Politics and Web 2.0

The Participation Gap

Peter Dahlgren, J. Paulo Serra, Gisela Goncalves

• Publisher: Vernon Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781622731091
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

A point of departure for this book is the paradox between the seemingly limitless promise modern web technologies hold for enhanced political communication and their limited actual contribution. Empirical evidence indicates that neither citizens nor political parties are taking full advantage of online platforms to advance political participation. This is particularly evident when considering the websites of political parties, which have taken on two main functions: i) Disseminating information to citizens and journalists about the history, structure, programme and activities of the party; ii) Monitoring citizens’ opinions in regard to different political questions and policy proposals that are under discussion. Despite the integration of websites into political parties’ “permanent campaigns” (Blumenthal), television continues to be seen as the core medium in political communication and one-way and top-down communication strategies still prevail. In other words, it is still “business as usual”. This book questions whether Web 2.0 could help enhance citizens’ political participation. It offers a critical examination of the current state of the art from diverse perspectives, highlights persisting gaps in our knowledge and identifies a promising stream of further research. The ambition is to stimulate debate around the party-citizen "participation mismatch" and the role and place of modern web technologies in this setting.

Each of the included chapters provide valuable explorations of the ways in which political parties motivate, make use of and are shaped by citizen participation in the Web 2.0 era. Diverse perspectives are employed, drawing examples from several European political systems and offering analytical insights at both the individual/micro level and at broader, macro or inter-societal systems level. Taken together, they offer a balanced and thought-provoking account of the political participation gap, its causes and consequences for political communication and democratic politics, as well as pointing the way to new forms of contemporary political participation.

Chapter 1

Introduction

J. Paulo Serra and Gisela Gonçalves

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The starting point of this book is the paradoxical state of the art regarding political communication’s potential and pitfalls in the Web 2.0 era.¹ In fact, empirical evidence has shown that neither citizens nor political parties have been taking full advantage of online features in regard to political participation. This is particularly evident in the case of political parties’ websites, which have taken on two main functions: i) Disseminating information to citizens and journalists about the history, structure, programme and activities of the party; ii) Monitoring citizens’ opinions in regard to different political questions and policy proposals that are under discussion. This means that, in spite of the integration of websites into political parties’ “permanent campaigns” (Blumenthal), TV continues to be seen as the core medium in political communication and thus one-way and top-down communication strategies still prevail. In other words, it is “business as usual”.

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Several issues arise from this context. With this book, we aim to keep the debate around the party-citizen “participation” mismatch alive. Ultimately, we consider it important to inquire as to whether Web 2.0 could help citizens’ political participation or if a new research stream should be identified. The chapters of this book respond to that challenge and provide valuable explorations of how political parties face the digital online apparatus regarding citizen participation at micro and macro level. The micro level involves research on an individual level, mainly focusing on the practices of individuals, while the macro level is more aimed at an analysis of broader, inter-societal systems. Within the 6 chapters gathered in this book, both levels of analysis are presented and intertwined, which leads to an overarching and thought-provoking discussion about the political participation gap, its causes and consequences for political communication and democratic politics, as well as new forms of political participation in contemporaneity.

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The first chapter in the volume critically reflects on the history of communication studies, often focused on the effects of the media, to demonstrate how some characteristics of Web 2.0 provide elements for a communication theory that is able to provide a framework for social changes and the implications of communication processes in social semiosis, i.e. the semiosis of mediatization. In “In search of a return to communication (studies) as a factor of social change: Web 2.0 and political participation”, Giovandro Marcos Ferreira, from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, is concerned with demonstrating the importance of the community, exercising citizenship on and over the internet, and its links with other institutions that are present in the public space. In particular, the author reflects on how the new wider public space can include what are known as “extimate” operations – a play on words that means externalizing the intimate. In other words, it is a space often frequented by emotion, intimacy and passion in public discussions.

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Joaquín Lopez del Ramo, from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain, presents “Descriptive indicators of photojournalistic treatment of political leaders from the standpoint of content analysis”. With this research, he uses the content analysis methodology to obtain in-depth, exhaustive and relevant data on how photojournalism deals with political leaders. Moreover, he underlines how stereotypes, ideological bias and an excess or abuse of ”clichés”, especially during electoral campaigns, may explain the distance between the public and politicians, by broadcasting the impression of a prefabricated image, hollow rhetoric or even falseness.

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The Spanish political party Podemos, new on the European scene, is the focus of the chapter authored by Karen Sanders, from CEU San Pablo University and the IESE Business School, Spain. In “The emergence of Spain’s Podemos (We Can) Party: Challenges for political communication practice and study” the author discusses how Podemos and other political groups and the popular distrust of mainstream politicians and political parties have placed the phenomenon of political populism firmly on the Spanish political and public agenda. Moreover, the author discusses how Podemos’ highly professional approach to political communication, using both traditional and social media to great effect, has at the same time sought to democratize its communication. This leads to an interesting debate about the so-called “false dichotomy”, according to which professional campaigns are seen as somehow incompatible with democratic communication that empowers the citizen.

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The concept of cosmopolitanism and its importance for understanding the modern transnational world is at the core of the chapter by Peter Dahlgren, from Lund University, Sweden, who critically analyses its utility in helping to understand the conditions for political activism in the context of a global civil society. The essay “Cosmopolitanism, media and global civil society: From moral to political agency” begins with reflections on global activism and stresses that much of the literature on cosmopolitanism comprises a normative discourse, asserting a moral obligation to global Others. The author then attempts to make the transition from moral to political engagement, and argues for the notion of civic cosmopolitanism.

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Evandro Oliveira, from Leipzig University and the University of Minho, together with Gisela Gonçalves, from the University of Beira Interior, centre their research on the Portuguese Parliament’s online communication to reflect on how social media is being used to foster interaction and dialogue between citizens and Members of Parliament. In “Talk to me and I will talk for you”, the authors anchor their research in the sociological context of social media communication and its relationship with online political communication and relationship management studies from a political public relations perspective. The main findings obtained with a multimethod approach suggest that the level of professionalization of MPs’ online communication is low and that the internet’s dialogical promise has not yet materialized in the Portuguese parliamentary realm.

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Completing the volume, “New media and politics: citizens’ participation in the websites of Portuguese political parties: main results”, is a chapter in which J. Paulo Serra and Gisela Gonçalves, from the University of Beira Interior, Portugal, present the main findings and discuss the main results obtained throughout the various stages of the three-year implementation of the “New media and politics: citizen participation in the websites of Portuguese political parties” project. It aimed to answer to the question ‘What is the degree of correspondence between the participation that the websites of the Portuguese political parties allow citizens and citizens’ expectations about their participation in non-electoral periods?”. By using multiple methods of data collection and analysis (content analysis, controlled experiments, semi-structured interviews, web-based surveys and focus groups), the authors conclude that there is a degree of total correspondence. However, as they also highlight, this affirmative answer hides a doubly negative one: i) the political parties’ websites do not provide citizens with real participation, but only a simulation of participation, with persuasive and propagandistic objectives; ii) citizens do not expect the political parties’ websites to allow them more participation than they already do, since what citizens mainly want from the websites is information about the parties.

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Finally, we hope that this volume achieves our main goal: to enrich the debate and open new avenues in the study of political participation and Web 2.0. We thank all the contributors, reviewers and thoughtful critics without whose contributions this book would not have been possible.

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The Editors

Chapter 2

In search of a return to communication (studies) as a factor of social change: Web 2.0 and political participation

Giovandro Marcos Ferreira

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“The unknown is found at the frontiers of the sciences”

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Marcel Mauss

On the standard history of the communication field (on the effects of theory)

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Different communication handbooks study a range of approaches with little overlap among them. In general, the smallest core features found in many handbooks are studies on effects. Elihu Katz states in presentations that he does not know what the object of study of communication is, although he knows what his object of study is in the field of communication – effects. When he says this, he somehow reveals the importance that those studies have had throughout his life and for several researchers in the United States and other countries in the world, highlighting part of the history of communication theories.

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There is a standard history of communication theories that views communication studies above all from the bias of effects. It sometimes polarizes and reduces the research’s past to “the apocalyptic and integrated”, as Umberto Eco (1978) put it simply in 1964. This perspective of the history of communication theories departs from parallel studies in the field of communication and focuses on reporting the research of prevailing studies.

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It is important to point out the contexts that support this perspective since the USA’s preparation to enter the Second World War and, later, the period marked by the Cold War. An important aspect in this demarche that consolidates the prevailing paradigm was the Rockefeller Foundation Communication Seminar from September 1939 to June 1940. In a broader sense, it would be interesting and necessary to have more in-depth studies on the influence of foundations (Rockefelle...