Participation, Civil Society and the Facebook Use of NGOs in Turkey

Participation, Civil Society And Icts

In 1990s, after the new liberalization wave in the world and the crisis of representative democracy, democracy has been associated with the concept of open society, transparent government, accountability of institutions, and the participation of various actors such as sub-national and supra-national institutions, social groups, or citizens in politics (Held et al., 1999, p. 187; Wijkman, 1998; Şaylan, 2008). Recently, politics is seen as more related to social area and it is a spontaneous process rather than hierarchical one (Çakır & Demirhan, 2011). Multiple-actors' participation in political issues, has been characterized as the main requirement in order to provide a heterogenic, flexible and strong democracy. These changes caused to the development of new democracy models like deliberative and radical democracy (Habermas, 2006; Mouffe, 2005). New democracy models consist of the political participation of different interest groups, NGOs, and other actors in politics. Political participation of these actors insists on the importance of democratization and the bottom-up model of participation instead of top-down model (Pratt, 2004, p. 319; Falk, 1999). It consists of a socialized public sphere more than constitutional process like periodical elections (Falk, 1999). Political participation of different social and political actors based on their communication. Either this communication would be resulted in an agreement among various groups who have different interests and opinions or it would prepare the conditions for pluralistic democracy for the political competition and conflict among these groups (Habermas, 2006; Benhabib, 2006; Mouffe, 2005).