Importance of TV Media for Democratic Deliberation and Civic Engagement A case of Georgia

The present paper will discuss a connection between TV media, democratic innovations, and civic engagement in a form of the research project to be carried out in the post-soviet country where democracy is supported by the local population but it is still in its infancy. The present interdisciplinary study is going to be implemented as part of the Ph.D. project during which a researcher will add the TV media component to the research concept of the democratic deliberation for enhancing the knowledge and create incentives for the civically disengaged and polarized people. In particular, this mechanism is added to empower excluded voices of citizens suffering from multifaceted social problems and could not find a mechanism to challenge the existing political institutions for solving them. Democratic innovations such as mini-publics are designed with empowerment in mind (Smith, G. 2009). Therefore, an investigation under this Ph.D. project will try to answer one of the research questions - will citizens who are systematically disengaged from the political processes and have a polarized point of view unite their voices through voluntarily partaking in public deliberation such as mini-publics and learn how to solve common social problems?