Social Media as a Catalyst for Online Deliberation: When Does the Medium Matter? Paper submitted to Communication and Technology Division.

The democratic potential of social media to integrate diverse sectors of the population has triggered utopian predictions about its use as a channel to foster new spheres for political expression. This paper aims to assess its implementation by examining whether the types of discussions that citizens maintain in two social media channels managed by the White House - Facebook and Youtube - meetthe necessary conditions for deliberative democracy. For this purpose 7, 230 messages posted by Facebook and Youtube users were assessed by democratic indicators such as politeness, civility, argumentation, and deliberation standards derived from the work of Habermas. Results showed that conversational coherence, anonymity, role of participants, interactivity, content of messages and other variables recognized by previous research in online deliberation influence users' participation, especially inYoutube where participants use more impolite messages to express their ideas. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]