Worth an Agora? 2003 E-lection Party Sites and Public Discourse
2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1353712042000283766
ISSN1743-9086
Autores Tópico(s)Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Dan Jellinek, ‘The Problems of Open Debate Online’, July 13, 2001. Downloaded from www.voxpolitics.com/news/voxpub/story278.shtml. 2. Rachel K. Gibson and Stephen J. Ward, ‘U.K. Political Parties and the Internet: “Politics as Usual” in the New Media?’ Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol.3, No.3 (1998), pp.14–38; Rachel K. Gibson, James L. Newell and Stephen J. Ward, ‘New Parties, New Media: Italian Party Politics and the Internet’, South European Society & Politics, Vol.5, No.1 (2000), pp.123–42; Don Lewicki and Tim Ziakus, ‘The Digital Leaves of Election 2000: The Internet and the Future of Presidential Politics’, First Monday: Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet, Vol.5 (12: December 2000). Downloaded from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_12/lewicki/index.html; Pippa Norris, ‘Preaching to the Converted? Pluralism, Participation and Party Websites’, Party Politics, Vol.9, No.1 (2003), pp.21–45; Tkach-Kawasaki, ‘Party Competition on the Internet in Japan’, Party Politics, Vol.9, No.1 (2003), pp.105–23. 3. Lincoln Dahlberg, ‘Computer-Mediated Communication and the Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol.7, No.1 (October 2001). Downloaded from www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol7/issue1/dahlberg.html. 4. Nicholas Jankowski and Renee van Os, ‘Internet-based Political Discourse: A Case Study of Electronic Democracy in the City of Hoogeven’, paper presented at the Euricom Colloquium: Electronic Networks & Democracy, 9–12 October 2002, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 5. Eytan Gilboa and Yaron Katz, ‘The Media Campaign: The Shift to Alternative Media’, Israel Affairs, Vol.7, Nos.2–3 (2001), pp.223–44. Gilboa and Katz devote less than one page (p.240) to the internet during the 1999 campaign. 6. Shalom Rosenfeld, ‘Ha'akhbar Mei'tzig et Ha'muamadim La'bekhirot’ (‘The Mouse Presents Election Candidates’), Otot, No.222 (February 1999), pp.8, 10 and 55 (Hebrew). 7. Gilboa and Katz, ‘The Media Campaign: The Shift to Alternative Media’, p.240. 8. Norris, ‘Preaching to the Converted? Pluralism, Participation and Party Websites’, p.26. However, one should distinguish between large, established parties and smaller and/or new parties. For the latter, the internet could be very significant, as Norris argues: ‘The Internet is likely to provide a more hospitable environment for competition by minor and fringe parties because, unlike free [but limited] party broadcasts, there is no central authority regulating, allocating and limiting political websites’. 9. Mark L. Clifford and Moon Ihlwan, ‘The Web Site that Elected a President’, Business Week, 24 February 2003, pp.30–31. 10. Jellinek, ‘The Problems of Open Debate Online’. 11. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. 12. Tamar Liebes, ‘Talk Shows: Ha'merkhav Ha'tzibburi He'khadash?’ (‘Talk Shows: The New Public Sphere?’), in Dan Caspi (ed.), Tikshoret ve'Demokratiah be'Yisrael (Communication and Democracy in Israel), Tel Aviv: Van Leer Institute and Kibbutz Ha'meukhad, 1997, pp.141–52 (Hebrew). Indeed, the one place where some sort of public discourse could be found in the mass media – political talk shows on Israeli TV – were barred by law from hosting any candidate running for office during the last weeks of the campaign! 13. Likud, Labour, NRP, National Union, Shinui, Green Leaf, Meretz and Tzomet. 14. Norris, ‘Preaching to the Converted? Pluralism, Participation and Party Websites’. 15. For a lengthy list of such Usenet forum sites, see Anthony G. Wilhelm, ‘Virtual Sounding Boards: How Deliberative is Online Political Discussion?’ in Barry N. Hague and Brian D. Loader (eds.), Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age, London: Routledge, 1999. 16. Judith S. Donath, ‘Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community’, in M.A. Smith and P. Kollock (eds.), Communities in Cyberspace, London: Routledge, 1999, pp.29–59. 17. Gili Drov-Heistein', Kolot May'Hayitziyah' (‘Voices from the Stands’), Ha'ayin Ha'shvi'it, No.43 (March 2003), p.28 (Hebrew – author's translation). 18. Vitaly J. Dubrovsky, Sara Kiesler and Beheruz N. Sethna, ‘The Equalization Phenomenon: Status Effects in Computer-mediated and Face-to-face Decision-making Groups’, Human Computer Interaction, Vol.6, No.2 (1991), pp.119–46. It also empowers those with verbal disabilities or handicaps: overly shy people, those who stutter or have other types of speech impediments. On the other hand, it hurts people who have text-based problems – dyslexics, etc. – although given the relatively loose rules of internet spelling and grammar, this is less of a handicap than it might seem at first glance. 19. Craig Calhoun, ‘Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere’, in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992, pp.1–50; Dror Werman, ‘Ha'merkhav Ha'tzibburi shel Habermas: Nisui Makhshavti o Ni'sayon Histori?’ (‘Habermas's Public Sphere: Intellectual Experiment or Historical Experience?’), Dvorim Akhadim, Vol.1 (Fall 1997), pp.34–45 (Hebrew). 20. Elizabeth Eisenstein, ‘The Rise of the Reading Public’, in David Crowley and Paul Heyer (eds.), Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society, New York: Longman Publishing Group, 1991, pp.94–102. 21. Douglas Kellner, ‘Intellectuals and New Technologies’, Media, Culture & Society, Vol.3 (1995), pp.427–48. 22. Despite repeated requests, neither the Likud nor Labour was willing to talk about the internet campaign. The four interviews were conducted with Tomer Preize (National Union), Roni Einav (Meretz), Rehavia Berman (Green Leaf) and Ro'i Lachmanovitz (Shas). 23. See below in the forum methodology for an explanation of how the days were selected. The number here is 19 as opposed to 18 with the forums because of data overload in January for the forums, necessitating skipping a day that we had originally planned to study. Scoring the sites was a much easier task. 24. Gibson and Ward, ‘U.K. Political Parties and the Internet: “Politics as Usual” in the New Media?’; Tkach-Kawasaki, ‘Party Competition on the Internet in Japan’; Gibson et al., ‘New Parties, New Media: Italian Party Politics and the Internet’; Lewicki and Ziakus, ‘The Digital Leaves of Election 2000: The Internet and the Future of Presidential Politics’; Sonia Puopolo, ‘The Web and U.S. Senatorial Campaigns, 2000’, The American Behavioral Scientist, Vol.44, No.12 (2001), pp.2030–47. 25. Wilhelm, ‘Virtual Sounding Boards: How Deliberative is Online Political Discussion?’, p.167. 26. The sixth category here – type of argumentation – is less fully fleshed out than Wilhelm's typology, which went more into depth on several aspects of the discussion: ‘providing information’, ‘seeking information’, ‘seeding a discussion’, ‘incorporating ideas from others’, ‘replying to another message’, ‘homogeneity relative to dominant public agenda’, and ‘content that can be logically validated’. On the other hand, the present study surveyed almost ten times the number of entries that he did (4,797 vs. 500). 27. James S. Fishkin, The Dialogue of Justice: Toward a Self-Reflective Society, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. As Fishkin notes, two time-related aspects are crucial: exchanging political messages of substance at length, and the opportunity for reflecting on these messages, as well as for ongoing debate. 28. Simone Chambers, Reasonable Democracy: Jurgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. 29. Wilhelm, ‘Virtual Sounding Boards: How Deliberative is Online Political Discussion?’ 30. James Bohman and William Rehg (eds.), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. 31. Joan Korenman and Nancy Wyatt, ‘Group Dynamics in an E-mail Forum’, in Susan C. Herring (ed.), Computer-mediated Communication: Linguistics, Social and Cross-cultural Perspectives, Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1996, pp.225–42; Tom Postmes, Russell Spears and Martin Lea, ‘Breaching or Building Social Boundaries: SIDE-Effects of Computer-mediated Communication’, Communication Research, Vol.25, No.6 (1998), pp.689–715. 32. Patrick B. O'Sullivan and Andrew J. Flanagin, ‘Reconceptualizing “Flaming” and Other Problematic Messages’, New Media & Society, Vol.5, No.1 (2003), pp.69–94; Joseph M. Kayany, ‘Contexts of Uninhibited Online Behavior: Flaming in Social Newsgroups on Usenet’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol.49, No.12 (1998), pp.1135–41; Mark Dery, Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994. 33. O'Sullivan and Flanagin, ‘Reconceptualizing “Flaming” and Other Problematic Messages’, p.73. Admittedly, there are several methodological problems involved here, so that no claim is made for highly precise accuracy on the scores obtained; rather, they should be viewed as a general tendency in one direction or another. One problem among others, what may seem to be a serious case of mutual cursing and recrimination to an outside observer, might actually be a ‘marker of relationship closeness’ between friends and a sign of mutual respect (e.g. two Afro-Americans calling each other ‘nigger’). Thus, the coder of such forum discussions needs a high level of semantic ‘intuition’ to differentiate actual flaming from something quite the opposite! 34. Interestingly, such ‘meet-the-candidate’ forums occurred only on the two institutional-commercial sites. For those days scored, these were the dates, guest's name, party affiliation, as well as the number of entries and participants in that order: Nana: 29/12 – Tommy Lapid, Shinui (67+29); 2/1 – Yossi Sarid, Meretz (56+21); 5/1 – Yuval Steinitz, Likud (56+24); 12/1 – Gideon Saar, Likud (103+29); 13/1 – Natan Sharansky, Yisrael B'Aliya (83+23); 19/1 – Michael Kleiner, Herut (113+48); 22/1 – Yossi Beilin, Meretz (58+19); 26/1 – Moshe Green, New Tzomet (70+35). Tapuz: 5/12 – Yulii Edelstein, Israel B'Aliya (54+26); 29/12 – Roni Bart, Tikva Le'Yisrael (non-party social movement) (31+15); 29/12 – Zvulun Orlev, National Religious Party (69+30); 8/1 – Moshe Green, New Tzomet (71+26); 8/1 – David Magen, Centre(51+30). 35. David A. Dulio, Donald L. Goff and James A. Thurber, ‘Untangled Web: Internet Use during the 1998 Election’, PS (March 1999), pp.53–9. 36. To be sure, the parties may not have enabled real debate on purpose. As Jellinek suggests (Jellinek, ‘The Problems of Open Debate Online’), parties are not obliged to provide a service that could expose thems to attack within their own ‘home’(page)! 37. Norris, ‘Preaching to the Converted? Pluralism, Participation and Party Websites’, p.26. 38. As the Green Leaf campaign manager noted: ‘We are internet people living in an internet generation’. 39. Stephen J. Ward and Rachel K. Gibson, ‘The First Internet Election? UK Political Parties and Campaigning in Cyberspace’, in Ivor Crewe, Brian Gottschalk and John Bartle (eds.), Political Communications: Why Labour Won the General Election of 1997, London: Frank Cass, 1998, pp.101–2. 40. Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1997, p.370. 41. While the scale used here is more nuanced than the simple dichotomous ‘yes/no’ score of Wilhelm regarding arguments that can be validated, it is interesting to note that whereas about 75 per cent of the forum entries he studied included an argument that could be validated, the proportion of entries scoring four or lower on our scale (i.e. had some measure of rational argumentation) was closer to 85 per cent. In other words, our Israeli discussants certainly were not less rational than their American counterparts during the 1996 presidential election campaign. 42. For Tapuz netiquette rules, for example, see www.tapuz.co.il/TapuzForum/main/rules.asp. As with most forums, they glorify freedom of expression but have a comprehensive list of prohibited behaviour, including insulting others in the forum, libel and hate speech, as well as not sticking to the general topic at hand. 43. Cass Sunstein, republic.com, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 44. Indeed, a cursory analysis of the discussions on the party sites' forums reinforces Sunstein's argument about ‘group polarization’, i.e. such sites tend to attract like-minded people who then proceed not only to reinforce their own positions but also actually distance the group's position from other groups (in this case, parties). Future studies of this sort might do well to more thoroughly investigate the differences between discourse on party forums compared to the public forums that are the focus of the present article. 45. Pam Fielding and Nicole Duritz (n.d.), ‘Net Savvy Challengers Win Online and at the Ballot Box’, in Stephen Coleman (ed.), Elections in the Age of the Internet. Downloaded from www.hansardsociety.org.uk/ElectionsinTheAgeofInternet.pdf. A very recent example is that of Howard Dean, who has used the internet to great effect in his run for the Democratic Party nomination for the US presidency. 46. Of course, there are also older Shas supporters. However, given the much higher birthrate among the ultra-Orthodox and a somewhat higher rate among Jews from Arab countries, the preponderance of potential voters for Shas comes from the younger generation. 47. ‘Political knowledgeability’ is obviously an amorphous term, hard to prove empirically. However, Israelis consistently rank high internationally in print news readership and radio news listening, not to mention voter turnout (excluding the Arab-Israeli sector, many of whom boycott elections for political reasons, and Israelis residing outside Israel, who are barred from casting a ballot overseas, voting participation rates reach 90 per cent and even above that). 48. Kim Jung Min, ‘Caught in a Political Net’, Far Eastern Economic Review (November 2001), pp.49–50. An indication of such a trend can be seen in the 2001 British elections. A MORI poll found that whereas only six per cent of the overall voting public with internet/e-mail access said that it had a ‘very or fairly important’ influence on their vote, the proportion almost tripled (17 per cent) among the 18–24 year-olds. Stephen Coleman, ‘Online Campaigning’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol.54, No.4 (2001), pp.679–88. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSam Lehman-WilzigSam Lehman-Wilzig is an associate professor and chairman of the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University. He thanks Mr. Cobi Yaacobi and Ms. Michal Seletzki, graduate students in the departments' Public Communications Program, for their invaluable research efforts in collecting the quantitative and qualitative material for this study.
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