Deliberation and Protest: A Closer Look at Social Fora dynamics
Alessia Rochira, Terri Mannarini

Abstract
The paper focuses on two key domains: the psychosocial dynamics of protest in social movements and deliberative democracy theory and practice. Explorative research on an Italian Social Forum has been carried out, aimed at: a) verifying the consistency and the correspondence between the construct of deliberative democracy and the interactive functioning of social fora; b) probing the factors underlying the “social psychology of protest” (Klandermans, 1997); c) integrating the two domains at an empirical level. Results lack generalization but provide useful indications to renew the theoretical assumptions concerning the psychosocial processes involved in deliberative interaction and protest.

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