Krems.
The next EDEM 2010 session starts with Francesco Molinari, who reflects on the outcomes of a component of the IDEAL-EU project: a multilingual social networking project involving Spain, France, and Italy which connected citizens and regional governments in order to discuss issues around climate change. Part of the question here was whether online interaction could be a valid extension of conventional face-to-face interaction; whether it could be of use to politicians and policymakers; and whether there were differences between the well-examined US approach to online participation, and more specific European approaches.
We already know about the continuing growth in social media participation - but social media users remain a minority (albeit a very visible and active one) amongst overall Internet users. We also understand the real limitations to significant social networking - expressed for example in the Dunbar number, the cognitive constraint on the social network size that humans can manage.
Where do social networks impact on politics, then? Based on US-based studies, Francesco identifies political branding, voter registration, fundraising, volunteering, and voter turnout. But not all of these may translate fully to political environments outside the United States - so what is possible in the European context?
The IDEAL-EU social networking platform was set up to explore these questions. It set a number of themes which it invited citizens to debate, with representatives of regional governments acting as moderators - but interestingly, user actiivty on the platform was not driven necessarily by government promotion, and indeed activity picked up again as governments began to lose interest in engagement towards the end of the project. Notably, too, towards the end visitors came to the site mainly through Google searches, not through direct links (as had been the case during early stages of heavily promoting the site). (I'm a little dubious of how Francesco interprets those access patterns, though...)
Francesco suggests, on this basis, that social networks can be useful provided that they are limited in topical scope, and aim at a structural change in people's behaviour.
