Developing Political
Conversations?
Prof. Nick Ellison & Dr Jo Orchard-Webb
The next 20 mins ...
Part 1: The theory
• The headline argument/ thesis
• The gap in knowledge we are responding to in terms of:
a) The web & the potential of democratic democracy b) Practices of citizenship
Part 2: The research project
• Policy/ practice relevance (particularly new Localism) • Research partnership
Ellison and Hardey (2012): a critical space between utopia and dystopia?
“An embryonic form of political communication”
New practices of political citizenship?
Under utilised and under-researched at the local government citizen scale
Key chapters in the story ...
• Cyber-libertarian/ Government 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2007, 2010) • Agoras of Habermasian deliberative politics (Benkler, 2006) • e-democracy (Web 1.0) (Miller, 2009)
• Political campaign engagement tool (Tapscott, 2009) • Facilitating catalyst for social movements & protest (e.g.
Arab Spring & Occupy) (Dutton, 2013) • Active citizenship applications
Curate’s egg?
• ICT exclusionary practices (Hill & Hughes, 1998; Pajnik, 2005; Sunstein, 2007)
• Transfer of off-line power inequalities to the on-line sphere (Dean, 2003; Lindner & Riehm, 2010)
• Social media are not inherently democratic – but possible model of ‘dialogue & conversation’ (Loader & Mercea,
Re-forging citizenship in a
mediated world ...
• Crisis of traditional democratic citizenship/ institutions of democracy (Bauman, 2000, 2007)
• Citizen consumer/ democratic citizen (Sunstein, 2007)
• Individualised/ collective action (Pajnik, 2005; Papacharissi, 2010)
• Narrow conceptions of Web 1.0 political citizenship (tied to voting/petitions) (Coleman & Blumler, 2009; Pajnik, 2005)
Re-forging citizenship in a
mediated world ...
Alternatives emerging in response to Web 2.0 ...
• More open & personalised conceptions of citizenship manifest in networked citizen-users (self-actualised
networking of citizens engaged in multiple political spaces/ identities) (Loader & Mercea, 2011)
• Social media disrupting traditional interests/ modes of communication? (Loader & Mercea, 2011)
• Less formally constituted local political conversations/ better suited to the logic of liquid modernity (Ellison & Hardey,
The research project ...
The gap:
Theoretical: Ellison & Hardey, 2012 thesis Practitioner: “stuck in broadcast”
Relevance:
Policy/ political-economy context (localism)
Generation C & Social media as a majority activity Hyper-connectivity as a key future identities trend
Research co-production:
Research Objective
An in-depth case study to map and analyse the
contemporary use of social media in public participation by three English local authorities (LA) in order to gain an
understanding of their potential impact on the nature of citizen engagement, emerging forms of active & political citizenship and shifting citizen-state relations in the context of the new ‘Localism’.
How?
RQ1: Which social media technologies are currently being used by each LA and how, if at all, are they being employed to enhance and/or change the nature of citizen participation? RQ2: How, to what extent, and with what effects do social media platforms either complement
or displace more traditional methods of citizen engagement (public meetings, consultation exercises)?
RQ3: What impact (positive and negative) are social media technologies currently having upon the ‘equality of engagement’ – in particular ‘stubborn’ citizen engagement issues such as accessibility, depth of representation, tokenism, consultation fatigue, and
inequalities of power within state-shaped platforms (Gilchrist, 2006; Swyngedouw, 2007; Taylor, 2007)?
RQ4: What are the implications of these findings for the broader development of LA
strategies for enhancing citizen engagement? How, if at all, should social media use be developed within local political arenas in ways that would contribute to more progressive (and nuanced) forms of localism?
Scoping themes (1)
• Stuck in broadcast mode
• Control – who owns the message
• Culture clash – traditional norms of governance & Web 2.0 • Thrust of assertion
• Resources/ training • Evaluation
• Usual suspects?
• Exclusionary practice/ Complexity of digital exclusion • Citizen led – conversations
Scoping themes (2)
• Crisis as a catalyst
• Service delivery driven (often by third sector)
• Aspiration to use social media to engage the ‘hard-to-reach’ • Digital by default future in the next generation of citizens
AND politicians
Broader research questions ...
• Is this mode of engagement facilitating norms that enable alternative practices of political & active citizenship?
• Is UK local government shifting from broadcast
communications and post-political governance norms to dialogue based communications that enable a more open and non-consensual local politics?
• Will such a recalibration of roles and power in practices of citizenship address issues of malaise and disengagement with the processes and agents of local politics?
Questions & Thoughts?
Get in contact:
Email: j.m.orchard-webb@leeds.ac.uk Twitter: @joorchardwebb
