Internet Technologies

Reykjavík.
The next presenter at ECPR 2011 is Matthew Wall, whose interest is on the 2011 Irish general election – with a specific focus on Sinn Féin. The 2011 elections reshaped the Irish party system (in response to the global financial crisis), and meant a further step for SF away from its close associations with the nationalist ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland and towards becoming a mainstream party in the Republic of Ireland.

SF has a mixed history in terms of online initiatives: they were the first Irish party to launch a Website, and had presences in Bebo and MySpace, but also still struggle to manage their message in conventional media as they’re regularly confronted with their terrorist links. Their candidates traditionally have poor individual Web presence (5% of candidates as opposed to 32% of other parties’ candidates had their own sites), and remain somewhat elusive to the media in general.

Reykjavík.
The next ECPR 2011 speaker is Joan Balcells, whose interest is in the impact of the Net on voting behaviour in the 2010 Catalan elections, with a specific focus on the left, pro-independence ERC party (which was in the ruling coalition but lost substantial votes in the election: from 14% of the vote in 2006 to 7% in 2010).

The ERC is defined by its Catalan nationalism, and had a strong following amongst Internet users (in fact, pro-independence attitudes and Internet use appear to be connected). ERC competes with CiU (the mainstream Catalan nationalist party) as well as small pro-independence parties (such as SI) outside the political establishment. Where did ERC’s voters disappear to in 2010, then – to these parties, non-independence parties, or into abstention?

Reykjavík.
Day two at ECPR 2011 starts with a paper by Sarah Oates, whose focus is on Russian political parties online. Generally, Russian political parties don’t function like democratic parties; they are coopted by state interests, and this is true especially for the parties supporting the current regime. Does a presence on the Internet reflect or transform them, however?

United Russia is the largest political party in Russia, with 64% of the vote in 2007; minor parties include the Communists (12%), Liberal Democrats (8%), and A Just Russia (8%). Sarah coded these parties’ Websites for their approaches to providing information, as well as the nature of their content and their interlinkage with other Websites.

Reykjavík.
The next speaker at ECPR 2011 is Rosalynd Southern, whose interest is in the UK general election. In the first place, this examined the Web presence of the various political candidates for the six largest parties (2424 in total), from profiles on their party sites through Web-in-a-box pages solutions organised by the parties to personalised sites. This provides an indication of the role the Web plays in each candidate’s campaigning.

Reykjavík.
The afternoon panel at ECPR 2011 starts with a paper by Bruce Bimber, whose focus is on the role of digital media in encouraging political participation in the US. Does digital media use lead to (or relate to) civic and political involvement? There appears to be a modest relationship, which is moderated by interest; interpretations vary about the substantive importance of that link, though. (Ultimately, effects of Internet use on engagement appear to be positive, but may not be substantial.)

Further, the association between the two may be growing with involvement over time – but that may not continue to be the case as the use of technologies such as Facebook becomes ubiquitous. Perhaps such time-based trends simply don’t make much sense any more.

Reykjavík.
The next speaker at ECPR 2011 is Barbara Pfetsch, whose focus is on media agenda building in online and offline media. She suggests that research is needed to assess the impact of the Net on public debate: how could one go about this work? There have been hopes that the Net may lead to greater public participation and deliberation; also, however, what is the discursive opportunity structure which is provided by the Net? What is the potential for new civil society actors to enter the debate, and how may they be included in the process?

What theoretical and empirical approaches may be suited to researching these questions? First, there is an elite bias in traditional mass media; they tend to exclude ‘outside’, non-mainstream actors, and the hope is that the Net removes such biases. Second, media agenda building depends on local contexts: the political system, the media system, and the constellation of current conflicts in a country, for example. How does traditional media agenda setting change because of the Internet, as new challengers make their views heard?

Reykjavík.
The next paper at ECPR 2011 is by Andrew Chadwick, whose argument is that old and new media scholars often talk past one another, and that political communication scholarship as well as Internet studies need to draw on one another’s ideas more effectively. The interrelationship between old and new media, in particular, needs to be examined more closely. This requires system-level perspectives and a conceptual understanding of power which can be illustrated empirically.

So, we need a hybrid media system perspective, recognising the technologies, genres, norms, behaviours, and organisations of all its components. Power relations between them are based on adaptation and interdependence, and actors create, tap, or steer information flows in ways that suit them.

Reykjavík.
The next paper at ECPR 2011 is by Carol Galais, whose focus is on the effect of digital media on civic attitudes. This was triggered by the Arab Spring and other popular uprisings in which Internet media have played a role; does digital media use affect political pattitudes and political participation? Carol’s study found that digital media can affect political attitudes, but that this effect is not the same in all contexts: Web 2.0 environments enhance autonomy and political interest; they can be used to build communities; and its users may be exposed to more political stimuli than others.

Reykjavík.
From the very intensive ten-day workshop with our research partners in Münster which started this trip (more on this on the Mapping Online Publics site some time soon) I’ve made it to the ECPR conference in Reykjavík. There’s more parallel sessions here than could be comfortably wiped out by a single exploding whale, so my conference blogging from here will necessarily follow my own interests, more or less; don’t take it as an accurate representation of all that’s going on here.

I’m starting the day with a panel on comparing digital media and politics across regimes, which begins with a paper by Susana Salgado, whose interest is in the impact of digital media in African countries. What kind of democratic impact is there; is the Net promoting participation; is it repeating the history of other media? Susana’s focus is on Portuguese-speaking Luso-African nations (Angola, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde); these are very impoverished nations, and Internet penetration is generally very low (Cape Verde was up to nearly 30% Internet penetration in 2010, Mozambique is below 3%).