
Country
Norway 1 1 2 2 3
Denmark 2 2 1 1 1
Canada 3 3 3 3 4
Uruguay 4 4 4 5 6
Greece 5 5 8 6 5
South Africa 9 6 6 4 7
India 11 7 10 8 12
South Korea 6 8 5 7 2
Zambia 12 9 9 9 13
Algeria 8 10 12 10 11
Egypt 7 11 11 11 10
Libya 10 12 13 14 9
China 14 13 7 12 8
Somalia 13 14 14 13 14
*Social Media Data (Socialbakers, 2012), 2011 Democracy Ranking (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2011), Other
Data (World Resource Institute, 2005)

4. In looking at a cross-section of the globe comparing fourteen diverse countries it is clear that the top
five democratic ranking countries have the highest freedom of the press, highest participation in social
media and lowest corruption, but after those five the correlation is not so clear cut; it gets a little messy
[Table 2].
Table 3: Shifts in Social Media Participation and Democracy Rankings
from 1990-2011
from 1990-2011
Change 2010-
Change 2010-
2011 Ranking
Social media
Social Media
Index 20005
Democratic
Democracy
Democracy
Democracy
Index 2011
Democracy
Index 1990
Index Shift
Difference
Country
Ranking
Index
2011
Zambia 34.55 4 -9 1 6 15.19 1
Libya 105.09 2 -7 -7 4 10.55 2
China -14.71 14 -7 -7 3 10.14 3
Egypt 22.1 7 -6 -6 4 9.95 4
Somalia 146.25 1 -7 -77 7 5
Algeria 29.38 5 -2 -3 2 4.48 6
South Africa 9.54 9 5 9 8 2.79 7
South Korea 64.11 3 6 8 8 2.06 8
Norway 3.52 11 10 10 10 0 9
Denmark 2.85 12 10 10 10 -0.48 10
India 25.93 6 8 9 7 -0.7 11
Canada 0.03 13 10 10 9 -0.92 12
Uruguay 10.65 8 10 10 8 -1.83 13
Greece 6.81 10 10 10 8 -2.35 14
*Social Media Data (Socialbakers, 2012), 1990 Democracy Index (Earthtrends, 2007), 2011 Democracy Index
(Economist Intelligence Unit, 2011), 2005 Democracy Index (World Resource Institute, 2005)
Social media isn’t completely decentralizing power in authoritarian regimes (Dahlberg, 2011), but it is
showing evidence of progressing already democratic states (Sander, 2011). Authoritarian states such as
China that do not allow Freedom of the Press and participation in social media have still shown
progress on the democracy index; suggesting that democracy can be accomplished without the likes of
social media. At the same time, countries that already rank high on the democratic index do not show
an increase in their ranking as social media became more prolific. They don’t have the need to
challenge their democratic state as much as flawed democratic states do and even less than people from
authoritarian states do if they had freedom of the press (Chokoshvili, 2011). The major shifts in

5. democracy are occurring with the hybrid democracies and low ranking flawed democracies such as
Zambia, Libya and Egypt [Table 3]. These countries have also seen substantial change in their social
media activity over the last year. This suggests that social media is most effective in places where a
base level of democracy already exists.
Social media’s role in a democratic state is very different than its role under an authoritarian state
(Chokoshvili, 2011). In authoritarian states, when used at all, social media is used primarily to generate
international support to limit human rights violations (Ritter, 2011). In flawed democracies and low
ranking hybrid regimes the main use is for forms of early protest and demonstration (Chokoshvili,
2011). Working democracies on the other hand, do not need to use social media for these purposes and
instead use it to develop social capital and increase civic participation.
In hybrid regimes and flawed democracies, social media is playing a part but is not making these
democratic shifts in isolation. The scenario must be ripe for democratic transition which includes
having several parties willing to govern and with no single party able to seize complete power; there
has to be a decrease in wealth and there a substantial amount of the population must be fighting age
(Olsen, 1993). If these factors all align and local participation in social media increases at the same
time, digital democracy can happen such as in Egypt. It is important however, to clarify what social
media’s role was in Egypt as it was limited compared to common belief. Facebook did help to create a
tipping point (Gladwell, 2000) of commitment to protest early on in the uprising; however, once the
physical protests began Facebook participation declined. Social media’s most important place in digital
democracy then is at the dawn of civic unrest (Chokoshvili, 2011).
The Arab Spring is probably the most noted case study for digital democracy and rightly so. Between
2005-2011 the Arab Spring countries have seen major shifts in democracy and equal increased
participation in social media, suggesting that there is a correlation [Table 4].

6. Table 4: Arab Spring Case Study
Social Media Penetration Change between 2010-
Democratic Index Shift from 1990-2011 Ranking
Democracy Index Difference from 1990-2011
Social media Change 2010-2011 Ranking
Country
Democracy Index 20005
Democracy Index 2011
Democracy Index 1990
2011
Libya 105.09 2 -7 -7 4 10.55 2
Egypt 22.1 7 -6 -6 4 9.95 4
Algeria 29.38 5 -2 -3 2 4.48 6
*Social Media Data (Socialbakers, 2012), 1990 Democracy Index (Earthtrends, 2007), 2011 Democracy Index
(Economist Intelligence Unit, 2011), 2005 Democracy Index (World Resource Institute, 2005)
Digital democracy is creating what Morozov (2011) has coined the “dictators’ dilemma”, where
repressive governments are limited to two options in dealing with social media participation – either
they limit citizens access which has economic repercussions or they relax restrictions but this could
lead to pre-conditions for the start of democratic transition. They have to determine if the other
conditions for transition are ripe and if they are this is a hefty risk indeed as we have seen in the Arab
Spring.
For the people, for the time being, social media isn’t hurting very many in the short run and it just may
be that tipping point for transition (Shirky, 2011). There are tools being developed such as
Citizenbridge (http://citizenbridge.org/ ) to aid in digital democracy but for now they only exist in
working democracies; the real transformation may begin when we see those tools reach out to flawed
democracies and hybrid regimes.

7. Social media doesn’t create democracy, but no doubt democracies do inspire participation on social
media. This is creating a digital divide between the haves and the have nots (Starr, 2010), a scenario of
uneven development. Social media over-represents the views and opinions of democratic states. The
way in which we develop and categorize a democratic state is evolving, in part due to social media but
also for a variety of other complex contributing factors far from the digital world. As democracy itself
evolves, social media will play a role but contrary to recent dialogue (Chokoshvili, 2011) it alone is not
progressing democracy evenly across the globe.

8. References
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