Keeping the demos out of liberal democracy? Participatory politics, ‘fake news’ and the online speaker

How do liberal democracies respond to the fact of multiple speakers in public discourse? Previous approaches to media regulation were predicated upon a few speakers-many readers/listeners/viewers model. Now that speech has been democratised, these prior conceptions appear unsuited to digital expression. This article draws upon contrasting accounts of political pluralism in liberal democracies (liberal elitist, deliberative and agonistic) to explore the ways in which liberalism closes down opportunities for ‘the people’ to speak and be heard. Normatively. it critiques dominant themes in European free speech jurisprudence and UK policy about ‘responsible speakers’ and defends a more conflictual account of political discourse which captures more adequately the democratic aspiration for popular authorship of the laws