Democratic Listening

Ensuring freedom of expression is a key democratic value. However, expression is only one part of the communication process. On the other side of the coin is democratic listening. It seems apparent that listening among citizens as well as between citizens and representatives is marked today by the strong penetration of everyday life with digital media, and social networking platforms in particular. These platforms are frequently subject to criticism for their inaction with regards to political polarization. Platform administrations have indeed demonstrated a certain reluctance in tackling online polarization themselves. Therefore, there is a clear need for research on mitigating pernicious levels of polarization and demonstrating the feasibility of depolarization initiatives. 

Democratic listening can be defined as the attentive exposure to and constructive engagement with statements by other citizens. It is based on a general willingness to seriously consider other perspectives, particularly between those with diverging opinions and perspectives. Ideally, democratic listening is a dialogic process so that one person’s constructive engagement with another person’s perspective engenders a feeling of being heard in the person being listened to (Scudder 2021). There is no guarantee that such a dialogic listening process will lead to agreement between the discussants. But it is likely to result in enlightened dissent (Wessler 2008) so that discussants understand better why others think and feel differently and what their reasons might be. Partial agreement on specific aspects of an issue is also possible as a result.

In principle, democratic listening is a “silent” process, but in online discussions it can be inferred from various posting and commenting behaviors. For example, discussants might briefly signal listening (e.g. “Interesting, thanks!”); they might engage substantively with another comment either approvingly or skeptically; they might explicitly put themselves in another’s shoes; or signal explicitly that they feel heard.

Given the current state of most social networking platforms, listening behaviors such as the one described here should be explicitly encouraged via novel platform features, particularly listening-oriented discussion moderation. Discussions should be structured in a way that makes them win-win situations for the parties involved rather than strictly competitive situations ending in victory and defeat. The goal should be to fill the “moral empathy gap” between the strong supporters of two opposing parties or causes and facilitate democratic listening.