Analysis of deliberative process innovation is currently at the forefront of democratic thinking and knowledge production. As an ever renewed topic of research, social and civic dynamics of a political nature are sought after as grounds for questioning and understanding how societies evolve vis a vis their dissatisfaction with how democratic regimes live up to their standards and promises. Living in an era riddled with technological devices and the grand revolutionary narratives that strive for affirming their deterministic explanatory quality, personal and collective experience of concrete deliberative strategies and processes remain central to understand context, frame, choice and consequence of democracy in action. Addressing activists’ representations on their deliberation and decision-making habitus is, thus, an invaluable source of information and a reminder of the insurmountable need for considering the social factor in democratic innovation and thinking. In this light, and in line with the goals and insights underlying WG1 and WG3 from COST Action CA17135, this paper seeks to characterize and discuss Facebook’s use as a platform for deliberation procedures in two recent Portuguese anti austerity social movements via discourse analysis of testimonies from their respective founding members, along with a contextual framework framing the political reality in which such processes were decided upon and put in practice.

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