Pluralism research rewired: Mutual adjustment and democratic collaboration online

In this paper I contribute to the debates on digital democracy by broadening how pluralism should be understood in the platform era. Existing accounts typically equate pluralism with intensified competition among interest groups and the proliferation of voices online. In contrast, I argue that the Internet and social media research should reorganize that democracy works through processes of coordination, negotiation, and mutual responsiveness among interdependent actors. Building on Charles Lindblom’s seminal yet underutilized concept of partisan mutual adjustment, I propose an expanded framework for pluralism research that takes into account the fact that democratic outcomes emerge through iterative interaction between institutional and non-institutional participants. The argument is developed by looking at four domains: agenda-setting by influential blogs, advocacy by online and fan communities, bargaining and disruption in the gig economy, and distributed knowledge production in citizen science. Across these domains, the I show that digital environments enable not only competitive pluralism but also political mutual adjustment.