Online Politics

This is a PDF / powerpoint of the Research Paper titled, "Women's Shrinking Political Space on Twitter: An Autoethnography from India" presented at The International Conference on Social Media & Society (#SMsociety), held from 16 to 18 July, 2024 at the London College of Communication.

The 2024 is co-organized by the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Digital Cultures and Economies Research Hub at the University of the Arts London.

Over the last decade, there has been an ever increasing number of citizens using online media to participate in and engage with politics. Social media sites and online blogs have enabled new opportunities for interactive and user-centered political experiences. Currently, there is a general scarcity of psychometrically validated and standardized instruments that assess politically-related constructs in the field of political sciences. The main aim of the present study was to develop a standardized psychometric tool to assess online political engagement among the general population that is valid and reliable. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a 7-item Online Political Engagement Scale (OPEnS) that assesses various online political actions people engage with during election campaigns. To develop the scale, data from the 2010 British Election Survey were used, and a total of 3,075 people participated in an online survey, post-election. The main findings obtained...

En este nuevo título de Opiniones y Actitudes se presentan los principales resultados del estudio 2736 del CIS. En él se incluyen indicadores relativos tanto a los usos de internet (políticos y no políticos) como a las principales actitudes políticas y dimensiones tradicionales del comportamiento político. Los autores de esta investigación dan respuesta a los siguientes interrogantes cruciales que, hasta este momento, no habían podido ser analizados para el caso español: en qué medida los ciudadanos españoles utilizan ...

This book focuses on the referendums against water privatization in Italy and explores how activists took to social media, ultimately convincing twenty-seven million citizens to vote. Investigating the relationship between social movements and internet-related activism during complex campaigns, this book examines how a technological evolution — the increased relevance of social media platforms — affected in very different ways organizations with divergent characteristics, promoting at the same time decentralized communication practices, and new ways of coordinating dispersed communities of people. Matteo Cernison combines and adapts a wide set of methods, from social network analysis to digital ethnography, in order to explore in detail how digital activism and face-to-face initiatives interact and overlap. He argues that the geographical scale of actions, the role played by external media professionals, and the activists’ perceptions of digital technologies are key elements that co...

ARE WE ALL #NASTYWOMEN? THE RHETORIC OF FEMINIST HASHTAGS AND RESPECTABILITY POLITICS Kimberly Lynette Goode Old Dominion University, 2018 Director: Dr. Candace Epps-Robertson In a time where misogynistic phrases from political figures such as Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are being reclaimed by feminists on Twitter, it is crucial for feminist rhetorical scholars to pay close attention to the rhetorical dynamics of such reclamation efforts. In particular, the reclamation of the phrase nasty woman via #NastyWoman, #NastyWomen, #IamANastyWomanBecause, #IamANastyWoman, etc. is a fruitful site for analysis. In this thesis, the reclamation efforts of Twitter feminists will be analyzed to gauge the underlying discourse at work in the hashtag. Based on the origins of the hashtag and the way the tweeters have come to define the term nasty woman, the hashtag is a discourse of respectability politics. Meaning, the tweeters are not merely reclaiming the phrase to repudiate Donald Trump, emp...

This article focuses on the use of Computer-Mediated Communication by the movement for global justice, with special attention to the organisations involved in the movement and its activists. We examined data collected during two supranational protest events: the anti-G8 protest in Genoa in July 2001 and the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence in November 2002. In both cases, we have complemented an analysis of the Genoa Social Forum and ESF websites with a survey of activists, including questions about their use of the Internet. We then examine hypotheses about changes new technologies introduce in collective action. The Internet empowers social movements in: (a) purely instrumental ways (an additional logistical resource for ‘resource-poor’ actors), (b) a protest function (direct expression of protest); (c) symbolically (as a medium favouring identification processes in collective actors) and (d) cognitively (informing and sensitising public opinion).

Over the last decade, there has been an ever increasing number of citizens using online media to participate in and engage with politics. Social media sites and online blogs have enabled new opportunities for interactive and user-centered political experiences. Currently, there is a general scarcity of psychometrically validated and standardized instruments that assess politically-related constructs in the field of political sciences. The main aim of the present study was to develop a standardized psychometric tool to assess online political engagement among the general population that is valid and reliable. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a 7-item Online Political Engagement Scale (OPEnS) that assesses various online political actions people engage with during election campaigns. To develop the scale, data from the 2010 British Election Survey were used, and a total of 3,075 people participated in an online survey, post-election. The main findings obtained...

Among the many so called microblogging services that allow their respective users to describe their current status in short posts, Twitter is probably among the most popular and well known. Since its launch in 2006, Twitter use has evolved and is increasingly ...

Through three case studies of online political activism on Facebook, this article conceptualizes the deployment of issue publics (Lippmann, 1993; Marres, 2005) on Facebook. We argue that issue publics on Facebook come into being through a specific set of double articulations of code and politics that link and reshape informational processes, communicational constraints and possibilities, and political practices in different and sometimes contradictory ways. Using Maurizio Lazzarato’s exploration of immaterial labour (2004), we demonstrate the need to further understand the networking of publics and their issues by considering how online platforms provide the material, communicational, and social means for a public to exist and therefore define the parameters for assembling issues and publics and circumscribe a horizon of political agency.

This article addresses some of the issues concerning the trans-nationalisation of collective action by focusing on the White Overalls and the Disobedients and their participation in three transnational cycles of protest that took place at different geographical levels – local, macro-regional, and global – between the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s. The first part briefly discusses some historical, transnational precursors to global collective action and will argue that the Global Justice Movement was a global and original actor with reference to three dimensions of contentious action: the organisational dimension, framing processes and campaigns. The second part focuses on the origins and identity of the White Overalls, while the third describes their analysis of globalization and looks at how the scale of action has shifted. The analysis of these three cycles of protest shows that the global shift has not superseded other scales of action, but rather has been interwov...

A partir de un análisis secundario de los microdatos procedentes del estudio 2.889 del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas de España, pretendemos observar la posible relación entre el uso de Internet por parte de los jóvenes y sus prácticas políticas. En concreto, las variables disponibles permiten estudiar tres aspectos fundamentales: si existe relación entre la frecuencia de uso de Internet y la participación política; si el grado de participación política en el espacio virtual se correlaciona con la participación fuera de este espacio; y si se observan diferencias en términos de participación política online según variables sociodemográficas. Entre los resultados obtenidos podemos destacar la existencia de una relación estadísticamente significativa entre una mayor frecuencia de uso de Internet y una mayor implicación política tanto en el espacio virtual como offline.

Jurgen Habermas introduced the public sphere is a model and measure for democratic transformation. His idea-while narrating the historical sequence-of the public sphere is to connect it to the story of the modern democracy in Europe. When the public sphere became accessible to the public, away from the kings' courts is the beginning of the modern democracy. People were able to participate freely in discussing public affairs, and express their opinions. This deliberation has led to for public opinion, and form the power to mobilize the public. With the emerging Internet Communication Technologies (ICT), especially the interactive channels of communication, the public deliberation of sociopolitical issues has expanded to a new, virtual sphere. This emerging sphere offers more inclusive, relatively free, and very diverse space, which creates an opportunity, but yet a challenge to forming public opinion. This paper suggests that internet activism, just like real life activism, and through networking can solve the problem by mainstreaming, explaining and managing online content that give momentum and re-invent the public social and economic power.
قدم يورغن هابرماس فكرة الفضاء العام كنموذج ومقياس للتحول الديمقراطي. وفكرة هابرماس من خلال سرد التسلسل التاريخي لتكوّن الفضاء العام هي الربط بين تطوّره كمساحة حرة للتعبير مع تطور الديمقراطية الحديثة في أوروبا. فعندما أصبح الفضاء العام متاحا لمشاركة الناس في الحوار حول قضاياهم العامة، والتعبير عن آرائهم، بعيداً عن بلاط الملوك، بدأ الرأي العام بالتشكّل، وبدأت القدرة على تحريك الناس واشتراكهم في العملية السياسية والاجتماعية في الظهور. ومع تطور تكنولوجيا الاتصال عبر الانترنت، وخصوصا قتوات الاتصال التفاعلي، دخل نقاش القضايا السياسية والاجتماعية إلى مساحة افتراضية جديدة، وفرت فرصة لانضواء قدر أكبر من الناس في نقاشاتها الافتراضية الجديدة. ويوفر هذا الفضاء العام الجديد، المجاني نسبيا، والمتعدد المحتوى بشكل كبير فرصة للتبادل المفتوح للأفكار، ولكنه يواجه أيضا تحدياً نابعا من طبيعته التي تعكس تعددية كبيرة، مما يؤدي إلى كم هائل من المعلومات المبعثرة التي تشتت الرأي العام. وتقترح هذه المقالة أن النشاط Activism في الفضاءالافتراضي  بإمكانه حل المشكلة بإعادة تقديم المعلومات وتفسيرها وتوجيهها بالطرق التي تخدم التحول الديمقراطي، كمشاركة الجمهور وتعزيز دور المجتمع الرقابي لإعادة تكوين قوة الجمهور وتعزيز التحول الديمقراطي. كما تضع أيضا على طاولة النشطاء الاجتماعيين والسياسيين ضرورة حل القضايا الاجتماعية والسياسية بتكوين مجموعات الضغط التي تنظم الجمهور وتشركه في النقاش وتجعل منه قوة سياسية واجتماعية.

La capacidad de intervención de los individuos en el proceso comunicativo de los mass media ha visto modificado su paradigma en los últimos años. En el presente contexto sociotecnológico y cultural, cada uno de nosotros puede interferir en el flujo informativo y cuestionar o legitimar cualquier mensaje que se produce en nuestra sociedad. La educación no es ajena a este cambio y debe preguntarse cómo se genera el flujo informativo teniendo en cuenta si el individuo como audiencia activa puede ser un nuevo filtro y formar, efectivamente, parte del proceso legitimador de la información y de la autogestión de su herencia cultural.

La movilizacion politica a actividades no electorales es un elemento central para entender por que unas personasparticipan en actividades politicas, mientras que otras no lo hacen. A pesar de ello, ha sido estudiadamuy raramente en encuestas. Esta nota de investigacion analiza una pregunta sobre movilizacion politicapara participar en manifestaciones, que fue incluida en la encuesta sobre “Usos politicos de Internet enEspana”, realizada en 2007 (2736 CIS). En primer lugar, se discuten las posibles formulaciones de un itemsobre movilizacion politica y se presentan los resultados obtenidos en la encuesta del CIS. En segundo lugar,se presentan analisis que muestran la importancia de considerar la movilizacion politica como un factor criticopara explicar la participacion. Al introducir el indicador estudiado, el impacto de variables clasicasexplicativas de la participacion desaparece. Concluimos que es importante incluir indicadores sobre movilizacionen los estudios sobre participacion ...

Although an association between congruent exposure to ideological news and affective polarization is well documented, we know little about the mechanisms underlying it. This article explores two possible mechanisms: (1) acceptance of media frames and (2) the effects on the audience’s reasoning, specifically, their knowledge of claims supporting their and the other camp’s positions. Mediation hypotheses were tested on data collected using an online survey of users of ideological and mainstream Israeli news websites ( N = 788). Op-eds from these websites ( N = 259) were content-analyzed to determine the frames used by ideological and mainstream websites. Results demonstrate that acceptance of frames plays a more important role than audience reasoning in mediating the effect of selective exposure on political polarization.

Abstract: Through three case studies of online political activism on Facebook, this article conceptualizes the deployment of issue publics (Lippmann, 1993; Marres, 2005) on Facebook. We argue that issue publics on Facebook come into being through a specific set of double articulations of code and politics that link and reshape informational processes, communicational constraints and possibil-ities, and political practices in different and sometimes contradictory ways. Using Maurizio Lazzarato’s exploration of immaterial labour (2004), we demon-strate the need to further understand the networking of publics and their issues by considering how online platforms provide the material, communicational, and social means for a public to exist and therefore define the parameters for assembling issues and publics and circumscribe a horizon of political agency.

In dem Beitrag wird das Problem der Wissensgenerierung, -vermittlung und des Wissensmanagements in sozialmedialen Umgebungen im Web 2.0 aufgegriffen. Es wird dabei angenommen, dass das wichtigste Element der Netzwerkgesellschaft in Bezug auf Web 2.0, das eine durchaus reziproke Kommunikation zulässt, die Einbeziehung der sog. vernetzten/kollektiven Intelligenz der User (Engl. networked intelligence) ist. Eine so verstandene Intelligenz kommt in unterschiedlichen Feldern zum Ausdruck (z. B. Bildung, Medien oder Politik) und bildet sich als Summe aller Beiträge der ‚Bürger‘ der Netzwerkgesellschaft im Internet. Veränderungen in Lernprozessen, in Politik und Wirtschaft unterliegen dabei einem übergeordneten Prinzip des sog. kollaborativen Handelns. Auf solchem Wege entstehen relativ lose themenoder interessenorientierte soziale Netzwerke, deren Mitglieder u. a. an kollaborativen Projekten arbeiten (z. B. an Wikis), gemeinsam diverse Probleme lösen (z. B. auf thematischen Foren oder Blo...

[Ensaio para o Nexo*] Questões sobre imunização de crianças contra o novo coronavírus não são uma tentativa de promover o engajamento cívico da população em torno de uma questão controversa. Nos objetivos, na forma e na substância, o que se nota na consulta pública sobre a vacinação infantil contra a Covid-19 é um procedimento não democrático de mobilização de apoiadores.
*O Nexo não é uma revista acadêmica.

Exploring the cases of India and Ethiopia, this article develops the concept of “extreme speech” to critically analyze the cultures of vitriolic exchange on Internet-enabled media. While online abuse is largely understood as “hate speech,” we make two interventions to problematize the presuppositions of this widely invoked concept. First, extreme speech emphasizes the need to contextualize online debate with an attention to user practices and particular histories of speech cultures. Second, related to context, is the ambiguity of online vitriol, which defies a simple antonymous conception of hate speech versus acceptable speech. The article advances this analysis using the approach of “comparative practice,” which, we suggest, complicates the discourse of Internet “risk” increasingly invoked to legitimate online speech restrictions.

Ein lebendiger politischer Diskurs ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil einer funktionierenden Demokratie. Mit steigenden Nutzerzahlen der sozialen Medien besitzt auch die politische Diskussion, die über diese Plattformen geführt wird, eine zunehmende Bedeutung. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht deshalb die KonsumentInnen von politischer Information über soziale Netzwerke anhand des wenig untersuchten Fallbeispiels Österreich. Unsere Modelle basieren auf einer Sekundärdatenauswertung der Studie Digitalmonitor (N=1.200). Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die NutzerInnen von politischer Information über soziale Netzwerke unter anderem politisch stark interessiert, auf einer Links-Rechts-Skala eher extrem eingestellt sind und ein geringes Vertrauen in traditionelle Medien haben. Der neue Informationskanal sorgt nicht zwangsläufig für einen gleichberechtigteren Zugang zu Information. Für Menschen, die mit dem bisherigen Angebot nicht zufrieden waren, bietet er jedoch eine Alternative.  

Für viele westliche Demokratien wird in den letzten Jahren eine zunehmende Polarisierung der öffentlichen politischen Diskurse und des Parteienspektrums diagnostiziert. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir aktuelle Befunde zur themenspezifischen Polarisierung in Deutschland vor, die wir als Begleiterscheinung des Social Webs interpretieren. Auf der Grundlage der theoretisch plausiblen Vermutung, dass Selektions- und Vernetzungsalgorithmen tatsächlich die Polarisierung von Meinungen zu politischen Themen begünstigen, formulieren wir unsere forschungsleitende Hypothese: "Je stärker Personen Soziale Online-Netzwerke zur Information über politische Themen nutzen, umso stärker werden dadurch ihre politischen Urteile polarisiert." Diese Hypothese wird am Beispiel des Urteils untersucht, das Internetnutzer aus Deutschland zur Migrationspolitik Angela Merkels äußern. Aufgrund der spärlichen empirischen Forschung zu den Bedingungen von Polarisierung durch Medien, untersuchen wir explorati...

En esta nota de investigación se presentan los primeros datos en España sobre los usos políticos de Internet que incluyen consumo de información política, recepción de estímulos movilizadores a través de Internet, y participación política online. Se exploran los datos describiendo los ...