Keywords
Hybrid Media
Public Sphere
Digital Citizenship
Activism
E-Governance
Algorithmic Mediation
How to Cite
Abstract
This article offers a qualitative, interpretive synthesis of secondary research to examine how digital politics reconfigures (rather than replaces) the public sphere through hybrid interactions between legacy and broadband-enabled platforms. Anchored in Castells’ network society, Coleman’s digital citizenship, and Habermas’ public sphere, the study develops four analytic themes (1) the shift from broadcast to broadband, (2) citizen-led participation and hashtag activism, (3) institutional adoption of digital tools, and (4) risks arising from algorithmic mediation and polarization. To ground the conceptual analysis, the paper employs four illustrative secondary case examples—the Arab Spring, India’s 2014/2019 general election campaigns, Black Lives Matter, and India’s MyGov platform—selected to represent movement mobilization, electoral communication, hashtag activism, and e-governance. The findings suggest a layered, contested, and participatory public sphere in which digital and legacy media co-evolve. The article clarifies boundaries and provides a transparent procedure for selecting and thematically analyzing secondary sources and cases. The paper adopts a conceptual approach, drawing on secondary sources selected through thematic review of peer-reviewed literature and reports related to research question between 2010–2024.
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