Peripheral publics and digital participation: deliberation in Northeast India's news media

Abstract

This article examines how publics on the margins of India's media landscape engage in digital news communication. Focusing on Northeast India, a region historically peripheral to national politics and journalism, it analyses audience interaction with regional digital-native news outlets on Facebook. Drawing on Dahlgren's interactional model of the public sphere, Keane's micro-public sphere, and recent work on affective and infrastructural publics, the study explores how emotion, reasoning, and mediated visibility intersect in peripheral contexts. Using a mixed-methods design that combines descriptive analysis of participation trends with qualitative interpretation of reader interaction, it identifies hybrid patterns of expressive and deliberative engagement. Although overall participation remains low, comment threads reveal meaningful civic presence within constrained digital infrastructures. By situating engagement from India's Northeast within debates on platform governance and media peripheries, the paper extends public sphere theory to show how small-scale digital participation contributes to everyday democratic discourse.

Keywords

digital news media Northeast India public sphere social media digital deliberation

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