The Rise of Casual Democracy

In this talk, Professor Steen Steensen at OsloMet will present the book Casual Democracy. News, Participation and Deliberation in Local Communities Dominated by Social Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). The book asks how the retreat of local journalism and the advance of social media platforms reshape democracy at the grassroots level.

It presents a unique ethnographic exploration of two distinct communities – Frederiksberg in Denmark and Ringwood in England – and introduces the concept of "casual democracy" as a provocative new way to think about the fluid, informal, and often unpredictable nature of local public spheres increasingly dominated by platforms like Facebook.

The talk will present and discuss  five affordances of casual democracies: algorithmic logic, ethical and epistemological relativism, hidden agendas, informal power structures and civic disengagement.