ABSTRACT
This chapter covers lots of theoretical ground and provides working definitions of the terms digital democracy, mediated citizenship, network society and online public sphere and takes a critical stance as to whether these have shifted social dynamics. Public spheres, whether local, regional, national or issue-specific, are social constructions in the true sense of the word. The articulation of citizenship rights, as described by Marshall, can be achieved through communication, which plays an important mediating role concerning the facilitation of dialogue. The very existence of these meaningful imagined communities is materialised through social media and other online technologies, which form the space in which the networked publics gather, connect and converse. A democratic social system can be defined as a model in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation typically involving periodically held free elections.
