An empirical study of e-participation activities in social movement organisations

The widespread diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has had a significant impact on European society. This study analyses the impact of ICT enabled political participation by Social Movement Organisations (SMOs). A sample of European protest networks and pressure groups' websites are analysed through the use of indicators that measure their ability to disseminate information, their potential for bilateral/multilateral communication, and their website connectivity. We found no significant differences in communication patterns between SMOs that have different sizes with regards to the information dissemination and communication patterns, and found that larger SMOs have more website connectivity

Internet Explorers: the online campaign

The idea of an ‘internet election’ was initially put forward in 1997. However, there is little evidence to date that online campaigning has supplanted more traditional campaign practices. This is particularly true of Irish campaigns, which are hardware-rich affairs characterised by substantial volumes of face-to-face human interactions. A study of the 2002 Irish campaign was entitled ‘None of that post-modern stuff around here’, and many ‘pre-modern’ patterns and practices endure in contemporary Irish politics. All of the coverage of the 2011 campaign attested to the ongoing centrality of the ‘canvass’ - meaning that, to be electable, Irish politicians must engage heavily in individual-level, door-to-door persuasion using a mixture of argumentation and personal charisma. No serious campaign consultant would advise his or her candidate to focus solely on online campaigning in an Irish election and an investigation of the campaign activities that corresponded to electoral gains in the 2007 Irish campaign found that posters and leaflets were the most effective campaign tools. In 2011, posters and leaflets remained must-have items for any serious candidate. Indeed, one of the election’s more amusing stories concerned the large number of heavy-duty posters that came loose and flapped around the country like deranged birds in the campaign’s first week. Nevertheless, Irish parties, candidates, and citizenry have made rapid advances and undergone remarkable changes in their political use of internet technologies since the 2007 election, and in this chapter we will describe some of these advances and changes

Why Do Politicians Tweet? Extremists, Underdogs, and Opposing Parties as Political Tweeters

Why do some politicians actively use social media, while others lag behind? To answer this question, we propose that opposing party politicians, underdogs, and extremists are more likely to become active political tweeters. Research has shown that media attention is generally concentrated on politicians with power; that is, ruling parties and party leaders. We thus hypothesize that politicians marginalized from media attention, namely backbenchers and those from opposing parties, may perceive greater potential benefits from social media. Further, politicians whose ideological positions do not match well with those of major news media (i.e., extremists) may perceive risks in facing tough questions from journalists, as well as the media's gatekeeping process. We thus hypothesize that extremists may perceive greater benefits from using social media, because they can control their message. We tested these hypotheses using data on U.S. Senators’ public communication activities on Twitter and in press releases in 2009–2011 and found strong support