ICTlogy

Ismael Peña-López (UOC/IN3)
15M-25M: Openness of the institutions or taking the power?

Víctor Sampedro (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos).
Technopolitical users and the 15M as an indignado consensus.

On 13th March 2004 (the Atocha terrorist attacks in Madrid) the political elite lies and loses all legitimacy for representing the citizen. And the citizens take up the organization of the protests and become new crucial actors in politics.

Technopolitics and the traditional public sphere:

• A new political-informational system.
• A new development model (V de vivienda
• The answer to the economic crisis that merges the regime of 1978 and that of May 2011.
• A change in consensus or a consensual dissent of the 15M.
• A change in institutions?

Cybermobilization:

• Intense mobilization.
• Polarization of the public sphere.
• A dire crisis and conditions of living.
• Lack of answer of the political representatives.
• Urgent need to re-stablish debate and deliberation.

Political elites not only “do not understand” new politics, but try to corrupt any emergence of new ways of political participation and engagement. The worst kind of slacktivism is promoted among the partisans of traditional parties to play havoc in any kind of cyberactivism.

Despite the power of television, a new digital sphere emerges where people get information and get involved in politics, in opposition to the traditional way of being informed about politics through mainstream media.

Discussion

Q: is the voter of the Partido X the same as Podemos’s? Ismael Peña-López: probably not, they play in different but overlapping spheres. Podemos emerges from the communist party while the Partido X (or the Pirate Party) has a very different nature. Notwithstanding, the political geeks of the Partido X power Podemos, collaborate with them and are even part of their circles.

Notes from the workshop Citizen Politics: Are the New Media Reshaping Political Engagement? held in Barcelona, Spain, on May 28-30th, 2009. More notes on this event: citizen_politics_2009.

Rachel Gibson

All politics is both personal and local… and national… and… Have to manage the way to connect the personal to the local.

Emergent e-campaign strategy: depends on infrastructure and the tools; and of the logic of networked communities, whether they are autonomous or not. A difference between building “real” communities, or populist platforms addressed to many in general (to the “herd”).

A major challenge: how to measure actions, people, quality, etc. A need to modelize “digital natives” and the way they interact between each other and through technology.

Main research approaches in Politics 2.0, all of them interrelated:

Víctor Sampedro

We should not embrace the discourse and language of marketing or consultants, of populism, of counter-hegemonic collectives.

We have to assess the validity of our data, and collaborate both with the industry and the subjects of our studies.

We have to clarify what we understand by counter-power measures of ICTs and also, the concept of empowerment, and the concept of mobilization.

Is it a grassroots approach really a better system? Shouldn’t leaders lead? Is there still a role for leaders to “educate” the voter or to find “better” solutions and show them to the citizen?

Brian Krueger

Everything that’s great can be used against you: we should be thinking about Internet surveillance and monitoring. We know little about it and should be paying more attention to it. And this includes the sheer sensation of being monitored, as it has behavioural effects (e.g. self-censorship). Evidence shows that people feel monitored if they’d type “impeach Bush” or “assassinate Bush”. Open political criticism is tied to the feeling of being watched. And this sensation of being watched most probably changes your own behaviour, even if you’re not actually watched. And it’s likely to change how and how much you are participating.

Bruce Bimber

Motivation, attitudes, trust… the umbrella were to begin exploring participation. And then focus also on the changes that the new media are infringing to the landscape.

How would the landscape look like when “all” the people would have been socialized with these new media?

How different Web 2.0 tools differentiate one another? What different specific applications do they have?

We’re right to talk about choice, but we do still have not good models how to measure how choice happens and why.

More effort should be made in analysing how citizens can affect agenda-setting, on a decentralized and bottom-up communication scheme. And also how horizontal communication happens, how peer-to-peer can pass the message on.

Should focus more not on how people mobilize, but what the specific motivations and contexts are. What keeps people awake at night.

Andrew Chadwick

We need more appreciation of social network environments (i.e. tools), and balance technological determinism with social determinism, keeping in mind how technology did change some human behaviours.

How do we contextualize a campaign or social movement, specially when social movements increasingly look like parties and parties increasingly look like social movements, and borrow each one’s instruments and techniques.

Look at how citizens cognitively negotiate information overload in an age of information saturation (not scarcity).

Can we do politics in a space owned by the market and private interests? Can the citizens build their own forums, create their own network effects and avoid commoditized online spaces?

We do need to start looking in more sophisticated ways how people are exposed to online content, including accidental exposure.

There are many cross-section analyses, but few panel-data analysis, which are usually acknowledged to be more robust (though more difficult and expensive). And we should use more the “free range” data that people automatically create with their actions (e.g. logs) instead of “battery raised” surveys. And combine methods.

We should be aware of how mobile technologies might be changing the economy of attention and politics.

Discussion

Bruce Bimber: mobility is more about time, more about “always on” rather than physical space or ubiquity (Chadwick fully agrees).

Rachel Gibson & Bruce Bimber: there are places where the local factor really matters and shapes how the institutions work or are built and managed.