Political Actors and Their Media Practices: Analyzing the Role of Media Participation in Democratic Backsliding and Resilience

This paper draws together insights from political science and political communication to advance a new understanding of the role of media in democratic backsliding and resilience. The central argument is that all political actors may also be media actors, although they may do so anonymously or use false identities. Thus, mass participation in media enables mass participation in political change, with better and worse democratic outcomes. As such, when analyzing backsliding and resilience scholars need to move away from focusing solely on particular institutions and actors with presumed democratic functions, as well as assuming that media and expressive freedom will necessarily serve democratic ends. Instead, we advocate analyzing how the participatory media practices of various actors interact with one another via communicative structures within processes of backsliding and resilience. Participatory media practices that prevent democratic breakdown include disseminating early warnings of backsliding, exposing executive errors and corruption, coordinating pro-democratic mobilization, and platforming the opposition, as well as countering disinformation and delegitimizing democratic institutions and processes. We also indicate how participatory media practices may aid democratic bounceback, as well as the challenges involved in reimagining the media infrastructure needed to sustain democratic recovery in the long-term. Thus, we argue that democratic backsliding and resilience should be reconceptualized as profoundly participatory, mediated processes.