Political Participation In The Digital Age

This book explores the potential of the Internet for enabling new and flexible political participation modes. It meticulously illustrates how the Internet is responsible for citizens' participation practices from being general, high-threshold, temporally constricted, and dependent on physical presence to being topic-centered, low-threshold, temporally discontinuous, and independent from physical presence. With its ethnographic focus on Icelandic and German online participation tools Betri Reykjavík and LiquidFriesland, the book offers plentiful advice for citizens, programmers, politicians, and administrations alike on how to get the most out of online participation formats.

A social anxiety currently pervades the political classes of the western world, arising from the perception that young people have become disaffected with liberal democratic politics. Voter turnout among 18-25 year olds continues to be lower than other age groups and they are less likely to join political parties. This is not, however, proof that young people are not interested in politics per se but is evidence that they are becoming politically socialized within a new media environment. This shift poses a significant challenge to politicians who increasingly have to respond to a technologically mediated lifestyle politics that celebrates lifestyle diversity, personal disclosure and celebrity. This book explores alternative approaches for engaging and understanding young people’s political activity and looks at the adoption of information and ICTs as a means to facilitate the active engagement of young people in democratic societies. Young Citizens in a Digital Age presents new research and the first comprehensive analysis of ICTs, citizenship and young people from an international group of leading scholars. It is an important book for students and researchers of citizenship and ICTs within the fields of sociology, politics, social policy and communication studies among others.

This book discusses the implications of recent innovations in information and communication technology for civic and political engagement. The international mix of contributions offers insights across a broad spectrum of studies into the form of engagement: explaining the reasons, incentives and motivations for engaging, and the different forms and levels of engagement; contrasting traditional and non-traditional forms of engagement and how they interlink; and asking why people utilize or avoid certain forms of engagement. It is a must-read for any scholar interested in the impact of social media on citizens’ propensity to get involved in political actions. It depicts the role that parties, organizations and peers play in mobilizing or demobilizing others and how online behaviour can act as a springboard into what might be called real-world politics. The book gathers together prominent scholars, who offer their understanding of social and political phenomena and give theoretical and empirical insights into the highly complex questions around political participation in the digital age. ​ This book was originally published as a special issue of Political Communication.

The arrival of the participatory web 2.0 has been hailed by many as a media revolution, bringing with it new tools and possibilities for direct political action. Through specialised online platforms, mainstream social media or blogs, citizens in many countries are increasingly seeking to have their voices heard online, whether it is to lobby, to support or to complain about their elected representatives. Politicians, too, are adopting "new media" in specific ways, though they are often criticised for failing to seize the full potential of online tools to enter into dialogue with their electorates. Bringing together perspectives from around the world, this volume examines emerging forms of citizen participation in the face of the evolving logics of political communication, and provides a unique and original focus on the gap which exists between political uses of digital media by the politicians and by the people they represent.

The Internet and „social media“ may initially have been understood as just one more instrument politicians could employ to manage without political parties. However, these media cannot be reduced to being a tool available solely to politicians. The electronic media make reinforcement of the „glocalization“ of the public/political sphere, a process already set in motion with the advent of television, and they can develop the trend even further.

Democracy in the Digital Age is a fascinating philosophical exploration of how the emerging information and communication technologies are impacting political participation in the United States. Rather than being the antidote to democratic ills, the political conversations occurring online are neither inclusive nor deliberative, suggesting that new technologies, as currently designed and used, are as much threats to progress as they are vehicles of progress. Wilhelm finds that there is often an appearance of progress, but negligible advancement of the human condition. He discusses the four features of digitally-mediated political life (resources, inclusiveness, deliberation, and design) and demonstrates the need for a strong public policy.

Social media and digital tools permeate the everyday lives of young people. In the early stages of commentary about the impact of the digital age on civic life, debates revolved around whether the Internet enhanced or discouraged civic and political action. Since then we have seen new media move to center stage in politics and activism--from the 2008 US election to the 2011 Arab Spring to the Occupy movement. We have also seen new patterns in how different sub-groups make use of digital media. These developments have pushed people to move beyond questions about whether new media are good or bad for civic life, to ask instead: how, under what conditions, and for whom, do new digital tools become resources for political critique and action by the young? This book will provide a platform for a new wave of scholarship about young people’s political participation in the digital age. We define “youth” or “young people” as roughly between the ages of 12 and 25. We include perspectives from political science, education, cultural studies, learning sciences, and youth development. We draw on the framework developed by the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (Cohen, Kahne, Bowyer, Middaugh, & Rogowski, 2012), which defines participatory politics as, “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern.”

Technologie und Innovation im Allgemeinen, insbesondere IT, sind heute in jeder Hinsicht wesentliche Bestandteile unserer Welt und haben Einfluss auf alle Bereiche der Gesellschaft – wirtschaftlich, rechtlich, politisch, soziologisch und auch kulturell. Diese neue Cyberwelt hat unser Leben in vielerlei Hinsicht verändert, nicht nur wenn es um demokratische Beteiligung geht. Die Digitalisierung aller Bereiche unseres Lebens revolutioniert unsere Gesellschaft: in Bezug auf unsere Freiheit wird dies nicht ohne Angst oder sogar Untergangsstimmung gesehen. PCs, Tablets und Smartphones sind wesentliche Bestandteile unseres Lebens; wir kaufen online und nehmen über elektronische Netzwerke an Debatten und Veranstaltungen teil. Wir sind so abhängig von der Nutzung elektronischer Geräte, dass man sich fragen könnte, ob wir auf dem Weg zum Cybermenschen sind. Wir haben die technischen Mittel, um in unserem Körper alle Informationen zur digitalen Identifizierung zu tragen, beispielsweise Mikrochips unter der Haut, injizierte Kennungen und verschluckte Passwörter: dies ist nicht Science-Fiction sondern Realität, wenn auch noch nicht Praxis. Der entscheidende Punkt ist die kulturelle Akzeptanz dieses neuen Lebensstils, der sich möglicherweise durchsetzen wird. Zukunftsforschung oder nicht, Tatsache ist, dass das Internet bereits einen wesentlichen Teil unseres Lebens ausmacht, sodass das deutsche Bundesverfassungsgericht mit Weitblick und Mut bereits im Januar 2013 Internetzugang als "Grundrecht" definierte: eine Aussage, die ein neues Konzept zur genaueren Definition dieses Mediums einführt. Dieses Buch soll verdeutlichen, dass sehr schnelle technologische Entwicklungen einen direkten und starken Einfluss auf das demokratische System haben. Politik, Gesetzgeber und Gesetzgebung müssen sich täglich mit dieser Thematik auseinandersetzen und neue und unbekannte Wege gehen. Technologische Innovation verändert und veränderte die Beziehung zwischen Volksvertretern und denjenigen, die sie vertreten, zwischen Politikern und ihren Wählern. Mittlerweile verändert sie auch das Parteiensystem. Betrachtet man ihren Einfluss auf Politik, Recht, Kultur und Wirtschaft, so sieht man, dass die technologische Innovation eine bedeutende Quelle der Macht in der heutigen Welt darstellt.