Collective Action, Interviews, Politics & Government

Do Finland’s digitally crowdsourced laws show a way to resolve democracy’s “legitimacy crisis”?

by Taneli Heikka 16/11/2015

Discussing the digitally crowdsourced law for same-sex marriage that was passed in Finland and analysing how the campaign created practices that affect democratic citizenship.

by Taneli Heikka 16/11/2015

There is much discussion about a perceived “legitimacy crisis” in democracy. In his article The Rise of the Mediating Citizen: Time, Space, and Citizenship in the Crowdsourcing of Finnish Legislation, Taneli Heikka (University of Jyväskylä) discusses the digitally crowdsourced law for same-sex marriage that was passed in Finland in 2014, analysing how the campaign used new digital tools and created practices that affect democratic citizenship and power making. Ed: There is much discussion about a perceived “legitimacy crisis” in democracy. For example, less than half of the Finnish electorate under 40 choose to vote. In your article you argue that Finland’s 2012 Citizens’ Initiative Act aimed to address this problem by allowing for the crowdsourcing of ideas for new legislation. How common is this idea? (And indeed, how successful?) Taneli: The idea that digital participation could counter the “legitimacy crisis” is a fairly common one. Digital utopians have nurtured that idea from the early years of the internet, and have often been disappointed. A couple of things stand out in the Finnish experiment that make it worth a closer look. First, the digital crowdsourcing system with strong digital identification is a reliable and potentially viral campaigning tool. Most civic initiative systems I have encountered rely on manual or otherwise cumbersome, and less reliable, signature collection methods. Second, in the Finnish model, initiatives that break the threshold of 50,000 names must be treated in the Parliament equally to an initiative from a group of MPs. This gives the initiative constitutional and political weight. Ed: The Act led to the passage of Finland’s first equal marriage law in 2014. In this case, online platforms were created for collecting signatures as well as drafting legislation. An NGO created a well-used platform, but it subsequently had to shut it down because it couldn’t afford the electronic signature system. Crowds are great, but not a silver bullet if something as prosaic as authentication is impossible. Where should the…

Collective Action, Politics & Government, Social Data Science

Don’t knock clickivism: it represents the political participation aspirations of the modern citizen

by Max Halupka 01/03/2015

Is an action only ‘political’ if it takes place in the mainstream political arena; involving government, politicians or voting?

by Max Halupka 01/03/2015

Following a furious public backlash in 2011, the UK government abandoned plans to sell off 258,000 hectares of state-owned woodland. The public forest campaign by 38 Degrees gathered over half a million signatures.

How do we define political participation? What does it mean to say an action is ‘political’? Is an action only ‘political’ if it takes place in the mainstream political arena; involving government, politicians or voting? Or is political participation something that we find in the most unassuming of places, in sports, home and work? This question, ‘what is politics’ is one that political scientists seem to have a lot of trouble dealing with, and with good reason. If we use an arena definition of politics, then we marginalise the politics of the everyday; the forms of participation and expression that develop between the cracks, through need and ingenuity. However, if we broaden our approach as so to adopt what is usually termed a process definition, then everything can become political. The problem here is that saying that everything is political is akin to saying nothing is political, and that doesn’t help anyone. Over the years, this debate has plodded steadily along, with scholars on both ends of the spectrum fighting furiously to establish a working understanding. Then, the Internet came along and drew up new battle lines. The Internet is at its best when it provides a home for the disenfranchised, an environment where like-minded individuals can wipe free the dust of societal disassociation and connect and share content. However, the Internet brought with it a shift in power, particularly in how individuals conceptualised society and their role within it. The Internet, in addition to this role, provided a plethora of new and customisable modes of political participation. From the onset, a lot of these new forms of engagement were extensions of existing forms, broadening the everyday citizen’s participatory repertoire. There was a move from voting to e-voting, petitions to e-petitions, face-to-face communities to online communities; the Internet took what was already there and streamlined it, removing those pesky elements of time, space and identity. Yet, as the Internet continues…

Social Data Science

Past and Emerging Themes in Policy and Internet Studies

by Vili Lehdonvirta 12/05/2014

It is simply not possible to consider public policy today without some regard for the intertwining of information technologies with everyday life and society.

by Vili Lehdonvirta 12/05/2014

We can't understand, analyse or make public policy without understanding the technological, social and economic shifts associated with the Internet. Image from the (post-PRISM) "Stop Watching Us" Berlin Demonstration (2013) by mw238.

In the journal’s inaugural issue, founding Editor-in-Chief Helen Margetts outlined what are essentially two central premises behind Policy & Internet’s launch. The first is that “we cannot understand, analyse or make public policy without understanding the technological, social and economic shifts associated with the Internet” (Margetts 2009, 1). It is simply not possible to consider public policy today without some regard for the intertwining of information technologies with everyday life and society. The second premise is that the rise of the Internet is associated with shifts in how policy itself is made. In particular, she proposed that impacts of Internet adoption would be felt in the tools through which policies are effected, and the values that policy processes embody. The purpose of the Policy and Internet journal was to take up these two challenges: the public policy implications of Internet-related social change, and Internet-related changes in policy processes themselves. In recognition of the inherently multi-disciplinary nature of policy research, the journal is designed to act as a meeting place for all kinds of disciplinary and methodological approaches. Helen predicted that methodological approaches based on large-scale transactional data, network analysis, and experimentation would turn out to be particularly important for policy and Internet studies. Driving the advancement of these methods was therefore the journal’s third purpose. Today, the journal has reached a significant milestone: over one hundred high-quality peer-reviewed articles published. This seems an opportune moment to take stock of what kind of research we have published in practice, and see how it stacks up against the original vision. At the most general level, the journal’s articles fall into three broad categories: the Internet and public policy (48 articles), the Internet and policy processes (51 articles), and discussion of novel methodologies (10 articles). The first of these categories, “the Internet and public policy,” can be further broken down into a number of subcategories. One of the most prominent of these streams…

Collective Action, Politics & Government

Presenting the moral imperative: effective storytelling strategies by online campaigning organisations

by Ariadne Vromen 25/06/2013

Existing civil society focused organisations are also being challenged to fundamentally change their approach, to move political tactics and communications online, and to grow their member lists.

by Ariadne Vromen 25/06/2013

Online campaigning organisations are on the rise. They have captured the imagination of citizens and scholars alike with their ability to use rapid response tactics to engage with public policy debate and mobilise citizens. Early on Andrew Chadwick (2007) labeled these new campaign organisations as ‘hybrids’: using both online and offline political action strategies, as well as intentionally switching repertoires to sometimes act like a mass mobilisation social movement, and other times like an insider interest group. These online campaigning organisations run multi-issue agendas, are geographically decentralised, and run sophisticated media strategies. The best known of these are MoveOn in the US, internationally focused Avaaz, and GetUp! in Australia. However, new online campaigning organisations are emerging all the time that more often than not have direct lineage through former staff and similar tactics to this first wave. These newer organisations include the UK-based 38 Degrees, SumOfUs that works on consumer issues to hold corporations accountable, and Change.Org, a for-profit organisation that hosts and develops petitions for grassroots groups. Existing civil society focused organisations are also being challenged to fundamentally change their approach, to move political tactics and communications online, and to grow their member lists. David Karpf (2012) has branded this “MoveOn Effect”, where the success of online campaigning organisations like MoveOn has fundamentally changed and disrupted the advocacy organisation scene. But how has this shift occurred? How have these new organisations succeeded in being both innovative and politically successful? One increasingly common answer is to focus on how they have developed low threshold online tactics where the risk to participants is reduced. This includes issue and campaign specific online petitions, letter writing, emails, donating money, and boycotts. The other answer is to focus more closely on the discursive tactics these organisations use in their campaigns, based on a shared commitment to a storytelling strategy, and the practical realisation of a ‘theory of change.’ That is, to ask how campaigns…

Collective Action, Methods, Politics & Government

Investigating the structure and connectivity of online global protest networks

by Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon 10/06/2013

The new networks of political protest, which harness these new online technologies are often described in theoretical terms as being ‘fluid’ and ‘horizontal’, in contrast to the rigid and hierarchical structure of earlier protest organisation.

by Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon 10/06/2013

How have online technologies reconfigured collective action? It is often assumed that the rise of social networking tools, accompanied by the mass adoption of mobile devices, have strengthened the impact and broadened the reach of today’s political protests. Enabling massive self-communication allows protesters to write their own interpretation of events—free from a mass media often seen as adversarial—and emerging protests may also benefit from the cheaper, faster transmission of information and more effective mobilisation made possible by online tools such as Twitter. The new networks of political protest, which harness these new online technologies are often described in theoretical terms as being ‘fluid’ and ‘horizontal’, in contrast to the rigid and hierarchical structure of earlier protest organisation. Yet such theoretical assumptions have seldom been tested empirically. This new language of networks may be useful as a shorthand to describe protest dynamics, but does it accurately reflect how protest networks mediate communication and coordinate support? The global protests against austerity and inequality which took place on May 12, 2012 provide an interesting case study to test the structure and strength of a transnational online protest movement. The ‘indignados’ movement emerged as a response to the Spanish government’s politics of austerity in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The movement flared in May 2011, when hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in Spanish cities, and many set up camps ahead of municipal elections a week later. These protests contributed to the emergence of the worldwide Occupy movement. After the original plan to occupy New York City’s financial district mobilised thousands of protesters in September 2011, the movement spread to other cities in the US and worldwide, including London and Frankfurt, before winding down as the camp sites were dismantled weeks later. Interest in these movements was revived, however, as the first anniversary of the ‘indignados’ protests approached in May 2012. To test whether the fluidity, horizontality and connectivity often claimed for…

Collective Action, Governance & Security

The global fight over copyright control: Is David beating Goliath at his own game?

by Yana Breindl 10/06/2013

We stress the importance of digital environments for providing contenders of copyright reform with a robust discursive opportunity structure.

by Yana Breindl 10/06/2013

Anti-HADOPI march in Paris, 2009. Image bykurto.

In the past few years, many governments have attempted to curb online “piracy” by enforcing harsher copyright control upon Internet users. This trend is now well documented in the academic literature, as with Jon Bright and José Agustina’s or Sebastian Haunss’ recent reviews of such developments. However, as the digital copyright control bills of the 21st century reached parliamentary floors, several of them failed to pass. Many of these legislative failures, such as the postponement of the SOPA and PIPA bills in the United States, succeeded in mobilising large audiences and received widespread media coverage. Writing about these bills and the related events that led to the demise of the similarly-intentioned Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty Agreement (ACTA), Susan Sell, a seasoned analyst of intellectual property enforcement, points to the transnational coalition of Internet users at the heart of these outcomes. As she puts it: In key respects, this is a David and Goliath story in which relatively weak activists were able to achieve surprising success against the strong. That analogy also appears in our recently published article in Policy & Internet, which focuses on the groups that fought several digital copyright control bills as they went through the European and French parliaments in 2007-2009—most notably the EU “Telecoms Package” and the French “HADOPI” laws. Like Susan Sell, our analysis shows “David” civil society groups formed by socially and technically skilled activists disrupting the work of “Goliath” coalitions of powerful actors that had previously been successful at converting the interests of the so-called “creative industries” into copyright law. To explain this process, we stress the importance of digital environments for providing contenders of copyright reform with a robust discursive opportunity structure—a space in which activist groups could defend and diffuse alternative understandings and practices of copyright control and telecommunication reform. These counter-frames and practices refer to the Internet as a public good, and make openness, sharing and creativity central features of the new…

Collective Action, Politics & Government

Why do (some) political protest mobilisations succeed?

by Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon 19/04/2013

Mobilisation paths are difficult to predict because they depend on the right alignment of conditions on different levels.

by Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon 19/04/2013

The communication technologies once used by rebels and protesters to gain global visibility now look burdensome and dated: much separates the once-futuristic-looking image of Subcomandante Marcos posing in the Chiapas jungle draped in electronic gear (1994) from the uprisings of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. While the only practical platform for amplifying a message was once provided by organisations, the rise of the Internet means that cross-national networks are now reachable by individuals—who are able to bypass organisations, ditch membership dues, and embrace self-organisation. As social media and mobile applications increasingly blur the distinction between public and private, ordinary citizens are becoming crucial nodes in the contemporary protest network. The personal networks that are the main channels of information flow in sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn mean that we don’t need to actively seek out particular information; it can be served to us with no more effort than that of maintaining a connection with our contacts. News, opinions, and calls for justice are now shared and forwarded by our friends—and their friends—in a constant churn of information, all attached to familiar names and faces. Given we are more likely to pass on information if the source belongs to our social circle, this has had an important impact on the information environment within which protest movements are initiated and develop. Mobile connectivity is also important for understanding contemporary protest, given that the ubiquitous streams of synchronous information we access anywhere are shortening our reaction times. This is important, as the evolution of mass recruitments—whether they result in flash mobilisations, slow burns, or simply damp squibs—can only be properly understood if we have a handle on the distribution of reaction times within a population. The increasing integration of the mainstream media into our personal networks is also important, given that online networks (and independent platforms like Indymedia) are not the clear-cut alternative to corporate media they once were. We can now…

Collective Action, Politics & Government

Online collective action and policy change: shifting contentious politics in policy processes

by Andrea Calderaro 02/04/2013

The Internet can facilitate the involvement of social movements in policymaking processes, but also constitute in itself the object of contentious politics.

by Andrea Calderaro 02/04/2013

Research has disproved the notion held by political elites—and some researchers—that collective action resides outside of policy-making processes, and is limited in generating a response from government. The Internet can facilitate the involvement of social movements in policymaking processes, but also constitute in itself the object of contentious politics. Most research on online mobilisations focuses on the Internet as a tool for campaigning and for challenging decision-makers at the national and international level. Meanwhile, less attention is paid on the fact that the Internet has raised new issues for the policy making agenda around which activists are mobilising, such as issues related to internet governance, online freedom of expression, digital privacy or copyright. Contemporary social movements serve as indicators of new core challenges within society, and can thus constitute an enriching resource for the policy debate arena, particularly with regards to the urgent issues raised by the fast development of the Internet. The literature on social movements is rich in examples of campaigns that have successfully influenced public policy. Classic works have proved how major reforms can start as a consequence of civic mobilisations, and the history provides evidence of the influence of collective action within policy debates on environmental, national security, and peace issues. However, as mentioned above and argued by Giugni (2004), social movement research has traditionally paid more attention to the process rather than the outcomes of mobilisations. The difficulty of identifying the consequences of collective action and the factors that contribute to its success may lie behind this tendency. As Gamson (1975) argues, the notion of success is elusive and can be most usefully defined with reference to a set of outcomes; these may include the new advantages gained by the group’s beneficiaries after a challenge with targets, or they may refer to the status of the challenging group and its legitimacy. As for the factors determining success, some scholars believe that collective action is likely to…

Collective Action, Politics & Government, Publications

Online collective action and policy change: new special issue from Policy and Internet

by Anastasia Kavada 18/03/2013

The internet has provided citizens with a greater capacity for coordination and mobilisation, which can strengthen their voice and representation in the policy agenda.

by Anastasia Kavada 18/03/2013

The Internet has multiplied the platforms available to influence public opinion and policy making. It has also provided citizens with a greater capacity for coordination and mobilisation, which can strengthen their voice and representation in the policy agenda. As waves of protest sweep both authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies, this rapidly developing field calls for more detailed enquiry. However, research exploring the relationship between online mobilisation and policy change is still limited. This special issue of ‘Policy and Internet’ addresses this gap through a variety of perspectives. Contributions to this issue view the Internet both as a tool that allows citizens to influence policy making, and as an object of new policies and regulations, such as data retention, privacy, and copyright laws, around which citizens are mobilising. Together, these articles offer a comprehensive empirical account of the interface between online collective action and policy making. Within this framework, the first article in this issue, “Networked Collective Action and the Institutionalized Policy Debate: Bringing Cyberactivism to the Policy Arena?” by Stefania Milan and Arne Hintz (2013), looks at the Internet as both a tool of collective action and an object of policy. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of how computer-mediated communication creates not only new forms of organisational structure for collective action, but also new contentious policy fields. By focusing on what the authors define as ‘techie activists,’ Milan and Hintz explore how new grassroots actors participate in policy debates around the governance of the Internet at different levels. This article provides empirical evidence to what Kriesi et al. (1995) defines as “windows of opportunities” for collective action to contribute to the policy debate around this new space of contentious politics. Milan and Hintz demonstrate how this has happened from the first World Summit of Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 to more recent debates about Internet regulation. Yana Breindl and François Briatte’s (2013) article “Digital Protest Skills and Online Activism Against…

Collective Action, Governance & Security, Publications

Papers on Policy, Activism, Government and Representation: New Issue of Policy and Internet

by David Sutcliffe 16/01/2013

Investigating the relationship between Internet-based applications and data and the policy process.

by David Sutcliffe 16/01/2013

We are pleased to present the combined third and fourth issue of Volume 4 of Policy and Internet. It contains eleven articles, each of which investigates the relationship between Internet-based applications and data and the policy process. The papers have been grouped into the broad themes of policy, government, representation, and activism. POLICY: In December 2011, the European Parliament Directive on Combating the Sexual Abuse, Sexual Exploitation of Children and Child Pornography was adopted. The directive’s much-debated Article 25 requires Member States to ensure the prompt removal of child pornography websites hosted in their territory and to endeavor to obtain the removal of such websites hosted outside their territory. Member States are also given the option to block access to such websites to users within their territory. Both these policy choices have been highly controversial and much debated; Karel Demeyer, Eva Lievens, and Jos Dumortie analyse the technical and legal means of blocking and removing illegal child sexual content from the Internet, clarifying the advantages and drawbacks of the various policy options. Another issue of jurisdiction surrounds government use of cloud services. While cloud services promise to render government service delivery more effective and efficient, they are also potentially stateless, triggering government concern over data sovereignty. Kristina Irion explores these issues, tracing the evolution of individual national strategies and international policy on data sovereignty. She concludes that data sovereignty presents national governments with a legal risk that can’t be addressed through technology or contractual arrangements alone, and recommends that governments retain sovereignty over their information. While the Internet allows unprecedented freedom of expression, it also facilitates anonymity and facelessness, increasing the possibility of damage caused by harmful online behaviour, including online bullying. Myoung-Jin Lee, Yu Jung Choi, and Setbyol Choi investigate the discourse surrounding the introduction of the Korean Government’s “Verification of Identity” policy, which aimed to foster a more responsible Internet culture by mandating registration of a user’s real…