ICTlogy

Notes on the seminar at UOC’s Law and Political Science School Reconsidering the analysis of the uses of ICTs by political parties: an application to the Catalan case, presented by Albert Batlle, Rosa Borge, Ana Sofía Cardenal and Albert Padró-Solanet, after their homonimous communication at the 4th ECPR General Conference in Pisa.

Is there a crisis on political participation?

From 1950 to our days, participation in elections has notably decreased in most developed countries.

Same applies when we look both at the membership/voters ratio and the absolute membership volume.

Electoral volatility — voters changing the party they vote — also increases.

Why those changes?

Positive approach: changes in cleavages that explained vote intention and no longer can so clearly explain vote intention.

Normative approach: crisis of the institutions themselves, citizenship disaffection.

What’s the role of ICTs in this landscape? Regenerate institutions? Empower voters/members? Raise political parties’ accountability? Enhance participation?

Working hypotheses

• Leveling the playing field: ICTs provide an comparative advantage to small parties, but after comes normalization: the bigger the party, the more resources can allocate
• Depending on the typology of the political party, they tend to interact more or less, communicate with their voters.

It seems that the normalization hypotheses is the most concurrent, political parties do not use ICTs to increase communication, and it geographically happens quite homogeneously.

Theoretical approach

Political parties are led/influenced/build by an ideology, an organization and an electoral market (the really exogenous variable). This leads the party to implement a communication strategy that will determine the party’s ICT uses.

Then, test how different indicators (see also paper below) affect the dependent variable: ICT use on political parties.

• Ideology: left parties associated with better participation scores?
• Party organization: mass parties related to resource generation and provision of information?
• Party organization: catch-all parties more related to campaining?
• Electoral market: more preasure to win votes leads to campaining?
• Electoral market: the more the resources and the expectations to obtain them, the more sophisticated the development of websites?

Findings

Normalization hypotheses seems confirmed: bigger/richer parties have better/richer websites… but smaller ones, do also well in their websites, to obtain support, funding… Thus, seems clear that the electoral market is a very important issue in the strategy of ICT use in political parties.

Nevertheless, it seems that ICTs in general — and, specifically, websites — are not a strategic priority of Catalan political parties.

Mass parties seem to be better connected, have better network than catch-all parties.

My questions/comments

Any research on how parties react to the quantity/quality of the communication — Fourth Estate — arena?

Political parties might not find any incentive to enter the conversation, taking into account the classical literature about how political parties behave. BUT, if there really is a Fifth Estate emerging thanks to web 2.0 technologies, wouldn’t it be a “menace” to the traditional way political parties communicate with voters and members? Wouldn’t it be an incentive — i.e. respond to the fifth power — to engage in more communication, participation?

Maybe we should not take political parties as “political parties” but as communication media: information deliverers and opinion generators. And analyze website strategies not as political strategies but communication strategies: look not at the origin — the political parties, their strategies — but at the destiny — the communication arena.

More info

• Batlle, A., Borge, R., Cardenal, A. S. & Padró-Solanet, A. (2007). Reconsidering the analysis of the uses of ICTs by political parties: an application to the Catalan case. Communication presented at the 4th ECPR General Conference. Pisa: ECPR. Retrieved

There’s an ongoing dialogue at the World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies about the Regulatory Frameworks for Improving Access. Amy Mahan kindly asked me to contribute — there are so far very interesting contributions to the debate —, so here comes my opinion.

From infrastructures to content regulation

Marc Raboy defined access (1998) in two ways:

In the broadcasting model, emphasis is placed on the active receiver, on free choice, and access refers to the entire range of products on offer. In the telecommunications model, emphasis is on the sender, on the capacity to get one’s messages out, and access refers to the means of communication.

In my opinion, when talking about accessing the Information Society — and measuring the development of the Information Society — in the last years the stress has been put in the Telecommunications Model: what are the infrastructures and how can they evolve to provide access. The regulation framework has, thus, followed the same path, by focusing on the telecommunications market, technical issues and so.

While necessary, the user is nevertheless usually forgotten in this point of view: digital content and services are just seldom taken into account and only sometimes are the target of specific initiatives to promote them, most of them coming from the public sector: e-Administration, e-Government, e-Health…

Notwithstanding, at least three facts have started to shift the focus from infrastructures towards content and services:

• The increasing maturity of the Information Society, the major deployment — at least in developed countries, but also in most developing ones — of the required infrastructures, and the accompanying legal measures to settle the situation have shown the imbalance between both sides of the scales: the container is regulated, but the content is not.
• The Web 2.0 has, indeed, strengthen the importance of the user and its creation and communications. And this has often happened to the detriment of infrastructures, as most Web 2.0 applications act as substitutes for desktop software and hardware (not connectivity).
• Once the intensity of use of the Internet as reached a certain level, the consequences of this use have come under the spotlight, being human rights (freedom of speech, intimacy, security, etc.) on of the most important ones.

Hence, and keeping in mind that infrastructure regulation is a must, it is time when content and services — i.e. uses — require more attention from policy makers and decision-takers:

• Internet governance
• Net neutrality
• Freedom of speech and censorship
• Digital identity, data protection, right to privacy
• Intellectual property rights in the digital age
• Content and services liability (carrier and/or supplier)
• Jurisdiction of taxes on e-services
• Definition and jurisdiction of cybercrime

Of course, this is not a closed, definitive list. Any suggestions?

Elisabetta Cigognini asks me whether I could draw a list of 10 adjectives — concepts, capacities, competences — that qualify the skills of an expert knower 2.0 or learner 2.0.

Difficult, because I get consciously or unconsciously “intoxicated” by John Palfrey’s list of characteristics of a digital native. I believe that a digital native and a knower/learner 2.0 are overlapping concepts (especially if you take digital native as a “syndrome”, as I do, and not as a generational fingerprint, which makes poor sense in a digitally divided world) but are not exactly the same thing.

You can browse Elisabetta Cigognini’s publications and speeches pages for a good bunch of readings about what a knower/learner 2.0 stands for. Regarding myself, and summing up, what I have in mind is an adult learner, or an expert knower, that, by definition, has left a long track behind that backs his vast knowledge in one — or more — fields, and is intensively using the Internet — specially Web 2.0 apps — to both increase and enhance the reach of his knowledge. Just to put things clear again about digital natives, I believe that:

Digital native = expert knower 2.0 – experience – maturity – general knowledge (+ deep knowledge in one new field of knowledge)

Or, mutatis mutandis:

Expert Knower 2.0 = Digital Native + experience + maturity + general knowledge (- deep knowledge in one new field of knowledge)

Notice the parentheses: as I said, I understand the digital native concept as a syndrome. Thus, some non-generational natives do behave like (almost) perfect digital natives, hence the fact that “deep knowledge in one new field of knowledge” can or cannot be a difference. Experience, maturity and general knowledge are provided only by lifetime spent, which, by definition, is shorter in (generational) digital natives. To me, the expert knower/learner is very close to the definition of the digital settler by John Palfrey / Urs Gasser / David Weinberger.

Going back to the list, I tried and group its points under three categories. Not that I like doing it, but it makes an easier reading and comprehension than just a 10 bullets list. They are not sorted in any way, thus last item is “last but not least” and so:

Technical skills

• English: necessary to access relevant information. English natives will nod proudly and non-natives will deny in anger. Even if things are changing, the fact that English is the lingua franca these days for both science and business, and the fact that the Internet and the Web where born and developed in English-speaking environments has created a deep lag in the amount of information that is available in English or in other languages… combined.
• Digerati: Informational literate: knows where and how to search, how to evaluate relevant information, etc.; Media literate: can manage any type/support of information: text, hypertext, photo, sound, video…; and Technological literate: has advanced technical skills such as general knowledge of HTML, javascript or PHP, knows how a computer, server or the Internet work, how to set up a web site and a domain, etc.
• Multitasker: can do more than one thing at the same time, specially combining job-training-leisure tasks to create a difficult balance. Can also play havoc on the knower/learner if energies/resources are not properly measured/allocated.

Philosophical approach

• Open: Needs sharing (for many reasons: principles, unselfish etichs, pretentious ego, self-esteem, selfish benefits…). Above all, awareness that what you give is what you get, that your wealth is — you are worth — what you contribute to your network.
• Passion to learn: needs knowing. Learning is both a pleasure and a must. Keeps (or tries to keep) him/herself informed and up-to-date.
• Led by the “procrastination principle“: “[to deal] with problems only as they arose—or [leave] them to [other] users to deal with” (read, for instace, Jonathan Zittrain). In other words: do what you are good at and leave the rest to other contributors of your network… and work/learn while you enjoy doing it. Can also play havoc on the knower/learner, as well as multitasking, if priorities or long-term strategies are not properly defined.

Psychologycal/Social aspects

• Networker: can work with different people/teams for different projects. I see it quite different from the teamworker: one team for everything. Networking means that people and resources are assets that allow infinite (in possibilities) and finite (in time) combinations (Yochai Benkler puts it better than I).
• Ubiquitous and always online: no time/space boundaries. People and information are just a click away; not being able to click them (because of being off-line) is not an option.
• Multidisciplinar: other disciplines (than his/her default one) can bring good solutions/information on our problems. And there are many and new problems that can only be explained by a mix of different points of view and approaches.
• Autonomous: can design, plan and lead his own learning; knows what he does not know / needs to learn, who can train or where the information is; can be self-discipline and draw an strategy and path towards his/her own (training, need for information) goals. Actually, doest not really care for what a “discipline” binds inside of it.