Democratic Potentials of Online Communication for Political Debate

1
Democratic Potentials of Online Communication for
Political Debate
Barbara Pfetsch

• Presentation at the International Summer School
  for Political Communication and Electoral
  Behavior,
• Milano, July 16-18, 2012

2
Political Communication and Media Change

• explosion of channels and avenues for
• (political, commerical, social ..) communication
• speed and new issue dynamics
• feedback loops and interactive communication
• convergence of mass media and digital
  communication venues
• ?media effects research must be reconsidered
• ?new potentials for political communication
• (campaign, democratiziation, political debate )
  

3
Starting Point of Reflection

• Democratic Potentials of Online Communication for
  Political Debate
• ? criteria inclusiveness and access for broad
  range of actors
• Mass mediated public sphere
• cumulative inequality (Wolfsfeld 1997)
• low representation and difficult access for civil
  society actors (challengers)

• Is the internet a better public sphere?
• Under what conditions can online communication
• make up for the deficits of traditional media?
• contribute to the enhancement of democratic
  political debate?

4
Outline

• I Inclusiveness and democratic potential of
  online communication
• Expectations and doubts
• II Interactions between old and new media as
  critical link
• The Chadwick approach of a Hybrid Media System
• III Consequences for research
• Interaction between online and offline media as
  field of inquiry
• IV Pathways of empirical research to assess the
  interaction
• of new and old media and its impact on democracy
• V Conclusion

5
Democratic Public Sphere
6
What creates the democratic potentials of the
internet?

• - open access for everybody
• - unlimited carrier capacity
• - availability of information
• - interactivity
• - co-presence of horizontal and vertical
  communication
• ?Indefinite reservoir of actors and issues
• ?Threat to the gate-keeping role of traditional
  mass media
• Access for challengers
• Incusiveness Capacity and space for networks of
  new communicators, coalitions and issue networks

7
Empirical Findings
Comparisons between online and print media debates
8
The Hybrid Media System
This interplay between online and offline media
leads to a hybrid media system which is build
upon interactions among old and new media in
contemporary politics and society. It is the
outcome of power struggles and competition for
preeminence during periods of unusual
transition, contingency, and negotiability
(Chadwick, 2011).
Political Media Effects through the Hybrid Media
System?
9
The Hybrid Media System
10
Desiderates of Political Communication Research

• Conditions of Political Media Effects in the
  Hybrid Media System
• ?Dynamics of Agenda Building
• ?Nature and Mechanisms of Spill-Over between
  Online and Offline Media
• (a) direct Spill-Overs (Baringhorst 2008)
• (b) Online Media Spill over (Huffington Post,
  etc.)
• (c) Double-campaign focused spill-over
• ?Context Conditions
• that make a particular type of spill-over more
  or less likely
• ?Research Designs and Methodology?

11
Possible Context Conditions of Spill Over Effects

• Nature of online and offline communication
• Specific types of issue coalitions and online
  networks (strongly connected actors, high frame
  strengths, frame sponsors)
• Particular (left or right) media at the receiving
  end
• Macro Level factors which shape the
  online-offline dynamic
• issue characteristics (e.i. connection to
  larger conflics, established vs. latent issues
• country characteristics (pluralist countries vs.
  corporatist countries

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Challenges of the Research Design

• 1. Analysis of issue specific communiction
  networks
• ? challengers build and act in coalitions
• (? single blog/webpage)

online-communication of challengers

• 2. When and under what circumstances do we find
  spill-overs?
• nature of the issue
• media and political context of countries
• ? type of communication network

media/political debate

• 3. Evaluation of online-communication
• ? democratic potential (accessability, inclusion)
  

13
Methodological Challenges
Online
Offline

• webpage selection
• Google
• experteninterviews
• literature

text selection print media
network selection issue crawler, web crawler,
spider software
internet challengers issue networks
frames issues on the agenda
network-analysis
content analysis
content-analysis
regression time series analysis
causality? level of data analysis?
Spill-over
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Conclusion
The internet as such does not automatically bring
about a more inclusive, a more accessible and
therefore more democratic public debate The
democratic potentials of the internet seem to
depend on the interaction of old and new media
and spill overs between them The hybrid media
system opens up new opportunities for challengers
and may be more inclusive The mechanisms and
varieties of interaction between old and new
media are a desiderate in political communication
research which requires innovative studies and
new methodologies.