Rationality and trust in virtual deliberations and their relationship to enhancing the role of social media in the public sphere and social capital :

Talking about a critical discourse that promotes social capital and public sphere seems strange and narrow-minded in times of noisy, angry, and polarized public discourse, such as the state of transformation that many societies, including Egypt, are going through. Despite this, the study attempts to understand the dynamics of the relationship between the public sphere and social capital on the one hand, and technology on the other. It seeks to answer a main question: Does social media contribute to guiding the public sphere and the growth of social capital in a way that enhances the democracy of communicative action?
This descriptive analytical study is an attempt to identify empirical indicators of rationality, and social trust in the deliberations of citizens in Egypt on the issues of (Renewing Religious Discourse) and (Education Reform). The study relied on analyzing the comments on the Facebook page - the most widely used social media in Egypt - for the newspaper "Youm Al-Sabea", a page that is followed by more than 23 million users. User comments were analyzed adopting comprehensive inventory style about two stories during September 2020. Total analyzed comments are (711 comment) distributed over the two issues: (Renewing Religious Discourse, 271 comments) and (Education Reform, 440 comments).
The results of the study did not prove the existence of a direct relationship between increasing spaces of online public debate through social media and the discourse rationality. It was also not confirmed that there is a significant relationship between the increase and diversity of forms public debate through social media and the increase in social trust among deliberators and the generation of social capital that required for development the democratic process. The results partially confirm the validity of the study's hypotheses about the correlation between the type of issue, degree of sensitivity on one hand and indicators of rationality, and social trust in deliberations via "Facebook" on the other hand.
The results also confirmed the relationship between gender (male-female-anonymous) and level of participation by posting comments, and type of issue being discussed. Where males tend to participate in greater proportions in controversial issues such as, (Renewing Religious Discourse) compared to females. Conversely, female interact and participate more in less sensitive discussions such as the issue of (Education Reform) compared to males. The results also showed a significant relationship between gender and indicators of rationality and social trust among deliberators, especially when discussing controversial issues (Renewing Religious Discourse), while the differences decline, and the relationship is not significant when discussing a less sensitive issues such as (Education Reform). In this context, the results point out the high rate of anonymous and deindividuated users in online deliberations. This leads to a fundamental conclusion related to the decline of opportunities for technology, specifically social media to democratize the public sphere and to create social capital as two basic pillars of democracy.
The study recommends continuing interdisciplinary research to examine the relationship between technology and democracy. Within this frame of reference, this study indicates the importance of the plurality of approaches and data collection tools and the adoption of a comparative perspective that focuses on assessing similarities and differences of the results of other studies considering some variables, such as the developmental level, socio-demographic factors, and along with the diversity of theoretical frameworks to bridge the gap between social theories and patterns of adoption and use of technology and its potential effects.