Civil Society and Public Sphere in the time of Social Media: From Rational youth to Emotional Youths.

Abstract

As the popularity of social media has increased rapidly in the past few years, this platform, which was first known for mere socializing purposes among friends, has now become an important element of public sphere creating an influential ground for the public to discuss and put forth their opinions particularly on the matter of governance. The core issue to this is that, in social media one has no boundaries to their opinion and hence, emotions tend to erode their capability of rational arguments. In recent years, even the educated youths of the country have been doing the same, initiating debates and discussions based on emotions and not on rationality. This research paper takes Facebook as a virtual ethnographic field and aims to understand and analyze this issue that disrupts with the quality of the public sphere.