NEW MEDIA AS THE NEW TOOL OF DEMOCRACY

Abstract

Public opinion is the fundamental of democracy. Now it’s the new media which controls public opinion. So, whoever controls the new media controls the country. Democracy has been proved as the best form of administration in the world and the mass communication media are the connective tissues of democracy. They are the principal means through which citizens and their elective representatives communicate in their reciprocal efforts to inform and influence. New media is playing a potential and innovative role in democratic politics. Defining the role of new media in democracy now requires hard thought and formulations. Old assumptions on the traditional forms of mass communication are no longer enough to explain the complexities. An important obstacle to a deeper understanding of the relationship between the new media and democratic political process has long been the lack of an integrated research agenda. Compartmentalization and fragmentation have resulted not only from the scattering of scholars among different academic disciplines that rarely interact with one another, but also from a puzzling and seemingly unnecessary bifurcation into distinct schools of analysis. Do the social media really change political attitude and behavior or do the political parties reinforce them? Do they differ in their political impact? Are all individuals equally susceptible to new media influence? These are among micro level questions in today’s time. A second and contrasting tendency has been for scholars to be more distinctively macro in focus. Studying the structure of media systems and how these systems affect politics. Among the systematic characteristics, we usually examine the pattern of government regulations, media ownership pattern, programme content, audience structure and viewership details. This paper is an attempt to make a micro analysis of the relationship of new media and democracy and its impact on Indian election system.