ICT4D Blog » Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism http://ictlogy.net Information Society, Digital Divide, ICT4D Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:49:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 iCities (Ia). Opening Session: Digital Citizens vs. Analogue Institutions http://ictlogy.net/20080509-digital-citizens-vs-analogue-institutions/ http://ictlogy.net/20080509-digital-citizens-vs-analogue-institutions/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 23:02:47 +0000 Ismael Peña-López http://ictlogy.net/?p=717 iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session I (part I).

Opening Session (part I)

Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo

Digital Citizens vs. Analogue Institutions
Ismael Peña-López

These are the materials I’m using at the iCities: Primeras Jornadas sobre Blogs, e-Government y Participación Digital [First Conference on Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation], for the opening speech, in which I take part on Friday 9th May 2008.

Slides:

Video

Bibliography

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Castells, M. (2004). “Informationalism, Networks, And The Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint”. In Castells, M. (Ed.), The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Dutta, S., López-Claros, A. & Mia, I. (Eds.) (2006). Global Information Technology Report 2005-2006: Leveraging ICT for Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dutta, S. & Mia, I. (Eds.) (2007). Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007: Connecting to the Networked Economy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dutta, S., López-Claros, A. & Mia, I. (Eds.) (2008). Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008: Fostering Innovation through Networked Readiness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Eurostat Information society statistics. [online]: European Commission.
Freedom House (2007). Freedom in the World 2007. Washington, DC: Freedom House.
Instituto Nacional de Estadística (2007). Encuesta sobre Equipamiento y Uso de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación en los hogares 2º semestre 2006. [online]: INE.
Mominó de la Iglesia, J. M., Sigalés Conde, C. & Meneses Naranjo, J. (2008a). L’Escola a la Societat Xarxa: Internet a l’Educació Primària i Secundària. Barcelona: Ariel.
Mominó de la Iglesia, J. M., Sigalés Conde, C. & Meneses Naranjo, J. (2008b). L’Escola a la Societat Xarxa: Internet a l’Educació Primària i Secundària (Volum I). Informe Final de Recerca. Barcelona: UOC.
Mominó de la Iglesia, J. M., Sigalés Conde, C. & Meneses Naranjo, J. (2008c). L’Escola a la Societat Xarxa: Internet a l’Educació Primària i Secundària (Volum II). Informe Final de Recerca. Barcelona: UOC.
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.
OECD (2007). PISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World. Volume 1: Analysis. Paris: OECD.
Parks Associates (2007). Offline Americans see Internet of Little Value. [online]: Parks Associates.
Peña-López, I. (2007). El papel de las TIC y la Web 2.0 en el desarrollo: de las estrategias push a las estrategias pull. Seminar and round table imparted in Cornellà de Llobregat, January 25th, 2008 at the Difundir las TIC en la época 2.0 conference, Observatorio de la Cibersociedad. Cornellà de Llobregat: ICTlogy.
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Estrategias 2.0, 8 Mayo 2008. [online]
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UNDP (2006). Human Development Report 2007/2008. Fighting Climate Change: Human solidarity in a divided world. New York: UNDP.
Universal McCann (2008). Wave 3. New York: Universal McCann.
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Acknowledgements

Update:
Now that the conference is over, hearty and warmest thanks to Pablo Díaz and César Calderón for making the conference happen and for having invited me.

Ricard Ruiz de Querol deserves my sincerest gratitude for his always challenging insights about the Information Society. Jaume Moregó also pushed me to a project that payed back with good reflections. A good buch of this conference was inspired by them both, thank you. And also thanks to Julio Meneses for his lightning fast and valuable help with some graphic materials.

]]> http://ictlogy.net/20080509-digital-citizens-vs-analogue-institutions/feed/ 4 Seminar: Reconsidering the analysis of the uses of ICTs by political parties: an application to the Catalan case http://ictlogy.net/20071115-seminar-reconsidering-the-analysis-of-the-uses-of-icts-by-political-parties-an-application-to-the-catalan-case/ http://ictlogy.net/20071115-seminar-reconsidering-the-analysis-of-the-uses-of-icts-by-political-parties-an-application-to-the-catalan-case/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:06:09 +0000 Ismael Peña-López http://ictlogy.net/20071115-seminar-reconsidering-the-analysis-of-the-uses-of-icts-by-political-parties-an-application-to-the-catalan-case/ 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
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