Blogs

Reykjavík.
The next speaker at ECPR 2011 is Anastasia Kavada, whose focus is on claims that the Net leads to more decentralised forms of organising which help to unite heterogeneous participants in loose collectives. Such claims place communication in a central position, but there appears to be a lack of systematic theoretical frameworks – organisational communication may help here, she suggests.

Reykjavík.
We move on at ECPR 2011 to Andrea Calderaro, who zooms in on the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement as a form of political struggle in the network society. It is important here to move beyond digital media as a mere tool, but to question the code itself; FOSS does this by open-sourcing code to allow greater interaction and transparency.

Reykjavík.
The next speaker at ECPR 2011 is Lance Bennett, whose interest is in connective action (as opposed to collective action). Understanding the logic of such action is important, as it may mean that political organisations need to rethink their outreach activities.

There have been significant self-organising large-scale connective actions recently – from the Arab Spring to the Spanish Indignados –, with substantial media and political successes. Collective action, by contrast, has its problems: the free rider problem, for example, which can be addressed through formal organisation (but this in turn creates problems with resource mobilisation, collective identity and action framing, and other issues).

Connective action personalises communication, by relying on loose ties and choice in affiliating with organisations and others; by building on easily shareable symbolic content; and by using social media for passing along such personalisable memes. Technology becomes a network agent that changes the game, and personalised sharing overcomes the self-interest barriers to collective actions.

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 final paper in this ECPR 2011 session is Virginie van Ingelgom, who returns us to the question of European legitimacy. There are two dimensions to this: internal (perceived by European citizens) and external (objectively legitimated by international law). The former is problematic: European integration has been found to have low salience for European citizens when examined using qualitative data, but quantitative methods may provide better insights.

Reykjavík.
Next up at ECPR 2011 is Maria Heller, whose focus is on the emerging ‘democrature’ in Hungary and the public discourse around this, especially in the context of Hungary’s role in the EU. The project found that the everyday reflections of lay persons about this are incoherent and confused, incorporating contradictory notions and feelings; in particular, they have very vague notions about the EU.

Further, individual interests play an important role in how people conceive of the EU; personal experience and attributes (travel, expected economic advantages, etc.) are also relevant here. Identification with the national community in Hungary is stronger than with the EU, and this is also driven by the legacy of the past, of course, with a persistent East/West divide perceived very strongly.

Reykjavík.
Next up at ECPR 2011 is Pieter de Wilde, whose focus is on Euroscepticism during the 2009 European Parliament elections. If I understand it correctly, this was examined by surveying a range of Websites discussing the elections, across a substantial number of member states.

Reykjavík.
The next ECPR 2011 speaker is Magdalena Gora, whose interest is in conceptualising the transformation of collective identities in the new European member and candidate states. There are three broad possibilities here: national identities could remain as they are; could become embedded into a stronger European identity; or could take on a more cosmopolitan flavour.

Reykjavík.
The second panel at ECPR 2011 is on civil society, identity and the public sphere in the EU, and begins with a paper by Helene Pristed Nielsen, whose focus is on European social movements. Her argument is that further inclusion of social movements in public sphere deliberation represents both a potential and a pitfall for the future of EU democracy.

Social movements are defined here as communities of interest: a distinctive form of contentious politics that make specific claims which if realised may clash with other communities’ views. The European public sphere is regarded as an open field of communicative exchanges, which may be in the process of emerging, though this, too is contentious.

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?