higher seminar at kau 5 /sep

Studying political participation using a (n)ethnographic method

Jakob Svensson

Presentation MKV Karlstad 5/9 2012

Overview

Background and Research QuestionsThree StudiesThe Method: (n)EthnographyProblem 1) Nina as Case Study Problem 2) Ethical issues Studying Online Communities

Background and Research Questions

Social Media and the Rationalities of Political Participation

How can we understand contemporary political participation in connected societies?

What motivates/ governs participation?


What is Political Participation?

The Political deals with the organization of society, distribution of its resources and how to conduct our lives together (Svensson 2011)

Participatory Practices can be subdivided on the basis from where they are initiated


a) Parliamentary Initiated Participation

b) Activist Participation - initiated from outside the Parliament but direct their participation towards the people and institutions of representative democracy

c) Popular Cultural Participation initiated from people and places outside the Parliament and not from the beginning directed towards it (Svensson, 2011)


Late Modernity - Processes of pluralization, fragmentation and reflexive individualization are given priority at the expense of the common cultural frames of reference that dominated social spaces and its organization in modernity (such as family, nation, class, party affiliation) (Giddens, Beck, Dahlgren)

Digital Late Modernity The contemporary online media and communication landscape develops and interacts in tandem with the pluralization, fragmentation and reflexive individualization of culture, lifestyle and tastes (Coleman & Blumler, 2009; Leaning, 2009; Feenberg, 2010; Svensson, 2011)


When communication goes from one-to-many to many-to-many on social media platforms, and reflexive negotiation of the self is practiced semi-publically in front of networks of peers and like-minded, political participation changes and becomes governed by other forms of/ combination of rationalities than before.

Overview


Three Studies

Parliamentary Initiated Participation A study of Nina Larsson

Ninalarsson.se have been up and running since 2006, and is constructed as a blog where postings with more obvious political angle are communicated.

On the regional newspaper Vmlands Folkblad (VF), Nina had a blog since 2008.

Three Studies

Both instrumental and communicative rational discourse to make her practices meaningful

But something else was going on social media was used as amplifiers, for virtual back-patting and image management

- For example in one posting she comments an investigative journalistic TV show scrutinizing the presence of MPs during voting. She was mentioned as one politician being absent at many parliamentary votes.

In another posting she comments the editorial of leading national newspaper. In this way established media channels are setting the agenda for her blog posting practice.

More than 60 percent of the postings on ninalarsson.se refer to media texts initially broadcasted offline

If Nina for example writes a debate article in a daily newspaper, or appear on TV or Radio, this will almost automatically generate a blog posting often linking to the original appearance.

She also links to, and comments on, current news stories and other politicians debate articles -

Ninalarsson.se is also largely used to promote the Liberal Party, to reinforce the political messages that other Liberals have been communicating in both offline media, as well as on their blogs and social media platforms.

A virtual patting the backs of fellow party comrades seems to take place in form of multiplying and commending each others appearances.

Measuring the links in and out of ninalarsson.se to other blogs, up to 90 percent were to, and came from, other liberal party members - This illustrates the kind of network individualsim

It seems that it is important for Nina to connect her political persona to other liberals in her network through linking to and commenting on each others blog postings.

The postings on the VF blog are more private in its character compared to ninalarsson.se. The postings do not address political matters as directly as on ninalarsson.se. Instead her postings are more connected to her feelings about her life and job as a politician, and also to some parts of her private life

Indeed the strategy for the VF blog

what makes this a great posting is that Nina steps out of her role as a politician and is just Nina

Three Studies

Activist Participation A study of Middle Class Activist in Southern Stockholm

Blg

Three Studies

Activists used social media to connect to issues and people with similar opinions and similar interests - like-mindedness

The more specialized the group, the more possibilities for action - fragmentation, specialization and action

Three Studies

Social media platforms underlined connectedness and responsiveness as norms/ values online - updating becoming a pivotal practice.

Updating is a two-way practice

Not only about information and mobilization also about identity- Social media platforms as looking glasses - Networked Individualism

Late modern reflexive individualization is not only about the liberation of the individual from institutions of modernity - but also a demand to supply our life stories, to import our selves into our biographies through our own actions (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim).

Three Studies

Popular Cultural Participation A study of Qruiser and FBK (?)

Overview


(n)Ethnography

Social media platforms are neither neutral artefacts nor have inherent capacity for social organization and change (Coleman & Blumler; Feenberg). Technology and society develops in a dialectical relationship to each other. They should therefore be understood from its uses and its social contexts (Digital Late Modernity)

Participatory practices on social media platforms are constructed and made meaningful through a range of complex processes. Hence it is important to study how and in what contexts political participation take place on social media platforms.

(n)Ethnography

My aims are explorative and hypothesis generative hence I have chosen to use an ethnographic method, both in its traditional meaning (fieldwork - to hang out with, observe, interview and live among participants - which explains the choices of study objects), but I have also used ethnography in its virtual form netnography. Netnography works well in combination with a more traditional ethnographic method, especially since the online and offline world mutually influence each other (Van Dijk, 2006; Baym, 2010).

(n)Ethnography

The internet is understood here as a social room, and the aim is to understand the social interactions taking place online.

As a researcher you can free yourself from the physical place to conduct observations in a virtual context on communities, focusing on user-generated information flows.

Social Media platforms can be used as archives of information, and you can create your own archives

(n)Ethnography

Netnography focuses exclusively on net-based social environments. The physical absence is compensated by different textual and figurative representations, which gives the user larger possibilities to reflect on, test and review different ways of action before they become part of the social interaction. Because of this enhanced possibility/ requirement of reflexivity, netnography is a good companion to theories of late modernity.

We can distinguish between asynchronous postings, allowing for greater reflection and planning and synchronous postings, happening in real time.

(n)Ethnography

In southern Stockholm followed the activists on all their different social media platforms, took field notes and screenshots.

Quantitative background data counted tweets, facebook and ning-postings who posted and how much.

Participated in online discussions, forwarded tweets

Offline interviews and participations

(n)Ethnography

With Nina Larsson I followed her on Twitter, Facebook, A campaign website, and two blog - took field notes and screenshots.

Content analyses counted blog facebook and twitter postings, when and how much she posted who and what she addressed and retweeted

Overview


Problem 1

Having got access to many studies on the Swedish elections 2010, and not the least the results from the SOM Vrmland Survey, I wanted to put these results in relation with my research results on Nina's use of Social media in her campaign.

Nina would be framed as an example of how social media were used in the Swedish elections, hence Nina shall serve as a case. But it is not completely evident to mix case study and ethnography

Problem 1

Most studies from the Swedish elections 2010 focus on either on political parties, or the electorates use of social media not on candidates use. These studies can then mostly be used to describe the general setting, but they say little about the population of political candidates.

There are studies from the UK and US, but their party system is different. In a multiparty system like Sweden the party has a stronger role than in the US and UK

Problem 1

Nina would not be a typical case since she did use and integrate social media (Compared to Grusell & Nord, 2011).

But even though a deviant case her conscious use of social media makes her suitable for an in-depth explorative study into the rationales of social media campaigning practices.

Problem 1

Consider her as a pathway case (Gerring, 2007) since the study of her aims at elucidating causal mechanisms behind political candidates uses .

The study is explorative and hypothesis generating in its aims rather than hypothesis testing, looking to spread light into mechanism rather than effects, hence a pathway case.

Nina is an example of a future generation of politicians and her campaign provides insights into the rationales of campaigning on social media platforms in a party-based representative democracy.

Overview

Background and Research QuestionsThree studiesThe Method: (n)EthnographyProblem 1) Nina as Case Study Problem 2) Ethical issues Studying Online Communities

Problem 2

To study popular cultural participation I will participate on the Ice-hockey team FBK's forum online and the HBTQ forum Qruiser to study how the political occurs and is discussed and what rationalities governs political participation here.

I will use mostly a netnographic method (perhaps some offline interviews/ telephone interviews as well as content analyses).

Problem 2

The problem: These sites are not public in the sense that you first have to become a member before you can take part/ read the threads.