Abstract:

This study aims at providing alternative conceptualizations to liberal model explaining political communication on new media platforms. The participative critics on liberal representative democracy are released around the theories of deliberative and agonistic democracy. The projections of these democracy models about “politics” and “political” differs from both each other and from liberal model. However, communication is the essential part of politics for both of these theories. Today, the terms of participation and communication firstly call to mind the new media platforms. Deliberative and agonistic democracy approaches provide alternative aspects to the conceptual frame consisting of the perspective of liberal democracy which aims at explaining the contribution of Internet to political marketing and political advertisement, and developing it. The conceptual frames, consisting of these alternative approaches, have potential to explain the communication process on new media platforms. This study, firstly, insists on the conceptual frame consisting of liberal approach. Secondly, it presents the deliberative model which can be used to explain political communication on new media in terms of the significant place of relationship between politics and communication in deliberative democracy. Lastly, it presents the agonistic model which can be used to explain political communication on new media with reference to the approaches on communication and politics in agonistic democracy. In literature, among alternative approaches, there are studies organized in terms of deliberative model, but there are few studies refer to agonistic model to explain political communication on new media platforms. This study can contribute to the explanation and the analyses of political communication on Internet and social media from different perspectives by means of using alternative conceptualizations. 

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