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%).
All four countries are democracies which follow a Portuguese-style semi-presidential system, although the actual extent of full democratic rights is in some doubt in a number of these nations. There is some political coercion here, and high inequality amongst citizens. Angolan elections have been irregular; vote buying is visible in the island nations of Sao Tome and Cape Verde; and media are dominated by the state and the governing parties in each case. Alternative media offerings are severely limited, and even this does not guarantee media plurality; economic power often translates to media power, and journalists are bribed and intimidated as well as lacking professional training.
What is the impact of the Internet, then? Political authorities are attempting to control it, but it also does stimulate the growth of alternative media forms; a growing number of blogs and online newspapers are evident across these countries. The Net’s role as an information vehicle is emphasised in contexts where there is a lack of pluralism, and it provides important support to the democratising influences which are usually associated with mainstream media. Cape Verde may be most advanced here, as it has the greatest level of Internet penetration, but much more remains to be done here.
