This paper proposes a preliminary conceptual approach for studying how social media (i.e., a class of specific Internet-based communication tools) can be strategically employed to promote social innovation (i.e., the actual consolidation of norms guiding democratic and participated policymaking processes). To this aim, we propose to overcome monolithic conceptions of Internet users, uses and politics thus grounding empirical studies on the joint observation of a) the type of users; b) the type of Internet-enabled communication; c) the different facets of political processes; d) the multi-level nature of contemporary politics.
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