Research Proposal - May 2009

Which aspects of web 2.0 have been perceived by political organisations and their members as being the most effective at encouraging user participation in politics in the UK and why? A qualitative approach. Sub Questions • • • • • • •

What is web 2.0? What potential does it have for encouraging participation? How is this different to previous uses of the web? How are political organisations using web 2.0? How has this been perceived by members? Does using web 2.0 lead to more or less participation by members? Why?

Introduction This is a qualitative approach to the question of the impact of web 2.0 on political participation. This question is designed to provide an opportunity to assess the impact of web 2.0 at both the organisational and the user level. Specifically it presents an opportunity to identify cause and effect, asking users directly how recent developments in the use of the web make them more or less likely to get involved. By relying on specific case studies based on organisations rather than aggregate data this question will be able to explain the specific issues within individual cases. This will add a level of detail that is difficult to achieve in a quantitative analysis at the expense of reducing the ability to generalise widely. This research will provide detailed case studies and develop a framework for subsequent analysis. By examining specific patterns of web use on the micro level this research will uncover variables that have been absent from previous research which, by necessity, has been much more general. By developing this detailed framework this project will allow subsequent research to more easily identify variables relevant to the issues of participation. What is web 2.0? Web 2.0 is an difficult concept to define. However the term retains much of its value for placing into context the trends which have developed in both web use and web design relatively recently. Web 2.0 does not represent any major leap forward in technical standards since the web was created in the early 1990s. What it does represent is a change in the way existing technologies are used. According to some sources the term itself was coined as the result of a 2004 media conference of the same name although this is difficult to verify (Wikipedia 2008). In general, and in this context, the term web 2.0 refers to the development of web applications which are more interactive than the first generation of websites. Some examples of this new generation of interactive websites include social networking sites, wikis (collaborative works such as Wikipedia) and blogs. The technology that these 1

sites rely on to work has been present for many years, but only in the last few has it been used to develop applications which rely much more heavily on user generated content. The simplest way of thinking about web 2.0 would be to see it as allowing a much greater flow of information between the user and the developer rather than the one way flow of information which was prevalent as recently as a few years ago. Web 2.0 offers the user greater power to add, edit or provide content compared to what had previously been a mainly passive experience i.e. users simply reading information from web pages. Theoretical background Initially hopes were high for the web. Some of the earliest writings were not born out of the development of the web but from pre-existing communities established on the internet. Rheingold wrote about his early experiences in an online community called the WELL, originally in 1992 but revised in 2000. He records that: ʻThe great power of the idea of electronic democracy is that technical trends in communications technologies can help citizens break the monopoly on their attention that has been enjoyed by the powers behind the broadcast paradigm.ʼ (Rheingold, 2000 p308) Although Rheingold was also cautious about the quality of the resulting democracy the idea that perhaps these emerging technologies could offer radical alternatives to the current political status quo was common among the academic community. Writers such as Rheingold, Negroponte and Budge all believed that the web had the potential to radically alter the way democracy functioned by providing the individual with a much greater say over the day to day running of a state. ʻIt is hard to defend restrictions on democratic citizens power to decide what governments should do and how they should operate. The new challenge of direct democracy lies in the startling fact that it is now technically possible. Public policy can be discussed and voted upon by every one linked in an interactive communication net.ʼ (Budge 1996 p1) As well as these optimistic projections there were also a number of writers who predicted problems. Many writers argued that that electronic communication would reduce the quality of debate, reduce the potential for collective action and damage the community ties (Oates, Owen & Gibson 2006 p3). Dimaggio et al cite Nie and Erbring in their synthesis of e-politics research (Dimaggio et al 2001 p316). Nie and Erbringʼs survey of four thousand internet users which showed a decline in socialising amongst the heaviest internet users. The cornerstone of civic society is argued by many to be social capital, which is based mainly on the development of social trust and networks which allows for collective action and co-operation (Chadwick 2006 p87). Robert Putnamʼs seminal essay ʻBowling Aloneʼ identifies the ʻtechnical transformation of leisureʼ as one of the issues leading to a decline in social capital and ultimately turn out. The villain of the piece was to a large extent television, which was leading to people spending their leisure time alone and not in the social networks which were essential for developing social capital (Putnam 2005 p75). This criticism could easily be levelled at the internet as it plays an increasingly important role in leisure activities. 2

When he came to extend this essay into a book he wrote extensively about how computer mediated conversation could never take the place of face to face meetings as a way to build social capital. Putnam argues that similarly dramatic predictions were made about the advent of the telephone:



ʻVery much like the nineteenth-century futurists contemplating the vistas opened by the telephone, enthusiast for the “virtual community” see computer networks as the basis for a kind of utopian communitarianism.ʼ (Putnam 2000 p 171)

Putnam concluded that despite the optimism surrounding the use of the internet and its possible impact on politics, that the supposed democratising effect was based more on ʼhype than careful researchʼ (Putnam 2000 p 173). To his mind, computer mediated communication couldnʼt hope to provide the level of interaction he considered necessary for building social capital . Putnam also points out that as part of his discussion of computer mediated communication that:



ʻThe “bandwidth” requirements (communications capacity) necessary for even poor-quality video are so high that it is unlikely to become commonly and cheaply available for at least a decade or moreʼ (Putnam 2000 p177)

YouTube, the video sharing web site, was founded in 2005. This doesnʼt cast doubt on the quality of Putnamʼs research, but instead serves to illustrate the speed at which the web moves and how easily it can outpace research even in the space of just a few years. Of all this criticism the one that captured the public and the politicianʼs imagination was the concept of the ʻDigital Divideʼ. Norris argued that inevitably there would be a portion of any population excluded from the benefits of the web. Far from empowering those that needed it the most, the web was just another way for elites to secure their influence. Change, argued Norris, rarely occurred from the bottom up. (Norris 2001 p236). Technical changes since 2001 do provide some promise for resolving these issues, the advent of mobile phones with effective web access for instance, but for the moment Norrisʼs thesis still holds true. Research published by Bimber supported the pessimistic arguments outlined above. His survey of data from the late 90ʼs showed that:



ʻWith only one exception, neither access to the internet nor use of the internet to obtain campaign information is predictive of voting or other forms of political behaviour.ʼ (Bimber 2001 p55)

The drawback to this research however that the information gathered pre-dated several important developments on the internet, for instance the rise of blogging, in particular political blogging, and the development of social networking sites such as Facebook which allows for the creation of issue groups with just a few button presses. While Bimberʼs research undoubtedly does a good job at reflecting internet use at the time, it does not, nor could it be expected to, take into account developments since. More recently however, there have been a number of empirical based studies which have uncovered potential in the internet to increase participation which is distinct from socioeconomic factors. Several researchers, working on more recent datasets have found that 3

the web may indeed be an important tool in both increasing the breadth of participation and the depth of access for many groups which have been previously shut out of the political system. Shah et al in their 2001 study exploring the relationship between internet use and social capital, reported the opposite of what sceptics were arguing. Contrary to what others, including Nie and Erbring, had found, they reported internet use was positively related to the production of social capital (Shah et al 2001 p154). Importantly, this study also attempted to unpack patterns of internet use, looking at the use of the internet for information exchange as separate from financial management or product consumption. Also, by measuring social capital and not voting behaviour, this research was not reliant on voting as a measure of civic engagement. Tolbert, McNeal and Ramona in their 2003 study found that those with internet access were 12.5% more likely to vote in the 96 and 2000 US Presidential election. This was increased a further 7.5% amongst those who also viewed online political information. (Tolbert et al 2003 p184) Mossberger, Tolbert & McNeal found much the same when they looked at online information as it applied to the 2000, 2002 and 2004 US elections. They found that, at least for the presidential elections (2000 & 2004) that any kind of online political activity was likely to increase the likelihood of voting (Mossberger et al 2008 p79). What this study cannot tell us about are developments post 2004, the most notable of which is the increase in the importance of social networking as a common tool. The run up to the 2008 presidential election in the US has demonstrated that sites such as Facebook seem to be playing an increasingly important role in political campaigns. Some recent reports state that Barak Obama raised 87% of his campaign contributions through social networking (Resource Nation 2008). The most relevant study to date for the UK was performed by Gibson, Lusoli & Ward. Their quantitative analysis of differing patterns of political web behaviour showed that there were groups who were being activated through the internet which were previously lying dormant in UK politics. The most significant seemed to be that of young people, traditionally considered a hard to reach group amongst policy makers and campaigners alike (Gibson et al 2005 p562). This research did not look at several aspects of web 2.0, principally because the data required to separate out web 1.0 and web 2.0 style activities was not available at the time. Again, social networking, possibly one of the most important developments was still in its infancy when the data was collected. There has been some research that has examined aspects linked to web 2.0, including Francoli and Ward, who have been examining the phenomenon of blogging amongst MPs in both the UK and Canada. Their understanding is that despite bursts of interest during times of national interest, after the novelty wore off that blogging is being treated by an additional extra by many MPs, rather than as a main stay of their communications with constituents. They also note that the most successful blogs seem to be those backed by a strong personality such as Boris Johnson or David Cameron. (Francoli & Ward 2007 p15). In the modern environment how is possible to separate politics from the celebrity culture that drives many other blogs? Pasek, More & Romer, in a paper prepared for a conference on Web 2.0 pointed out that in recent research there has been a rallying cry for the the differentiation between differing types of internet use. (Pasek et al 2008 p4) Their paper went on to look at two social networking sites and found stark differences between the differing user bases, further 4

emphasising the need to account for the differing ways people use the internet right down to the individual site level. (Pasek et al 2008 p29). There is an acceptance amongst many researchers that there is a need to reduce the web to more basic components if they are to learn anything definitive about the impact on politics. This project, it is hoped, will fit into this debate on emerging technologies at the user level. While quantitative research may be useful for establishing broad trends, itʼs effectiveness at determining cause and effect is more limited as rigid data sets can only reflect the variables which are measured. Confounding variables such as the ʻweb site cultureʼ identified by Pasek may well have as much or even a greater baring on outcomes as the more general measures used by even the most detailed of the quantitative studies (Pasek et al 2008 p29). Based on this information it is fair to conclude that there would be value in looking at how the web has been implemented in organisations which are looking to use the web to convey a political message, and specifically how the end users within that organisation are responding to attempts to engage them through the internet. The question of how users are responding to these new tools and which aspects they think are the most valuable is key if they are to be deployed correctly in the future. This question seeks to identify not only how web 2.0 has been deployed by organisations, but how users respond and turn this engagement into political action. Methodology This research will be qualitative based primarily on research conducted at various levels in an organisation. The choice of organisation has not been finalised as it will rely a great deal on securing the co-operation of that organisation at several levels.1 Potential organisations include: • • • • •

Political parties Trade unions Pressure groups Advocacy organisations Youth engagement programmes

There also exists potential in this study to examine more than one organisation, perhaps contrasting the use of web 2.0 in a broader political party and within the narrower confines of a single issue pressure group. Additionally there is potential to vary the level of the organisation under examination, for instance there may be local groups using web 2.0 as part of their campaign methods as well as national groups. A local case study would go further to examining web 2.0ʼs potential to either unite or divide local level organisations. It may also be able to incorporate a limited amount of a longitudinal aspect within this research. Over the life span of this project (3 years) there are likely to be several opportunities to revisit interviews. Again this aspect depends heavily on securing cooperation, but it could provide an extra level of insight to the research.

The author retains links to a number of political parties and pressure groups as a result of previous research at the MA level and from previous employment. 1

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The first element of this research will be interviews with those responsible for managing the web strategy of an organisation which is involved in encouraging political activities of one kind or another. This is an important exercise as it will not only record the opinions of those at the top of the organisational hierarchy, but it will also provide the context for further interviews or a possible survey of those who the measures are designed to target. The interviews should cover: • • • • • •

How the web is used in the organisation A history of web use within the organisation (some of this may be accomplished by desk based research) Which aspects of the web are being used (web 1.0 vs web 2.0) Why those particular aspects were chosen How effective the organiser thinks they have been in accomplishing the goals set Any drawbacks of using the web to communicate political ideas

The second part of the methodology is aimed at building on the background information collected through the initial interviews and using it as a basis for discussing the impact of web 2.0 with users. This will take the form of in depth interviews with members of an organisation, but it could also include a quantitative survey of users. Again this would be contingent on the target organisationʼs co-operation. This portion of the research will focus on: • • • • •

Patterns of web use Which aspects do they find most useful? Which aspects do they not use or like? What aspects have provided them with the greatest incentive to participate? Why?

Using these techniques we will be able to draw on existing expertise on the use of web 2.0 in the field in order isolate the most relevant aspects of these emerging technologies. This will allow us to get a fuller understanding of which aspects are most successful in the eyes of users and which are possibly the most effective at encouraging political participation. Conclusions There has been a great deal of research done on the possibilities offered by the development of the web. Predictions have rested on a spectrum that runs from the opening up of civic society to the collapse in levels of civic participation. So far none of these extremes has come true. Initial empirical studies suggested that the webʼs effect on politics has been negligible, whilst more recent studies have started to identify groups which may have benefited from the development of the web. The development of web 2.0 has brought with it new levels of interactivity and a new set of common tools for the average web user. These new possibilities for the use of the web have already to some extent lent them selves as political tools which both enable and encourage participation in the political arena.

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This paper suggests that through a series of unstructured interviews, semi-structured interviews and possible surveys of key members in organisations which use the web to communicate, that a greater understanding of web 2.0 can be gained. Specifically it seeks to record the knowledge and experiences of those who are using web 2.0 in a political context. It also hopes to use this information to seek to explain how users are responding to these developments, specifically how engaging they find them to be. Ultimately this research hopes to identify the mechanisms which translate political exposure through the web into political action. From this the author intends to gain a clearer understanding of which aspects of web 2.0 have been the most effective in the field and why. This will allow future researchers to more accurately differentiate between differing patterns of web use in broader analysis. Bibliography Berners-Lee (1999) ‘Weaving the web, the past, present and future of the world wide web by its inventor’ Orion: London Bimber (2001) ‘Information and political engagement in America: The search for the effects of internet technology at the individual level’, Political Research Quarterly Vol 54, No 1, pp 53-67 Budge (1996) ‘The new challenge of direct democracy’ Polity Press: Oxford Chadwick (2006) ‘Internet Politics: States, citizens and new communication technologies’ Oxford University Press: London DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman & Robinson (2001) ‘Social implications of the internet’ in Annual review of sociology Vol 27 pp 307-336 Francoli & Ward (2007) ‘21st Century soap boxes? MPs and their blogs’, Paper presented to the Political Studies Association annual conference at the University of Bath, April 11-13 2007 Gibson, Lusoli & Ward (2005) ‘Online participation in the UK: Testing a contextual model of internet effects’ British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol 7, pp 561-583 Kittilson & Dalton (2008) ‘Virtual Civil Society: The new frontier of social capital?’ Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association Mossberger, Tolbert & McNeal (2008) ‘Digital Citizenship: The internet, society and participation’ MIT Press: London Norris, Pippa (2001) ‘Digital divide: civic engagement, information policy and the internet worldwide’ Cambridge University: Cambridge Oates & Gibson (2006) ‘The internet, civil society, democracy: a comparative perspective’ in Oates, Owen & Gibson (eds) (2006) ‘The internet and politics: citizen’s voters and activists’ Routeledge: London

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Pasek, More, Romer (2008), ‘Realizing the social internet? Online social networking meets offline social capital’ Paper prepared for Politics: Web 2.0: An international conference at Royal Holloway University of London April 17-18 2008 Putnam (2000) ‘Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of american community’ Simon & Schuster: London Putnam (1995) ‘Bowling Alone: America’s declining social capital’ Journal of Democracy Vol 6 No1, pp 65-78 Resource Nation (2008) ‘How Obama raised 87% of his funds through social networking’ http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/how-obama-used-social-networking-to-setfundraising-records accessed 21/10/2008 Rheingold (2000 revised edition) ‘Homesteading on the electronic frontier’ MIT Press: London Shah, Kwak & Holbert (2001) ‘Connecting and disconnecting with civi life: Patterns of internet use and the production of social capital’ Political Communication Vol 18 pp 141-162 Tolbert, Caroline & McNeal, Ramona (2003) ‘Unraveling the effects of the internet on political participation’ in Political Research Quarterly Vol 56 No 2 June 2003 pp 175-185 Wikipedia (2008) ‘Web 2.0’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 accessed 11/10/08

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