Striving behind the shadow: the dawn of Spanish Politics 2.0

Book cover for: Innovating Government. Normative, policy and technological dimensions of modern government

Innovating Government – Normative, policy and technological dimensions of modern government, the book edited by Simone van der Hof and Marga M. Groothuis, has finally seen the light. Its abstract goes as follows:

The aim of this book is to analyze four dimensions of innovating government and the use of new technologies: legal, ethical, policy and technological dimensions. By joining authors from a diversity of backgrounds (law, ethics, public administration, political science, sociology, communications science, information science, and computer science) in one book, readers (academics, policy makers, legislators and others) are confronted with a variety of disciplinary perspectives on persistent themes, like privacy, biometrics, surveillance, e-democracy, electronic government, and identity management, that are central to today’s evolution of new modes of modern government.

I took part in this book with a chapter called Striving behind the shadow: the dawn of Spanish Politics 2.0 on the wake of Spain to Politics 2.0. Though the chapter was initially drafted in 2009 and then corrected and slightly updated in 2010, I am sad to acknowledge that things have not changed that much in Spain since then. Indeed, despite the recent upheavals in Spain around the so called “15M movement” (aka #spanishrevolution), online politics in general have evolved but very slightly, most of the times only in the field of political marketing rather than towards e-participation or e-democracy.

Following you can download a preprint version of the chapter and also scan through the bibliography I used. I am most grateful and definitely in debt with Simone van der Hof and Marga M. Groothuis for their patient endurance through the whole writing and editing progress. If you can read this lines they undoubtedly deserve much credit for it.

Bibliography

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Cantijoch, M. (2009). Reinforcement and mobilization: the influence of the Internet on different types of political participation. Prepared for the seminar Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement? Barcelona, May 28th-30th 2009. Barcelona: IGOP.
Castells, M. (2007). “Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society”. In International Journal of Communication, 1, 238-266. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg Press.
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Criado, J. I. & Martínez Fuentes, G. (2009). “¿Hacia la conquista política de la blogosfera? Blogging electoral en la campaña de los comicios municipales del 2007”. In IDP. Revista de Internet, Derecho y Ciencia Política, (8). Barcelona: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Cristancho, C. & Salcedo, J. (2009). Assessing Internet Mobilization – Integrating Web Analysis and Survey Data. Prepared for the seminar Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement? Barcelona, May 28th-30th 2009. Barcelona: IGOP.
Davies, T. & Peña Gangadharan, S. (Eds.) (2009). Online Deliberation. Design, Research, and Practice. Standford: CSLI Publications.
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Elmer, G., Langlois, G., Devereaux, Z., Ryan, P. M., McKelvey, F., Redden, J. & Curlew, A. B. (2009). ““Blogs I Read”: Partisanship and Party Loyalty in the Canadian Political Blogosphere”. In Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 6 (2), 156 – 165. London: Routledge.
Fleishman-Hillard (2009). European Parliament Digital Trends. Brussels: Fleishman-Hillard.
Franco Álvarez, G. & García Martul, D. (2008). “Los efectos de las redes ciudadanas en la campaña electoral del 9-M”. In Ámbitos, (17), 25-36. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla.
Gibson, R. K. (2009). “New Media and the Revitalisation of Politics”. In Representation, 45 (3), 289 – 299. London: Routledge.
Gonzalez-Bailon, S. (2008). The inner digital divide: How the web contributes (or not) to political equality. Working Paper Number 2008-02. Oxford: University of Oxford.
Hara, N. (2008). “Internet use for political mobilization: Voices of the participants”. In First Monday, 7 July 2008, 13 (7). [online]: First Monday.
Hillygus, S. & Shields, T. (2007). The Persuadable Voter: Campaign Strategy, Wedge Issues, And The Fragmentation Of American Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Howard, P. N. (2005). “Deep Democracy, Thin Citizenship: The Impact of Digital Media in Political Campaing Strategy”. In The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597 (1), 153-170. London: SAGE Publications.
Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (2004). Political Influentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign. Washington, DC: The George Washington University.
Jacobson, D. (1999). “Impression Formation in Cyberspace”. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5 (1). Washington, DC: International Communication Association.
Jensen, M. J. (2009). Political Participation, Alienation, and the Internet in the United States and Spain. Prepared for the seminar Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement? Barcelona, May 28th-30th 2009. Barcelona: IGOP.
Katz, J. E., Rice, R. E. & Aspden, P. (2001). “The Internet, 1995-2000: Access, Civic Involvement, and Social Interaction”. In American Behaviorial Scientist, 45 (3), 405-419. London: SAGE Publications.
Kelly, J., Fisher, D. & Smith, M. (2005). Debate, Division, and Diversity: Political Discourse Networks in USENET Newsgroups. Paper prepared for the Online Deliberation Conference 2005. Palo Alto: Stanford University.
Kelly, J. (2008). Pride of Place: Mainstream Media and the Networked Public Sphere. Media Re:public Side Papers. Cambridge: Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Kirkman, G., Cornelius, P. K., Sachs, J. D. & Schwab, K. (Eds.) (2002). Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lenhart, A. (2009). Adults and social network websites. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Morozov, E. (2009). “How dictators watch us on the web”. In Prospect, December 2009, (165). London: Prospect Publishing Limited.
Norris, P. & Curtice, J. (2006). “If You Build a Political Web Site, Will They Come? The Internet and Political Activism in Britain”. In International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 2 (2), 1-21. Hershey: IGI Global.
Noveck, B. S. (2005). “A democracy of groups”. In First Monday, 10 (11). [online]: First Monday.
Noveck, B. S. (2008). “Wiki-Government”. In Democracy, Winter 2008, (7), 31-43. Washington, DC: Democracy, a Journal of Ideas, Inc..
O’Reilly, T. (2005). What Is Web 2.0. Sebastopol: O’Reilly.
Oates, S., Owen, D. & Gibson, R. K. (Eds.) (2006). The Internet and Politics. Citizens, Voters and Activists. New York: Routledge.
Observatorio Nacional de las Telecomunicaciones y la Sociedad de la Información (2009). Evolución de los usos de Internet en España 2009. Madrid: ONTSI.
Padró-Solanet, A. (2009). The Strategic Adaptation of Party Organizations to the New Information and Communication Technologies: A Study of Catalan and Spanish Parties. Paper prepared for presentation at the Workshop 20: “Parliaments, Parties and Politicians in Cyberspace” ECPR Joint Sessions Lisbon, April 14-19 2009. Lisbon: ECPR.
Peña-López, I. (2008). Ciudadanos Digitales vs. Insituciones Analógicas. Conference imparted in Candelaria, May 9th, 2008 at the iCities Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation. Candelaria: ICTlogy.
Peña-López, I. (2009a). Goverati: New competencies for politics, government and participation. Seminar at the Course: Digital Competences: Knowledge, skills and attitudes for the Network Society. CUIMPB, 16th July 2009. Barcelona: ICTlogy.
Peña-López, I. (2010). “Goverati: e-Aristocrats or the delusion of e-Democracy”. In Parycek, P. & Prosser, A. (Eds.),
EDem2010. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on E-Democracy, 23-39. Keynote speech. Wien: Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft.
Pew Research Center for The People & The Press (2008). Social Networking and Online Videos Take Off. Internet’s Broader Role in Campaign 2008. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
Peytibí, F. X., Rodríguez, J. A. & Gutiérrez-Rubí, A. (2008). “La experiencia de las elecciones generales del 2008”. In IDP. Revista de Internet, Derecho y Ciencia Política, (7). Barcelona: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Robles Morales, J. M. (2008). Ciudadanía Digital. Un acercamiento a las causas de la ideología de los internautas españoles. Research seminar held on July, 3rd, 2008 in Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. [mimeo]
Smith, A. (2008). Post-Election Voter Engagement. Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
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Traficantes de Sueños (Ed.) (2004). ¡Pásalo! Relatos y análisis sobre el 11-M y los días que le siguieron. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños.

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Web 2.0 tools for the development of professional skills

My University is organizing the II Conference on Law teaching and Information and Communication Technologies (II Jornada sobre Docencia del Derecho y Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación) where my colleague Agustí Cerrillo i Martínez and I are presenting the communication Herramientas 2.0 para el desarrollo de competencias profesionalizadoras (Web 2.0 tools for the development of professional skills).

What we are presenting is the educational methodology that we apply in the Master in e-Administration and which has been evolving (for good, we guess) along the five years of existence of these postgraduate studies.

The communication begins with a presentation of the master, its eminently professional-aimed approach, its multidisciplinary approach (partly due to the multidisciplinary origin of our students: hi-level public servants, lawyers and computer scientists) and its stress in digital competence.

We explain how we are using the following tools to get to our goals:

  • Blogs (actually a blog which acts as an RSS aggregator);
  • slides or presentations (made by the students, not the teachers);
  • wikis + online debates; and
  • nanoblogging.

My speech goes from 2:35 to 12:50

The full text of the communication is in Spanish but the slides can be both downloaded in English and Spanish:

logo of PDF file
Peña-López, I. & Cerrillo Martínez, A. (2011)
Tools 2.0 for the development of professional skills”.

(Slides in English)

logo of PDF file
Peña-López, I. & Cerrillo Martínez, A. (2011)
Herramientas 2.0 para el desarrollo
de competencias profesionalizadoras
”.

(Paper + slides in Spanish)

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Analyzing digital literacy with a single simple tweet

Two years ago, in Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills, I depicted digital literacy according to five different categories, being those categories technological literacy, informational literacy, media literacy, digital presence and e-awareness (please see the paper From laptops to competences: bridging the digital divide in higher education for a thorough explanation about those concepts):

Explaining these concepts with a single example (that is, all the concepts using the very same example for all of them) is not always easy, so you end up using different examples with each category or concept. Today I just found that single example that can be used to explain all of them.

On 3 june 2011, Brian Lamb, strategist and coordinator with UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, tweeted what follows:

Tweet: Hanging with @grantpotter and @cogdog at Kootenay Co-Op Radio, ready to simulcast to #ds016radio for #etug http://t.co/1LAoLU6
Hanging with @grantpotter and @cogdog at Kootenay Co-Op Radio,
ready to simulcast to #ds016radio for #etug yfrog.com/hss95tdj

This tweet seems coded by the Enigma encryption machine. Decoding it definitely requires much more than what the usual definition of digital literacy implies, but a complex set of skills or competences as the one described above:

  • Technological literacy: Easy at it may seem at first sight, many people just do not get how twitter works. It is as simple to operate (“just a 140 car. message”) as complex to understand how it works as a whole. Add to this that you have to be following either @brlamb or any of the hashtags to be able to notice the new tweet. And that you can follow them in several different ways, including different technologies, platforms and devices. Definitely, not that easy.
  • Informational literacy: There are three kinds of links in Brian Lamb’s tweet. At least two of them feature “strange” signs (@ and #) and the other one looks (or maybe does not) like your usual link, but lacking the http:// part (not to speak about the www.). Informational literacy is about telling the difference from those different links, what do they mean and where do they head towards if one clicks onto them. Informational literacy is about being able to find out that @grantpotter and @cogdog are two people (that’s more or less obvious once you’ve clicked on the respective links), that #ds016radio is the free streaming station used for the Digital Storytelling MOOC course, and that #etug refers to the Educational Technology Users Group Spring 2011 Workshop. Easy to find out for the experienced user, those last two do require an effort for the unexperienced one.
  • Media Literacy: The tweet is accompanied by an image. Its meaning is absolutely related to the information gathered in the tweet (as one would expect) and so it completes the message. Nevertheless, media literacy is not about the image, but about the crossmedia and crossplatform factors implied by that tweet. The actual message is that for you to get the whole piece of information you have to browse at least 4 websites (Twitter, with information about the profiles and the hashtag timelines; the course, the radio station and the event website) and then you have to tune in yet another device to listen to the actual radio. Indeed, the word “simulcast” already warns you that it will be much more complex than opening a book, sitting and reading. Add to this that you can add your soundcraft to #ds106 radio, by using DROPitTOme, a way to operate Dropbox. Oh, and yes, the image was uploaded to a companion service to Twitter, yfrog. Let us acknowledge that this cloud computing thing is a complex one to say the least.
  • Digital presence: It is very different identifying who the author or who the people mentioned in of the tweet are, from knowing what is their relationship and what is the meaning of them being together doing what is told in the message. But, more important than that, is what will imply for you being related with them. Answering or retweeting Brian Lamb’s message will tell everyone that you are interested in instructional technology. Following Brian would reinforce that message, and being followed back by him and/or other people from his closest professional network can end up implying the fact that you indeed agree with the ideas that this network more or less share: educational resources should be open, learning should strongly be based on building (constructivism) and remixing and working with your peers (connectivism), education has a way out of institutions (edupunk), and so [by the way, my apologies for the simplifications]. There are many messages whose information is about who you are rather than a transmission of rough data.
  • e-awareness: Taken at a systemic level, Brian Lamb’s tweet talks about very important things. We have just mentioned connectivism or edupunk. But implicit in the message’s 126 characters is the understanding of what is a massive open online course (MOOC) or how an amplified event works. Full understanding of the tweet requires awareness on how information and communication technologies are (or are potentially) changing the landscape of education, how the educational system and educational institutions are being threatened on their very same core and foundations, how the roles of teachers are (or should be) shifting from lecturers to mentors, etc. E-Awareness is about knowing the systemic and strategic implications of living in a knowledge society; and, implicitly, that tweet is talking just about that.

Now, those are 126 characters charged with meaning. If a single simple tweet requires so much digital competence, what is needed for living your daily live at full throttle? What for the exercise of democracy and citizen participation? What for health? What for education? What for love and friendship?

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