Politics

Reykjavík.
The next speaker at ECPR 2011 is Andreas Jungherr, whose interest is in using Twitter data to detect events by identifying sudden bursts of activity in the continuing stream of updates. Such research is especially straightforward on Twitter, due to its convenient API access formats; additionally, the short format of Twitter messages means that key themes in messages can be more easily identified.

Twitter itself does some of this, of course, with its ‘trending topics’ (also broken down for specific geographical regions); further, it is possible to identify the links which are shared as part of tweets, of course, as well as identifying hashtags, @replies, and retweets. And tweets are exactly timestamped, allowing for close analysis of temppral developments.

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 final session for the day at ECPR 2011 (well, before we go and hear from the President of Iceland) has a distinct Twitter theme, and starts with Greg Elmer. His focus is on the use of Twitter in the Canadian election debate of 2008, and on the question of how Twitter contributes to intensifying the permanent election campaign.

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.