study: eParticipation Research, a case study on political online debate in Austria

In case you read German, this is a neat study on online political debate in Austria, by Christian Fuchs.

ICT&S | eParticipation Research: "eParticipation Research. A Case Study on Political Online Debate in Austria"

eParticipation is a term referring to the methods, tools, practices, and concepts of employing ICTs within politics, and is related to the tradition of participatory, self-organized democracy and grassroots communication and discussion processes. An analysis of the websites of important political actors in Austria showed that political institutions and parties mainly practice forms of representative digital democracy, whereas civil society groups seem to be more inclined towards eParticipation. A case study on eParticipation in Austria was conducted by analysing debates in a political online discussion board. The focus of interest was on interactivity, rationality, political identity, and political values. The sociological method of empirical content analysis was employed.
79,6% of the messages were assessed as interactive responses. Hence a vast majority of users in this case study has understood and practices the networked potentials of the internet. In most postings users avoided a clear identification with political ideologies, politicians, or parties (84,1%), a minority of 15,9% of all postings showed a moderate or strong political affiliation. A majority of 60,8% of these politically affiliated postings
contained elements characteristic for right-wing worldviews, especially xenophobic and nationalist arguments. A percentage of 68,8 of the postings was rational in the sense that arguments for opinions were provided. 73,0% fulfilled the validity claim of normative rightness. But within the remaining set of 31,2% irrational and 27,0% normatively false postings, insults, threats, prejudices, and hatred were heavily present. Political values that were of particular importance in this case study are economic efficiency, nation, home, equity, and democracy. There was a strong clustering of postings: A small minority of users (11,9%) posted each more than 30 messages and accounted for a total of 50,7% of all postings, whereas a majority of users (58,2%) posted only 1-5 messages and accounted for only 10,5% of all postings.

If you don't, here is an English version in PDF format which should do the trick.

The full ref is:

Fuchs, Christian (2006) eParticipation Research: A Case Study on Political Online Debate in Austria. Salzburg: ICT&S Center. ISSN 1990-8563.

Enjoy.

comunicazione politica: special issue on e-democracy

I am very glad this is finally out. 'This' is a special issue on e-democracy published by the Italian journal Comunicazione Politica, Vol. 7 n. 1 2007.

It features articles from Mauro Calise, Philippe Schmitter, Francesco Amoretti, Rosanna De Rosa and a few others, including yours truly.

Here's the table fo contents:

What is (not) e-democracy
Mauro Calise

dossier: e-democracy

E-democracy and Eu-democracy: a Meditated Experiment
By Philippe C. Schmitter

Of Windows, Triangles and Circles: the Political Economy in the Discourse of
Electronic Democracy
By Wainer Lusoli

The Digital Revolution and the European Constitutionalisation Processes: EDemocracy
Between Ideology and Institutional Practices
By Francesco Amoretti

Weblogs and Processes of Formation of Public Opinion
By Rosanna De Rosa

The World Summit on the Information Society: exercises of e-governance between
“place spaces” and “flux spaces”
By Claudia Padovani and Bart Cammaerts

Challenges and Opportunities of e-democratization in East Europe
By Mara Morini

Tools

Tra e-democracy ed e-government: definizioni e percorsi di ricerca
Monica Zuccarini

Book reviews

Rachel K. Gibson, Andrea Römmele & Stephan J. Ward (a cura di) (2004). Electronic Democracy. Mobilisation, organisation and participation via new Icts.
FORTUNATO MUSELLA

Lawrence Lessig (2005). Cultura Libera. Un equilibrio fra anarchia e controllo, contro l’estremismo della proprietà intellettuale.
TOMMASO EDEROCLITE

Perri 6. E-governance. Styles of political judgment in the information age polity.
ANNARITA CRISCITIELLO

Jayne Rodgers (2003). Spatializing international politics: analysing activism on the Internet.
MAURO SANTANIELLO

International outlook

Digital policies: overview of an e-volution
Silvia Bolgherini

Internet resources
Mauro Santaniello

You can read the Introduction here, penned by Calise, about what e-democracy is not. A few things, as it happens. The journal website includes all abstracts in English, and a link to the full text in Italian form the publisher's website.

The English version of my article [Windows, triangles and loops] can be found here.

citizen calling: an e-democracy initiative

This is one of the latest initiatives from the Hansard Society and the Home Affairs Select Committee, in case you have missed it. Citizen calling, in a nutshell, tries to get young people think about crime and the Criminal Justice System, and feed their opinion using text messages.

This is 'Citizen Calling' - an experiment to see whether mobile phones are a good way for people and Parliament to interact.

The topic is young people and the criminal justice system. The Home Affairs Select Committee wants your help to define how Parliament and the Government should look at the issue.

Thought bubbles

The MPs on the Committee have set 5 questions for you to think about:

1. What are your experiences of crime in your area?
2. Are some groups of young people more likely to be involved in crime than others?
3. Which factors lead young people to break the law?
4. What can be done to discourage young people from committing crime?
5. How far do the public's opinions about young people and crime reflect reality?

The idea is that you use your mobile to send your views in as either txt, video, audio or image msgs. Here's more info 'about how it works'.

This is a great opportunity for young people in the UK and very important to the MPs.

Sort of what we have been trying to do with Criminology students here, only the medium was a dissertation... Maybe in medio stat virtus, we need to find somewhere in between 165 characters and 10K words as an ideal space for engagement. Uhm, I will give that some thought.

conference

Quite a bit of e-democracy discussed at the World e-gov Forum, in Issy les Moulineaux, France. There are panels on citizen journalism and blogging, digital inclusion and open source solutions for e-government.

Anyone going?

research: log on, tune off?

Today I've come across a new piece of research on the relation between time spent online, news browsing and offline political activism. Some highlights from the Maxwell Poll on Civic Engagement and Inequality:

Occasional use of the Internet to gather news, as opposed to frequent use or no use at all, is associated with higher levels of political activity.

This relation holds up across a variety of political activities, including contacting public officials (by any means), attending political events, contributing money, working in political campaigns, and even voting.

Occasional Internet users consistently reported the highest levels of participation; frequent users usually reported the second-highest levels; non-users usually reported the lowest levels.

A statistical analysis of all these factors considered together indicates that the association between participation and categories of Internet use holds up, controlling for age and gender. In fact, the association becomes even stronger when controlling for age. Controlling for age, for example, an occasional Internet user is 3.3 times more likely to report having attended a political event relative to someone who never uses the Internet, while a frequent Internet user is 2.1 times more likely.

Read the full article from Grant Reeher to know more. Decide for yourself regarding modelling, significance and variables included. Intriguing, as it both corroborates and challenges some of the research we have conducted.

conference: Italian Political Science Association [papers on e-politics]

I think I should flag this for non Italians. This is the annual conference of the Italian Political Science Association [SISP].

Conference panels [for browsing]

Paper room [for searching]

Most papers are available for downloading. A number of works were presented regarding e-democracy and e-participation; some have to do with the role of the Internet in the 2006 Italian election. Some provide different perspecives on onine politics, outside the traditional Anglo-Saxon mould [I'm guilty as anyone else here].

Some perks below. Enjoy.

PANEL: Electronic citizenship: challenges and dilemmas
Organisers: Francesco Amoretti (Università di Salerno, amoretti@unisa.it) e Rosanna De Rosa (Università di Napoli Federico II, shine@netfly.it)

Session I:

Chairs: Rosanna De Rosa (Università di Napoli Federico II, shine@netfly.it)
1) Francesco Amoretti (Università di Salerno, amoretti@unisa.it), E-democracy and International Organizations Theoretical and Methodological Issues

2) Anna Carola Freschi (Università di Bergamo, anna.freschi@unibg.it) Luci ed ombre della policy italiana sulla e-democracy. Il possibile superamento del modello 'technology driven'

3) Claudia Padovani (Università di Padova, claudia.padovani@unipd.it), Arjuna Tuzzi (Università di Padova, arjuna.tuzzi@unipd.it), Giorgia Nesti (Università di Padova, giorgia.nesti@unipd.it), Matteo Cernison (Università di Padova, cinus@libero.it), The social life of “e-democracy” in the European web sphere

Discussant: Marzia Antenore (Università di Sassari, antenore@uniss.it)

Sessione II:

Chair: Francesco Amoretti (Università di Salerno, amoretti@unisa.it)

4) Rosanna De Rosa (Università di Napoli Federico II, shine@netfly.it), Processing e-democracy. Toward a substantial configuration of the living (e)democracy

5) Cristian Vaccari (Università di Bologna, vaccari@spbo.unibo.it), Informazione senza partecipazione: La comunicazione on line dei partiti italiani nelle elezioni 2006

6) Marzia Antenore (Università degli Studi di Sassari, antenore@uniss.it) e Laura Iannelli (Università La Sapienza di Roma, laura.iannelli@uniroma1.it), Opinion leader on line. Il ruolo dell’influenza personale nella campagna per le politiche 2006

Discussant: Mauro Calise (Università di Napoli Federico II, mauro.calise@unina.it)

PANEL: La comunicazione politica internazionale: temi e prospettive di ricerca

Organisers: Claudia Padovani (Università di Padova, claudia.padovani@unipd.it) e Alvaro Duque (Università di Torino, alvaro.duque@unito.it)

Session I:

Chair: Claudia Padovani (Università di Padova, claudia.padovani@unipd.it)

1) Elena Carli (Università di Torino, elena.carli@unito.it), New global e new media: un approccio comunicativo all’analisi dei nuovi movimenti sociali

2) Stefania Milan (Istituto Universitario Europeo e Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research, stefania.milan@iue.it), Risposte collettive a processi di communication governance transnazionali: riflessioni teoriche e qualche spunto empirico

Discussant: Andrew Calabrese (Università del Colorado, andrew.calabrese@colorado.edu)

Session II:

Chair: Andrew Calabrese (Università del Colorado, andrew.calabrese@colorado.edu)

3) Elena Pavan (University of Trento, elena.pavan@soc.unitn.it), Mismatching of publics? Internet users profiling for an efficient communication strategy

4) Alvaro Duque (Università di Torino, alvaro.duque@unito.it), Media watchdog groups and new forms of political communication

Discussant: Andrew Calabrese (Università del Colorado, andrew.calabrese@colorado.edu)

Session III:

Chair: Alvaro Duque (Università di Torino, alvaro.duque@unito.it)

5) Patrizia Laurano (Università di Roma La Sapienza, patrizia.laurano@uniroma1.it), Public e Media diplomacy: il ruolo dei media nel nuovo ordine mondiale

6) Chiara De Franco (Istituto Universitario Europeo, Chiara.DeFranco@IUE.it), L’influenza dei Network Televisivi Internazionali sulle politiche di guerra. Kosovo 1999 e Afghanistan 2001

7) Andreu Casero (Universidad Jaume I, Castellón, Spain, casero@fis.uji.es), The television construction of a ‘exceptional case’: public opinion and political strategies in the terrorist attacks of 11-M in Madrid

Discussant: Andrew Calabrese (Università del Colorado, andrew.calabrese@colorado.edu)

comment box not working

I just realized that the comment page on my website [www.lusoli.info] has not functioned properly for some two weeks. If you tried to get in touch during this time, please try again [of course, of course I read all my messages not mentioning cialis].

Sorry, tehcnologies silly season.

a fresh beginning

With the new academic season, time to update the site and the blog with some recent news. First, I will try and get a new picture on the site, the goatee has long gone to acquire a more sober look. Whatever, as my students would say. More to come on recent papers, presentations and publications. There a lot of ferment in the e-democracy / e-participation arena right now, I will try to track some relevant developments in the next few weeks.

To all of you: welcome back, and stay tuned.

Wainer