i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i Edited by PAULO SERRA, EDUARDO CAMILO AND GISELA GONÇALVES POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND WEB 2.0 i i i i i i i i Livros LabCom Série: Pesquisas em Comunicação Direcção: José Ricardo Carvalheiro Tradução: Rui Vitorino Azevedo Tom Williams Design da Capa: Cristina Lopes Paginação: Filomena Matos Covilhã, UBI, LabCom, Livros LabCom ISBN: 978-989-654-133-0 Título: Political Participation and Web 2.0 Autores: Paulo Serra, Eduardo Camilo and Gisela Gonçalves (Orgs.) Ano: 2014 www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt i i i i i i i i Contents Introduction 1 The research project “New media and politics: citizen participation in the websites of Portuguese political parties” 5 ICITIZENSHIP AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION 16 Freedom as participation in Isaiah Berlin António Fidalgo 19 From brochureware to ‘MyBo’: an overview of online elections and campaigning Rachel Gibson 31 Notes on the construction of the journalistic event: from a politically active intellectual to the advent of Web 2.0 Giovandro Ferreira 43 II POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRACY 57 Participation and alternative democracy: social media and their con- tingencies Peter Dahlgren 61 i i i i i i i i i New bottles, old wine? New media and political parties Carlos Jalali 87 An alternative approach: portuguese associativism and trade union associativism Daniela Fonseca 105 III POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE INTERNET AGE 118 Sound bite: politics in frames Nuno Francisco 121 Challenges to intermedia agenda-setting: reflections on Pedro Passos Coelho’s outburst Eduardo Camilo and Rodolfo Silva 135 Political communication 2.0: new challenges for an old art Elsa Santos and Rosália Rodrigues 163 IV THE WEBSITES OF POLITICAL PARTIES (ANALYTICAL MODELS) 193 Online party communication: websites in the non-electoral context Catarina Silva 197 Type, visibility and functioning of participatory resources on the web- sites of Portuguese political parties: a preliminary analysis Joaquín Lopez del Ramo 243 CONTRIBUTORS Web 2.0 and Political Participation 273 ii i i i i i i i i Introduction Despite it being a debated issue in recent decades, there is in fact no consensus regarding the potentialities of the Internet for the strengthening of citizens’ political participation and – by extension – of democracy itself. Nonetheless, this “new medium”, and, in particular, its Web 2.0 version has become the cornerstone of communication strategies for both political parties and their candidates. Several questions emerge from the debate about the impact of the internet on political participation. First of all, the very concept of political participa- tion. Despite its importance in the theory of democracy, this concept is not always easy to define with rigor particularly when it comes to the form and boundaries of such participation. Actually, the ultimate issue is whether we are currently witnessing a “crisis of participation” or quite the contrary, the rise of alternative forms thereof. Secondly, the debate about the so-called “crisis of democracy” is also central when thinking about political participa- tion in our times. Democratic societies are experiencing a democratic deficit, to a large extend a crisis of confidence in traditional political parties, by which citizens feel misrepresented and hence alienated from righteous participation in their political destiny. These and similar questions are the pillars of an ongoing research pro- ject, entitled “New media and politics: citizen participation in the websites of Portuguese political parties”. Developed by a team of researchers from Lab- Com – a communication sciences research center located at the University of Beira Interior, this 3-year research project is funded by FCT, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. We consider that in the new media context, political parties’ websites might very well be a microcosm worthy of analysis. The websites have evolved through various stages and it is im- 1 i i i i i i i i 2 Political Participation and Web 2.0 portant to establish how these steps can be characterized and what the main differences to be found between them are. We anticipate to find that Web 2.0 contributed to a radical change of/in the structures and functioning of politi- cal parties’ websites; nevertheless, the ultimate question is whether Web 2.0 did indeed change the way citizens use those websites and ultimately how we participate in the building of our political destiny. The main objectives, methodology and expected results of the project are presented in the very first chapter of this book, which gives the motto for the following 11 chapters. It is worth mentioning that the majority of the chapters have resulted from the international conference held at UBI, on the 11-12th of October 2012. With the selected papers in this volume, we attempt to keep alive the debate that began in that conference – a very important milestone in our research project –, and to foster the work of the LabCom research team as well. “Political Participation and Web 2.0” is organized into four main parts. The first part of the book, “Citizenship and political participation”, is divi- ded into three chapters. António Fidalgo, from the University of Beira Inte- rior/LabCom, reflects on the concept of “Freedom as Participation”. In line with the thought of Isaiah Berlin, in particular, the concept of positive and negative freedom, the director of LabCom debates how under the banner of freedom, both right and left, liberalism and socialism, justify opposing politi- cal ideologies. The following chapter, “From Brochureware to ‘MyBo’: An Overview of Online Elections and Campaigning”, authored by Rachel Gibson from the University of Manchester, provides an overview of key findings and deba- tes that have emerged in literature regarding online campaigning. In parti- cular, whether modern-day electioneering is becoming a more participatory and grass-roots affair, and whether use of digital tools can actually affect the outcome of a race. The citizenship and political participation theme is also central in the chapter of Giovandro Ferreira, from UFBA, the Federal University of Bahia. In his text, the Brazilian researcher discusses how Web 2.0 strengthens and increases the participation of citizens. He highlights how citizens, agents that go beyond the usual intellectuals and journalism professionals, participate in the “collective act” of constructing a journalistic event, in the current public space of media. www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt i i i i i i i i Paulo Serra, Eduardo Camilo e Gisela Gonçalves (Edit.) 3 The second main part of the book focuses its attention on “Political parties and democracy”. The first chapter, “Participation and alternative democracy”, is authored by Peter Dahlgren, emeritus professor at Lund University (Swe- den), who looks at some key contingencies of political economy, technology, and socio-cultural patterns and how they impact the spaces of online partici- pation and the forms of identity that they foster. Dahlgren notes in particular the emergence of what he calls the “solo sphere” as a mode of participation that has debilitating consequences for alternative politics. The following chapter explores the relationship between parties and new media, with a particular focus on Portugal. Carlos Jalali, from the Univer- sity of Aveiro, argues that new media may constitute new means for parties to overcome their weakening social ties, but that is by no means an inevitable outcome. Rather, the usage of new media by political parties can also repro- duce the types of interaction seen in other contexts, reflecting the supply-side constraints generated by contemporary party systems. While these strategies may be rational for political parties individually, the externalities in terms of the quality of democracy are far from positive. The quality of democracy is also central to the chapter by Daniela Sam- paio, from the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. In line with Ro- bert Putnam’s thesis that the greater the associative participation of citizens the stronger the Democracy is, the author presents a picture of Portuguese as- sociativism – stressing its weak activity –, and discusses its relation with the phenomenon of the new social movements. In the 3rd part of the book special attention is paid to “Political commu- nication in the Internet Age”. All three chapters included are authored by re- searchers from LabCom and are all both theoretically and empirically driven. Nuno Francisco presents a reflection about the “sound bite”: an expression used to characterize a brief statement with an immediate and precise impact, created to fit perfectly as a newspaper title or headline or as the perfect mea- sure to open the television news. The author wonders how new media contri- bute to a new era of political communication, without mediation from the jour- nalistic sphere. Eduardo Camilo and Rudolfo Silva use a case-study approach to debate the existing relations between new media and traditional media with regard to how the opinion published in digital environments can transform it- self into an opinion published in an editorial environment of the journalistic field. Elsa Simão and Rosália Rodrigues developed a content analysis of the Livros LabCom i i i i i i i i 4 Political Participation and Web 2.0 two main Portuguese party websites used in a campaign period in order to reflect about the new “2.0 communicative” possibilities and challenges. Finally, the 4th and last part of this book presents two different “Models of analysis” on the Portuguese websites of political parties with parliamentary representation. By studying the political parties’ websites in relation to the in- formation, interaction, mobilization and sophistication dimensions, Catarina Silva, from the University of Aveiro, inferred a relationship in the use of online pages with a partisan typology. In the last chapter, Joaquin del Ramo, from the University of Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, also presents a multiple dimensi- onal analysis of the participatory tools available on websites.