Agent, Structure, and the Media-based Democratic Politics

Nowadays democracy encounters with this problematic, especially with increasing virtualization / capitalization of society, that whether media acts in the service of citizen's autonomy, of ideological inductions or a techno-electronic politics in controlling society. Accordingly, the paper question is that from which perspective one can take consider, in spite of pay attention to critical approaches about mass media, the media-based contemporary societies leading to progressive democratic politics? As a response, this paper aims, instead of imaginary picturing the future (whether optimistic or pessimistic), offering a discussion about the conditions needs for realization of real media-based democracy, as an alternative to de-facto democracy, by re-define/adapt democratic theory appropriate to mediated contemporary society, in order to make Link between technological progress and democratic world-life. To do so, the paper taking advantage of the "Agent- Structure" approach, in the sense of Anthony Giddens, for picturing a media-based democracy as an idea that can transcend the debate, about positive/ negative theories of media & democracy relationship, onto focus on necessary conditions for realize the democracy appropriate to new communication technologies. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.