Network Politics

Week 8

CCT 205

New Technologies, New Politics?

• Are the logic and technologies of networks giving rise to new forms of political organization and mobilization?

• To what extent are the new forms of social networking effective in the political sphere?

From Nation-State to Network

• Modern communication technologies important in extending sovereign political authority at a national level

• Centralized, standardized message dispersed across national territory

• State receives information on compliance and threats (internal/external)

• Shaping of public opinion in context of growth of liberal democratic citizenship – Printing press, radio & t.v. broadcasting

Globalization & Decline of State Sovereignty

• Nation-state no longer enjoys exclusive power to prescribe and proscribe within their borders

• Rise of regional, global multi-layered system of governance– Private transnational corporations– International policy making bodies ( IMF,

WTO, European Union, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation)

Erosion of Nation State?

• Globalization = many new constraints on actions of the nation state. – Global financial flows– Internet communications– Oil dependency– Transnational migrants – Interdependence and a global division of labour all

lessen the power on individual nation states to act.

• Result: Lessen power on individual states to act.

Growing Regional/Ethnic Identities

• Surveys in Europe and America show – 38% identify with their nation state– 48% cite their regional identity. – Decentralization & regionalization bring power

closer to people– devolution in Scotland – Basque region of Spain– Quebec separatists in Canada

New Informational Environment

• More intensive and extensive than old media• Political information ‘captured’ in multiple spaces

created by new communication technologies– E mail– Internet sources– Video

• New politics is a struggle over information & perception management & control in wide range of media outlets

Rise of New Social Movements

• Network communication technologies give rise to transnational new social movements

• Oppositional political formations outside of mainstream politics

• Deterritorialized coalitions on local, regional, national, international level– Human rights, environmental, women’s

movement

Uses of Digital Networks

• Cheap, fast publication of information• Event promotion• Maintenance of links with sympathetic

organizations• Mobilization & internal organization• Dialogue & debate• Novel forms of direction political action:

mass email campaigns, electronic petitions, parody sites

• Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.

Social Media

Social Media

• Social media uses the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner.

• Forms: Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.

• Examples of social media applications are Google (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook(social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), and Flickr (photo sharing).

Purpose of Social Media

• Develop community • broadcast and amplify a particular perspective • help with product/candidate development • Get feedback • create content • create peer relationships between candidate,

party and voters • foster communication and increase trust.

On the Campaign Trail

Campaign Fundraising

• Easier for small donors to play a meaningful role in financing political campaigns on internet.

• Previously, small-donor fundraising was prohibitively expensive, as costs of printing and postage ate up most of the money raised

• Raising large amounts of money from small donors at minimal cost now possible– credit card transaction fees = biggest expense

• For the first time, you have a door into the political process that isn't marked 'big money'

Why We Should Care?

• A new blog is created once every 2 seconds• New videos are posted to YouTube even more

frequently• Politicians are embracing new forms of social

networking – Second Life, Twittr, Flickr• Old top down message delivery is no longer the

only option

How Important Are Blogs?

• Vital form of social networking to determine what stakeholders are saying about candidate

• A way to develop a network of influencers around a candidate and engage in dialogue

• Source for story ideas, tracking down rumors and heading off potentially harmful, negative publicity

Social Media Campaigns

• Quantifiable data easy to obtain and analyze. 

• Fine-tuning decisions can be made and implemented at any time. 

• Unlike traditional media, the cost of change in a social media campaign is comparatively very low.

Effectiveness

• Tools to measure blogs:– who looks at offerings– who clicks on them – how long do they look– how many blogs are talking about a particular

candidate– how does all this compare to what

competitors are doing?

Effectiveness: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”

• Social Media techniques easy to track in data rich environments on the web and fine-tune on a daily or even hourly basis.

• Quantifiable data: numbers are easy to come by and analyze.  Fine-tuning decisions can be made and implemented at any time.  Unlike traditional media, the cost of change in a social media campaign is comparatively very low

• Tools: to measure blog effectiveness can use server log files, ClickTracks, WebTrends, Technorati, The Conversation Index

• Measuring effectiveness– Outcomes: Impact on behavior and relationships

– Outtakes: Social capital and social networking measures

– Outputs: How many people are paying attention ?

Implications of Network Model

• “Cultural battles are the power battles of the Information Age. They are primarily fought in and by the media…Power lies in the network of information exchange and symbolic manipulation.. It does not really matter who is in power. There are no more stable power elites.” Castells, 1998)

New Technologies & Democratic Politics

• More convenient generalized access to massive volume of relevant information

• Broader diversity of public interest info• Vertical communication between citizens

and legislators• Enhanced horizontal communication

among citizens• More direct forms of participation: online

voting, opinion polling

Political Parties & Networks

• Email; websites for publications, recruitment, fundraising, mobilization

• Possibility of more interactivity– Online discussion – forums– Online public opinion polls– Vote for leadership candidates

Networked Governance

• Distribution of select government functions

• Decentralization and democratization of governance– Policy consulting– Service delivery– Regulation of standards– Program implementation

Politics: More or Less Inclusive?

• Politics organized by electronic networks• Digital information more binary (Castells) you

are either in or you are out of a network; little scope for ambiguity.

• The nature of power is then redefined. The question becomes, who decides who is excluded?

• Does this changing nature of communication and networking widen the potential numbers of an elite or close it off to society more than before?

Cyberbalkanization

• “Cyberbalkanization"— political discussions on Net that lead to fragmentation and polarization rather than consensus

• Net gives people access to a large number of news sources, but also lets them pinpoint the ones they agree with and ignore the rest.

• Is the experience of the echo chamber easier to create with a computer than with many of the forms of political interaction that preceded it?

• Is public media space being fragmented into smaller privatized spheres?

Accelerated Pluralism

• Mobilization around narrowly defined interests

• Todd Gitlin: fragmentation of the public sphere into ‘private sphericules’

• Radical privatization of public sphere rather than democratization?

• See the Cluetrain Manifesto: Internet as a conversation that empowers voice

Net Organizing

• According to University of California professor Barbara Epstein: Internet "allows people who agree with each other to talk to each other and gives them the impression of being part of a much larger network than is necessarily the case."

• Impersonal nature of communication by computer may actually undermine important human contact that always has been crucial to social and political movements

• Impact on political parties?