Going offline

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Going offline
Domagoj Bebic, Marijana Grbeša, MSc Faculty of
Political Science University of Zagreb

• How online initiatives revive offline civic
  engagement

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Identity

• Two perspectives
• I (individual identity) psychological
  constructs/influences of social interaction
• We (collective identity)

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Collective identity

• Shared definition produced by several interaction
  individuals who are concerned with the
  orientations of their actions as well as the
  field of opportunities and constraints in which
  their actions take place (Mellucci, 1989)

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Collective identity

• Members of the Internet community continually
  work to reincorporate their experience of
  themselves and of others selves into integrated,
  consistent wholes
• Presumption of an offline identity which
  continues to live offline is a precondition for
  discussion that person pursue his/her interests
  and causes which continue to exist both in
  virtual and physical world

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Erosion of Social Capital (Putnam)

• Dissolution of community
• Decline in membership of social groups and
  voluntary associations, and in many forms of
  collective political participation such as
  attending town hall meetings or working for
  political parties (Putnam 1995)

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Erosion of Social Capital (causes)

• Structure of US economy
• Changes in the family
• Growth of the welfare state
• Emergence of television (alienation of people)

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Crisis of Public Communicationpolitical
disengagement

• Common practices in political communications as
  deployed by the news media and by party campaigns
  hinder civic engagement, meaning learning about
  public affairs, trust in government and political
  activism (Blumler and Gurevitch 1995, Rosen 1996)

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Both concepts

• If we agree that it is the engagement of citizens
  that provides the building blocks of successful
  democracy then concern them stems from both
  concepts is hardly surprising

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New communication technologies

• Appear to have opened up new spaces for public
  and private participation as well as broadened
  public participation in political matters

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Virtual Communities

• Individuals engage in online communication thus
  creating virtual communities
• the social aggregations that emerges from the
  Internet when enough people carry on public
  discussions long enough and with sufficient human
  feeling to form webs of personal
  relationships(Rheingold)

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Citizens reconnect

• Interactivity as a key element to change the
  nature of citizens participation in politics and
  public life in general
• Internet with a potential to restore public
  sphere providing forum in which citizens debate
  issues of public concern (Coleman Street)
• Cyberspace as generating a new world order based
  on international communication and popular
  empowerment (Negroponte, 1996)

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Basic conclusion

• Reinvent community in cyberspace and political
  participation will follow (Chadwick, 2006)

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Enabling View
Internet Group identity
Real world Group identity
Real world Group action

• as medication for the perceived ills of modern
  society isolation, fragmentation, competitive
  individualism, the erosion of local identities,
  the decline of traditional religious and family
  structures and the downplaying of emotional forms
  of attachment and communication

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Enabling View Two-folded solution

• Internet is seen to have potential to engage
  people into public discussion about matters of
  common concern thus bringing politics back to the
  people and restoring public sphere Habermasian
  sense of reengagement

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Enabling View Two-folded solution

• Internet is believed to have capacity to restore
  broken social ties Putnams sense of
  reengagement

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Disabling View (concerns)

• The only functional community is the one based on
  a face-to-face communication (Putnam)
• Poor quality of interaction between individuals,
  tendency to produce plurality of deeply segmented
  political associations

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Examples

• Move On (Habermas)
• Meet Up (Putnam)

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Move On
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Move On
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Meet Up
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Meet Up
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Examples

• Both initiatives have clearly demonstrated
  capacity
• provide a platform to elaborate the cause people
  can identify
• build group cohesion strong enough to encourage
• real action

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Conclusion (Assumptions developed)

• I. Online interactions in virtual communities
  have the potential to create group identity hence
  providing a source of content that has the
  capacity to transform virtual into physical
  communities.

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Conclusion (Assumptions developed)

• II. These virtually created and physical
  consumed communities have the capacity to induce
  public action and positively contribute to civic
  engagement

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Conclusion

• Presented initiatives have managed to deploy
  alternative communication channels to positively
  contribute to public engagement in both
  Habermasian sense and Putnams sense and that is
  a value per se

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Avenue of future research

• To closely examine the nature and the dynamics
  of these virtually created and physically
  consumed communities
• Compare them to traditional real life groups
  and communities