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.