SSC Stenographer 2026 PYQ — Question 170

In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
As post-industrial societies gravitate towards algorithmic governance, the contours of democratic deliberation are being steadily (1)_____. What was once a domain of slow-paced, participatory engagement has now been supplanted by platforms that privilege immediacy and spectacle. The metrics of influence—likes, shares, and impressions—act as a surrogate for rational consensus, creating a new epistemic environment where the distinction between knowledge and propaganda becomes increasingly (2)_____.
This metamorphosis is not merely technological but ontological, reshaping how individuals perceive their agency. The citizen morphs into a data node, his behavior quantified and curated to feed predictive models of consumption and compliance. Amid this shift, traditional norms of accountability and transparency are often rendered (3)_____, buried under technical jargon and opaque algorithms. Efforts to reclaim civic integrity must contend with this techno-political apparatus that simultaneously empowers and ensnares.
For those committed to revitalizing public discourse, the challenge lies in cultivating (4)_____ practices—ones that resist the homogenizing tendencies of digital systems. Rather than acquiesce to algorithmic flattening, democratic actors must foreground plurality and dissent, embracing complexity over coherence. In this regard, ethical resistance becomes not an act of rebellion but of (5)_____, an assertion of human interpretive agency against machinic determinism.
What should come in the place of blank number 4?