Tag: democracy

P&I Special Issue 2023 Call for Paper – Datafication. Platformisation. Metaverse. Global Internet Policy or a Fractured Communication Future?

Datafication. Platformisation. Metaverse. Global Internet Policy or a Fractured Communication Future?

Special Issue Call for Papers, Volume 15, Issue 4

Datafication. Platformization. Metaverse. What is the state of global internet policy? Within our current online and hyper-connected lives, is it possible to have such a thing as global internet policy? Building off the 2022 Policy & Internet Conference, this special issue addresses the complex and multiple perspectives of internet policy from around the globe.

As we evolve through the Anthropocene and attempt to navigate the significant challenges humanity currently faces, we are consistently reminded of the most pressing critical issues of our epoch. Economic systems are the point of breaking, industrial action mobilised by unions is at an all-time high, inflation is rising, workers’ pay continues to fall, and the stability of our political systems has come into question. Our health systems are under unfathomable stress, refugee numbers are increasing through displacement, and the war in Ukraine continues, all of which adds to the growing global societal, economic and political pressures. And yet, concurrently, our connectivity through digital media and its surrounding environments is at an all-time high, arguably from the rise of technology players providing suites of social media platforms and its supporting infrastructures that enable a seamless and convenient, always-on lifestyle. The same app that enables us to chat with our friends and family can also book our rideshares, order our food, pay for our purchases and tempt us to become internet celebrities. What was once framed as user generated content activity has now become a normalised cultural pastime, as TikTok influencers feed the demotic turn that sees ordinary folk become internet superstars in rather small timeframes.

At the same time, policymakers are reforming legislation to address the incomprehensible imbalance of power that is generated by technology giants. One of the immediate issues concerning users is their online privacy. In many instances, governments continue to struggle with bringing large-scale social media platforms to account, and seeking mutually beneficial outcomes. TikTok especially has raised concerns with user privacy as many cybersecurity agencies who advise governments have no clear answers on how to maintain its use while not knowing what will happen to user data. Alongside user data issues, in some countries the relationship between technology providers and governments is blurred, where regulation is becoming a weaponized approach to citizen control. To counter these sorts of power imbalances, advocacy groups are consistently calling for safe, inclusive, affordable and reliable internet connectivity, as the digital divide continues to increase. The urgency for healthy online civic spaces has been highlighted as a key focus for advocacy groups, while ensuring the safety of its users has also been highlighted.

This special issue asks for responses to these contemporary issues and seeks to understand if a global internet policy is possible. How might we incorporate co-design, open dialogues, increased governance, interoperability and user-centred discussions into policy discussions? What are the immediate issues for policymakers?

We welcome research that addresses the following areas of interest (but not limited to):

  • Takedowns, shadowbanning, throttling
  • Non-western approaches towards internet policy
  • Internet governance and infrastructures
  • Content moderation
  • Regulatory responses that address the growing digital divide 
  • Communication and technology for positive economic development
  • Building strong communication systems during times of high societal pressure
  • Social media and labour concerns
  • Emerging digital communication for marginalised groups and individuals
  • Digital communication that bridges regional legislation
  • Communication and technology through comparative media systems 
  • Regulation for diversity across media systems
  • Media automation for the next 10 years and beyond
  • Young people and social media
  • Innovative empirical examples of positive digital communication and/or technology development

Please send through your title and 150-200 word abstract to Jonathon Hutchinson [jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au] and Milly Stilinovic [milica.stilinovic@sydney.edu.au] with the subject line: Policy & Internet Special Issue by October 31 2022.

Timeline

October 31 – Abstracts due

November 18 – Notification of Accepted Papers

January 31 (2023) – Full Papers Due

March 31 (2023) – Final Revisions Due

Photo by Risto Kokkonen on Unsplash

How can we encourage participation in online political deliberation?

Political parties have been criticized for failing to link citizen preferences to political decision-making. But in an attempt to enhance policy representation, many political parties have established online platforms to allow discussion of policy issues and proposals, and to open up their decision-making processes. The Internet — and particularly the social web — seems to provide an obvious opportunity to strengthen intra-party democracy and mobilize passive party members. However, these mobilizing capacities are limited, and in most instances, participation has been low.

In their Policy & Internet article “Does the Internet Encourage Political Participation? Use of an Online Platform by Members of a German Political Party,” Katharina Gerl, Stefan Marschall, and Nadja Wilker examine the German Greens’ online collaboration platform to ask why only some party members and supporters use it. The platform aims improve the inclusion of party supporters and members in the party’s opinion-formation and decision-making process, but it has failed to reach inactive members. Instead, those who have already been active in the party also use the online platform. It also seems that classical resources such as education and employment status do not (directly) explain differences in participation; instead, participation is motivated by process-related and ideological incentives.

We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings:

Ed.: You say “When it comes to explaining political online participation within parties, we face a conceptual and empirical void” .. can you explain briefly what the offline models are, and why they don’t work for the Internet age?

Katharina / Stefan / Nadja: According to Verba et al. (1995) the reasons for political non-participation can be boiled down to three factors: (1) citizens do not want to participate, (2) they cannot, (3) nobody asked them to. Speaking model-wise we can distinguish three perspectives: Citizens need certain resources like education, information, time and civic skills to participate (resource model and civic voluntarism model). The social psychological model looks at the role of attitudes and political interest that are supposed to increase participation. In addition to resources and attitudes, the general incentives model analyses how motives, costs and benefits influence participation.

These models can be applied to online participation as well, but findings for the online context indicate that the mechanisms do not always work like in the offline context. For example, age plays out differently for online participation. Generally, the models have to be specified for each participation context. This especially applies for the online context as forms of online participation sometimes demand different resources, skills or motivational factors. Therefore, we have to adapt and supplemented the models with additional online factors like internet skills and internet sophistication.

Ed.: What’s the value to a political party of involving its members in policy discussion? (i.e. why go through the bother?)

Katharina / Stefan / Nadja: Broadly speaking, there are normative and rational reasons for that. At least for the German parties, intra-party democracy plays a crucial role. The involvement of members in policy discussion can serve as a means to strengthen the integration and legitimation power of a party. Additionally, the involvement of members can have a mobilizing effect for the party on the ground. This can positively influence the linkage between the party in central office, the party on the ground, and the societal base. Furthermore, member participation can be a way to react on dissatisfaction within a party.

Ed.: Are there any examples of successful “public deliberation” — i.e. is this maybe just a problem of getting disparate voices to usefully engage online, rather than a failure of political parties per se?

Katharina / Stefan / Nadja: This is definitely not unique to political parties. The problems we observe regarding online public deliberation in political parties also apply to other online participation platforms: political participation and especially public deliberation require time and effort for participants, so they will only be willing to engage if they feel they benefit from it. But the benefits of participation may remain unclear as public deliberation – by parties or other initiators – often takes place without a clear goal or a real say in decision-making for the participants. Initiators of public deliberation often fail to integrate processes of public deliberation into formal and meaningful decision-making procedures. This leads to disappointment for potential participants who might have different expectations concerning their role and scope of influence. There is a risk of a vicious circle and disappointed expectations on both sides.

Ed.: Based on your findings, what would you suggest that the Greens do in order to increase participation by their members on their platform?

Katharina / Stefan / Nadja: Our study shows that the members of the Greens are generally willing to participate online and appreciate this opportunity. However, the survey also revealed that the most important incentive for them is to have an influence on the party’s decision-making. We would suggest that the Greens create an actual cause for participation, meaning to set clear goals and to integrate it into specific and relevant decisions. Participation should not be an end in itself!

Ed.: How far do political parties try to harness deliberation where it happens in the wild e.g. on social media, rather than trying to get people to use bespoke party channels? Or might social media users see this as takeover by the very “establishment politics” they might have abandoned, or be reacting against?

Katharina / Stefan / Nadja: Parties do not constrain their online activities to their own official platforms and channels but also try to develop strategies for influencing discourses in the wild. However, this works much better and has much more authenticity as well as credibility if it isn’t parties as abstract organizations but rather individual politicians such as members of parliament who engage in person on social media, for example by using Twitter.

Ed.: How far have political scientists understood the reasons behind the so-called “crisis of democracy”, and how to address it? And even if academics came up with “the answer” — what is the process for getting academic work and knowledge put into practice by political parties?

Katharina / Stefan / Nadja: The alleged “crisis of democracy” is in first line seen as a crisis of representation in which the gap between political elites and the citizens has widened drastically within the last years, giving room to populist movements and parties in many democracies. Our impression is that facing the rise of populism in many countries, politicians have become more and more attentive towards discussions and findings in political science which have been addressing the linkage problems for years. But perhaps this is like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Read the full article: Gerl, K., Marschall, S., and Wilker, N. (2016) Does the Internet Encourage Political Participation? Use of an Online Platform by Members of a German Political Party. Policy & Internet doi:10.1002/poi3.149

Katharina Gerl, Stefan Marschall, and Nadja Wilker were talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

Habermas by design: designing public deliberation into online platforms

Advocates of deliberative democracy have always hoped that the Internet would provide the means for an improved public sphere. But what particular platform features should we look to, to promote deliberative debate online? In their Policy & Internet article “Design Matters! An Empirical Analysis of Online Deliberation on Different News Platforms“, Katharina Esau, Dennis Friess, and Christiane Eilders show how differences in the design of various news platforms result in significant variation in the quality of deliberation; measured as rationality, reciprocity, respect, and constructiveness.

The empirical findings of their comparative analysis across three types of news platforms broadly support the assumption that platform design affects the level of deliberative quality of user comments. Deliberation was most likely to be found in news fora, which are of course specifically designed to initiate user discussions. News websites showed a lower level of deliberative quality, with Facebook coming last in terms of meeting deliberative design criteria and sustaining deliberation. However, while Facebook performed poorly in terms of overall level of deliberative quality, it did promote a high degree of general engagement among users.

The study’s findings suggest that deliberative discourse in the virtual public sphere of the Internet is indeed possible, which is good news for advocates of deliberative theory. However, this will only be possible by carefully considering how platforms function, and how they are designed. Some may argue that the “power of design” (shaped by organizers like media companies), contradicts the basic idea of open debate amongst equals where the only necessary force is Habermas’s “forceless force of the better argument”. These advocates of an utterly free virtual public sphere may be disappointed, given it’s clear that deliberation is only likely to emerge if the platform is designed in a particular way.

We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings:

Ed: Just briefly: what design features did you find helped support public deliberation, i.e. reasoned, reciprocal, respectful, constructive discussion?

Katharina / Dennis / Christiane: There are several design features which are known to influence online deliberation. However, in this study we particularly focus on moderation, asynchronous discussion, clear topic definition, and the availability of information, which we have found to have a positive influence on the quality of online deliberation.

Ed.: I associate “Internet as a deliberative space” with Habermas, but have never read him: what’s the short version of what he thinks about “the public sphere” — and how the Internet might support this?

Katharina / Dennis / Christiane: Well, Habermas describes the public sphere as a space where free and equal people discuss topics of public import in a specific way. The respectful exchange of rational reasons is crucial in this normative ideal. Due to its open architecture, the Internet has often been presented as providing the infrastructure for large scale deliberation processes. However, Habermas himself is very skeptical as to whether online spaces support his ideas on deliberation. Ironically, he is one of the most influential authors in online deliberation scholarship.

Ed.: What do advocates of the Internet as a “deliberation space” hope for — simply that people will feel part of a social space / community if they can like things or comment on them (and see similar viewpoints); or that it will result in actual rational debate, and people changing their minds to “better” viewpoints, whatever they may be? I can personally see a value for the former, but I can’t imagine the latter ever working, i.e. given people basically don’t change?

Katharina / Dennis / Christiane: We are thinking that both hopes are present in the current debate, and we partly agree with your perception that changing minds seems to be difficult. But we may also be facing some methodological or empirical issues here, because changing of minds is not an easy thing to measure. We know from other studies that deliberation can indeed cause changes of opinion. However, most of this probably takes place within the individual’s mind. Robert E. Goodin has called this process “deliberation within” and this is not accessible through content analysis. People do not articulate “Oh, thanks for this argument, I have changed my mind”, but they probably take something away from online discussions which makes them more open minded.

Ed.: Does Wikipedia provide an example where strangers have (oddly!) come together to create something of genuine value — but maybe only because they’re actually making a specific public good? Is the basic problem of the idea of the “Internet supporting public discourse” that this is just too aimless an activity, with no obvious individual or collective benefit?

Katharina / Dennis / Christiane: We think Wikipedia is a very particular case. However, we can learn from this case that the collective goal plays a very important role for the quality of contributions. We know from empirical research that if people have the intention of contributing to something meaningful, discussion quality is significantly higher than in online spaces without that desire to have an impact.

Ed.: I wonder: isn’t Twitter the place where “deliberation” now takes place? How does it fit into, or inform, the deliberation literature, which I am assuming has largely focused on things like discussion fora?

Katharina / Dennis / Christiane: This depends on the definition of the term “deliberation”. We would argue that the limitation to 280 characters is probably not the best design feature for meaningful deliberation. However, we may have to think about deliberation in less complex contexts in order to reach more people; but this is a polarizing debate.

Ed.: You say that “outsourcing discussions to social networking sites such as Facebook is not advisable due to the low level of deliberative quality compared to other news platforms”. Facebook has now decided that instead of “connecting the world” it’s going to “bring people closer together” — what would you recommend that they do to support this, in terms of the design of the interactive (or deliberative) features of the platform?

Katharina / Dennis / Christiane: This is a difficult one! We think that the quality of deliberation on Facebook would strongly benefit from moderators, which should be more present on the platform to structure the discussions. By this we do not only mean professional moderators but also participative forms of moderation, which could be encouraged more by mechanisms which support such behaviour.

Read the full article: Katharina Esau, Dennis Friess, and Christiane Eilders (2017) Design Matters! An Empirical Analysis of Online Deliberation on Different News Platforms. Policy & Internet 9 (3) 321-342.

Katharina (@kathaesa), Dennis, and Christiane were talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

Does Internet voting offer a solution to declining electoral turnout?

e-voting had been discussed as one possible remedy for the continuing decline in turnout in Western democracies. In their Policy & Internet article “Could Internet Voting Halt Declining Electoral Turnout? New Evidence that e-Voting is Habit-forming”, Mihkel Solvak and Kristjan Vassil examine the degree to which e-voting is more habit forming than paper voting. Their findings indicate that while e-voting doesn’t seem to raise turnout, it might at least arrest its continuing decline in Western democracies. And any technology capable of stabilizing turnout is worth exploring.

Using cross-sectional survey data from five e-enabled elections in Estonia — a country with a decade’s experience of nationwide remote Internet voting — the authors show e-voting to be strongly persistent among voters, with clear evidence of habit formation. While a technological fix probably won’t address the underlying reasons for low turnout, it could help stop further decline by making voting easier for those who are more likely to turn out. Arresting turnout decline by keeping those who participate participating might be one realistic goal that e-voting is able to achieve.

We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings:

Ed.: There seems to be a general trend of declining electoral turnouts worldwide. Is there any form of consensus (based on actual data) on why voting rates are falling?

Mihkel / Kristjan: A consensus in terms of a single major source of turnout decline that the data points to worldwide is clearly lacking. There is however more of an agreement as to why certain regions are experiencing a comparatively steeper decline. Disenchantment with democracy and an overall disappointment in politics is the number one reason usually listed when discussing lower and declining turnout levels in new democracies.

While the same issues are nowadays also listed for older established democracies, there is no hard comparative evidence for it. We do know that the level of interest in and engagement with politics has declined across the board in Western Europe when compared to the 1960-70s, but this doesn’t count as disenchantment, and the clear decline in turnout levels in established democracies started a couple of decades later, in the early 1990s.

Given that turnout levels are still widely different depending on the country, the overall worldwide decline is probably a combination of the addition of new democracies with low and more-rapidly declining turnout levels, and a plethora of country-specific reasons in older democracies that are experiencing a somewhat less steep decline in turnout.

Ed.: Is the worry about voting decline really about “falling representation” per se, or that it might be symptomatic of deeper problems with the political ecosystem, i.e. fewer people choosing politics as a career, less involvement in local politics, less civic engagement (etc.). In other words — is falling voting (per se) even the main problem?

Mihkel / Kristjan: We can only agree; it clearly is a symptom of deeper problems. Although high turnout is a good thing, low turnout is not necessarily a problem as people have the freedom not to participate and not to be interested in politics. It becomes a problem when low turnout leads to a lack of legitimacy of the representative body and consequently also of the whole process of representation. And as you rightly point out, real problems start much earlier and at a lower level than voting in parliamentary elections. The paradox is that the technology we have examined in our article — remote internet voting — clearly can’t address these fundamental problems.

Ed.: I’m assuming the Estonian voters were voting remotely online (rather than electronically in a booth), i.e. in their own time, at their convenience? Are you basically testing the effect of offering a more convenient voting format? (And finding that format to be habit-forming?).

Mihkel / Kristjan: Yes. One of the reasons we examined Internet voting from this angle was the apparent paradox of every third vote being cast online but also only a minute increase in turnout. A few other countries also experimenting with electronic voting have seen no tangible differences in turnout levels. The explanation is of course that it is a convenience voting method that makes voting simpler for people who are already quite likely to vote — now they simply use a more convenient option to do so. But what we noted in our article was a clearly higher share of electronic voters who turned out more consistently over different elections in comparison to voters voting on paper, and even when they didn’t show traits that usually correlate with electronic voting, like living further away from polling stations. So convenience did not seem to tell the whole story, even though it might have been one of the original reasons why electronic voting was picked up.

Ed.: Presumably with remote online voting, it’s possible to send targeted advertising to voters (via email and social media), with links to vote, i.e. making it more likely people will vote in the moment, in response to whatever issues happen to be salient at the time. How does online campaigning (and targeting) change once you introduce online voting?

Mihkel / Kristjan: Theoretically, parties should be able to lock voters in more easily by advertising links to the voting solution in their online campaigns; as in banners saying “vote for me and you can do it directly here (linked)”. In the Estonian case there is an informal agreement to remain from doing that, however, in order to safeguard the neutrality of online voting. Trust in online voting is paramount, even more so than is the case with paper voting, so it probably is a good idea to try to ensure that people trust the online voting solution to be controlled by a neutral state agent tasked with conducting the elections, in order to avoid any possible associations between certain parties and the voting environment (which linking directly to the voting mechanism might cause to happen). That can never be 100% ensured though, so online campaigns coupled with online voting can make it harder for election authorities to convey the image of impartiality of their procedures.

As for voting in the moment I don’t see online voting to be substantially more susceptible to this than other voting modes — given last minute developments can influence voters voting on paper as well. I think the latest US and French presidential elections are a case in point. Some argue that the immediate developments and revelations in the Clinton email scandal investigation a couple of weeks before voting day turned the result. In the French case the hacking and release of Macron’s campaign communications immediately before voting day however didn’t play a role in the outcome. Voting in the moment will happen or not regardless of the voting mode being used.

Ed.: What do you think the barriers are to greater roll-out of online voting: presumably there are security worries, i.e. over election hacking and lack of a paper trail? (and maybe also worries about the possibility of coercive voting, if it doesn’t take place alone in a booth?)

Mihkel / Kristjan: The number one barrier to greater roll-out remains security worries about hacking. Given that people cannot observe electronic voting (i.e. how their vote arrives at the voting authorities) the role of trust becomes more central than for paper voting. And trust can be eroded easily by floating rumours even without technically compromising voting systems. The solution is to introduce verifiability into the system, akin to a physical ballot in the case of paper voting, but this makes online voting even more technologically complex.

A lot of research is being put into verifiable electronic voting systems to meet very strict security requirements. The funny thing is however that the fears holding back wider online voting are not really being raised for paper voting, even though they should. At a certain stage of the process all paper votes become bits of information in an information system as local polling stations enter or report them into computer systems that are used to aggregate the votes and determine the seat distribution. No election is fully paper based anymore.

Vote coercion problems of course cannot be ruled out and is by definition more likely when the voting authorities don’t exercise control over the immediate voting environment. I think countries that suffer from such problems shouldn’t introduce a system that might exacerbate that even more. But again, most countries allow for multiple modes that differ in the degree of neutrality and control exercised by the election authority. Absentee ballots and postal voting (which is very widespread in some countries, like Switzerland), are as vulnerable to voter coercion as is remote Internet voting. Online voting is simply one mode of voting — maintaining a healthy mix of voting modes is probably the best solution to ensure that elections are not compromised.

Ed.: I guess declining turnout is probably a problem that is too big and complex to be understood or “fixed” — but how would you go about addressing it, if asked to do so..?

Mihkel / Kristjan: We fully agree — the technology of online voting will not fix low turnout as it doesn’t address the underlying problem. It simply makes voting somewhat more convenient. But voting is not difficult in the first place — with weekend voting, postal voting and absentee ballots; just to name a few things that already ease participation.

There are technologies that have a revolutionary effect (i.e. that alter impact and that are truly innovatory) and then there are small technological fixes that provide for a simpler and more pleasurable existence. Online voting is not revolutionary; it does not give a new experience of participation, it is simply one slightly more convenient mode of voting and for that a very worthwhile thing. And I think this is the maximum that can be done and that is within our control when it comes to influencing turnout. Small incremental fixes to a large multifaceted problem.

Read the full article: Mihkel Solvak and Kristjan Vassil (2017) Could Internet Voting Halt Declining Electoral Turnout? New Evidence that e-Voting is Habit-forming. Policy & Internet. DOI: 10.1002/poi3.160
Mihkel Solvak and Kristjan Vassil were talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

Does Internet voting offer a solution to declining electoral turnout?

e-voting had been discussed as one possible remedy for the continuing decline in turnout in Western democracies. In their Policy & Internet article “Could Internet Voting Halt Declining Electoral Turnout? New Evidence that e-Voting is Habit-forming”, Mihkel Solvak and Kristjan Vassil examine the degree to which e-voting is more habit forming than paper voting. Their findings indicate that while e-voting doesn’t seem to raise turnout, it might at least arrest its continuing decline in Western democracies. And any technology capable of stabilizing turnout is worth exploring.

Using cross-sectional survey data from five e-enabled elections in Estonia — a country with a decade’s experience of nationwide remote Internet voting — the authors show e-voting to be strongly persistent among voters, with clear evidence of habit formation. While a technological fix probably won’t address the underlying reasons for low turnout, it could help stop further decline by making voting easier for those who are more likely to turn out. Arresting turnout decline by keeping those who participate participating might be one realistic goal that e-voting is able to achieve.

We caught up with the authors to discuss their findings:

Ed.: There seems to be a general trend of declining electoral turnouts worldwide. Is there any form of consensus (based on actual data) on why voting rates are falling?

Mihkel / Kristjan: A consensus in terms of a single major source of turnout decline that the data points to worldwide is clearly lacking. There is however more of an agreement as to why certain regions are experiencing a comparatively steeper decline. Disenchantment with democracy and an overall disappointment in politics is the number one reason usually listed when discussing lower and declining turnout levels in new democracies.

While the same issues are nowadays also listed for older established democracies, there is no hard comparative evidence for it. We do know that the level of interest in and engagement with politics has declined across the board in Western Europe when compared to the 1960-70s, but this doesn’t count as disenchantment, and the clear decline in turnout levels in established democracies started a couple of decades later, in the early 1990s.

Given that turnout levels are still widely different depending on the country, the overall worldwide decline is probably a combination of the addition of new democracies with low and more-rapidly declining turnout levels, and a plethora of country-specific reasons in older democracies that are experiencing a somewhat less steep decline in turnout.

Ed.: Is the worry about voting decline really about “falling representation” per se, or that it might be symptomatic of deeper problems with the political ecosystem, i.e. fewer people choosing politics as a career, less involvement in local politics, less civic engagement (etc.). In other words — is falling voting (per se) even the main problem?

Mihkel / Kristjan: We can only agree; it clearly is a symptom of deeper problems. Although high turnout is a good thing, low turnout is not necessarily a problem as people have the freedom not to participate and not to be interested in politics. It becomes a problem when low turnout leads to a lack of legitimacy of the representative body and consequently also of the whole process of representation. And as you rightly point out, real problems start much earlier and at a lower level than voting in parliamentary elections. The paradox is that the technology we have examined in our article — remote internet voting — clearly can’t address these fundamental problems.

Ed.: I’m assuming the Estonian voters were voting remotely online (rather than electronically in a booth), i.e. in their own time, at their convenience? Are you basically testing the effect of offering a more convenient voting format? (And finding that format to be habit-forming?).

Mihkel / Kristjan: Yes. One of the reasons we examined Internet voting from this angle was the apparent paradox of every third vote being cast online but also only a minute increase in turnout. A few other countries also experimenting with electronic voting have seen no tangible differences in turnout levels. The explanation is of course that it is a convenience voting method that makes voting simpler for people who are already quite likely to vote — now they simply use a more convenient option to do so. But what we noted in our article was a clearly higher share of electronic voters who turned out more consistently over different elections in comparison to voters voting on paper, and even when they didn’t show traits that usually correlate with electronic voting, like living further away from polling stations. So convenience did not seem to tell the whole story, even though it might have been one of the original reasons why electronic voting was picked up.

Ed.: Presumably with remote online voting, it’s possible to send targeted advertising to voters (via email and social media), with links to vote, i.e. making it more likely people will vote in the moment, in response to whatever issues happen to be salient at the time. How does online campaigning (and targeting) change once you introduce online voting?

Mihkel / Kristjan: Theoretically, parties should be able to lock voters in more easily by advertising links to the voting solution in their online campaigns; as in banners saying “vote for me and you can do it directly here (linked)”. In the Estonian case there is an informal agreement to remain from doing that, however, in order to safeguard the neutrality of online voting. Trust in online voting is paramount, even more so than is the case with paper voting, so it probably is a good idea to try to ensure that people trust the online voting solution to be controlled by a neutral state agent tasked with conducting the elections, in order to avoid any possible associations between certain parties and the voting environment (which linking directly to the voting mechanism might cause to happen). That can never be 100% ensured though, so online campaigns coupled with online voting can make it harder for election authorities to convey the image of impartiality of their procedures.

As for voting in the moment I don’t see online voting to be substantially more susceptible to this than other voting modes — given last minute developments can influence voters voting on paper as well. I think the latest US and French presidential elections are a case in point. Some argue that the immediate developments and revelations in the Clinton email scandal investigation a couple of weeks before voting day turned the result. In the French case the hacking and release of Macron’s campaign communications immediately before voting day however didn’t play a role in the outcome. Voting in the moment will happen or not regardless of the voting mode being used.

Ed.: What do you think the barriers are to greater roll-out of online voting: presumably there are security worries, i.e. over election hacking and lack of a paper trail? (and maybe also worries about the possibility of coercive voting, if it doesn’t take place alone in a booth?)

Mihkel / Kristjan: The number one barrier to greater roll-out remains security worries about hacking. Given that people cannot observe electronic voting (i.e. how their vote arrives at the voting authorities) the role of trust becomes more central than for paper voting. And trust can be eroded easily by floating rumours even without technically compromising voting systems. The solution is to introduce verifiability into the system, akin to a physical ballot in the case of paper voting, but this makes online voting even more technologically complex.

A lot of research is being put into verifiable electronic voting systems to meet very strict security requirements. The funny thing is however that the fears holding back wider online voting are not really being raised for paper voting, even though they should. At a certain stage of the process all paper votes become bits of information in an information system as local polling stations enter or report them into computer systems that are used to aggregate the votes and determine the seat distribution. No election is fully paper based anymore.

Vote coercion problems of course cannot be ruled out and is by definition more likely when the voting authorities don’t exercise control over the immediate voting environment. I think countries that suffer from such problems shouldn’t introduce a system that might exacerbate that even more. But again, most countries allow for multiple modes that differ in the degree of neutrality and control exercised by the election authority. Absentee ballots and postal voting (which is very widespread in some countries, like Switzerland), are as vulnerable to voter coercion as is remote Internet voting. Online voting is simply one mode of voting — maintaining a healthy mix of voting modes is probably the best solution to ensure that elections are not compromised.

Ed.: I guess declining turnout is probably a problem that is too big and complex to be understood or “fixed” — but how would you go about addressing it, if asked to do so..?

Mihkel / Kristjan: We fully agree — the technology of online voting will not fix low turnout as it doesn’t address the underlying problem. It simply makes voting somewhat more convenient. But voting is not difficult in the first place — with weekend voting, postal voting and absentee ballots; just to name a few things that already ease participation.

There are technologies that have a revolutionary effect (i.e. that alter impact and that are truly innovatory) and then there are small technological fixes that provide for a simpler and more pleasurable existence. Online voting is not revolutionary; it does not give a new experience of participation, it is simply one slightly more convenient mode of voting and for that a very worthwhile thing. And I think this is the maximum that can be done and that is within our control when it comes to influencing turnout. Small incremental fixes to a large multifaceted problem.

Read the full article: Mihkel Solvak and Kristjan Vassil (2017) Could Internet Voting Halt Declining Electoral Turnout? New Evidence that e-Voting is Habit-forming. Policy & Internet. DOI: 10.1002/poi3.160
Mihkel Solvak and Kristjan Vassil were talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

What explains variation in online political engagement?

Sweden is a leader in terms of digitalization, but poorer municipalities struggle to find the resources to develop digital forms of politics. Image: Stockholm by Peter Tandlund (Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

While much of the modern political process is now carried out digitally, ICTs have yet to bring democracies to their full utopian ideal. The drivers of involvement in digital politics from an individual perspective are well studied, but less attention has been paid to the supply-side of online engagement in politics. In his Policy & Internet article “Inequality in Local Digital Politics: How Different Preconditions for Citizen Engagement Can Be Explained,” Gustav Lidén examines the supply of channels for digital politics distributed by Swedish municipalities, in order to understand the drivers of variation in local online engagement.

He finds a positive trajectory for digital politics in Swedish municipalities, but with significant variation between municipalities when it comes to opportunities for engagement in local politics via their websites. These patterns are explained primarily by population size (digital politics is costly, and larger societies are probably better able to carry these costs), but also by economic conditions and education levels. He also find that a lack of policies and unenthusiastic politicians creates poor possibilities for development, verifying previous findings that without citizen demand — and ambitious politicians — successful provision of channels for digital politics will be hard to achieve.

We caught up with Gustav to discuss his findings:

Ed.: I guess there must be a huge literature (also in development studies) on the interactions between connectivity, education, the economy, and supply and demand for digital government: and what the influencers are in each of these relationships. Not to mention causality.. I’m guessing “everything is important, but nothing is clear”: is that fair? And do you think any “general principles” explaining demand and supply of electronic government / democracy could ever be established, if they haven’t already?

Gustav: Although the literature in this field is becoming vast the subfield that I am primarily engaged in, that is the conditions for digital policy at the subnational level, has only recently attracted greater numbers of scholars. Even if predictors of these phenomena can be highly dependent on context, there are some circumstances that we can now regard as being the ‘usual suspects’. Not surprisingly, resources of both economic and human capital appear to be important, irrespective of the empirical case. Population size also seems to be a key determinant that can influence these kind of resources.

In terms of causality, few studies that I am familiar with have succeeded in examining the interplay of both demand for and supply of digital forms of politics. In my article I try to get closer to the causal chain by examining both structural predictors as well as adding qualitative material from two cases. This makes it possible to establish better precision on causal chains since it enables judgements on how structural conditions influence key stakeholders.

Ed.: You say government-citizen interactions in Sweden “are to a larger extent digital in larger and better-off societies, while ‘analog’ methods prevail in smaller and poorer ones.” Does it particularly matter whether things are digital or analog at municipal level: as long as they all have equal access to national-level things?

Gustav: I would say so, yes. However, this could vary in relation to the responsibilities of municipalities among different countries. The municipal sector in Sweden is significant. Its general costs represent about one quarter of the country’s GDP and the sector is responsible for important parts of the welfare sector. In addition to this, municipalities also represent the most natural arena for political engagement — the typical political career starts off in the local council. Great variation in digital politics among municipalities is therefore problematic — there is a risk of inequality between municipalities if citizens from one municipality face greater possibilities for information and participation while those residing in another are more restrained.

Ed.: Sweden has areas of very low population density: are paper / telephone channels cheaper for municipalities to deliver in these areas, or might that just be an excuse for any lack of enthusiasm? i.e. what sorts of geographical constraints does Sweden face?

Gustav: This is a general problem for a large proportion of the Swedish municipalities. Due to government efforts, ambitions for assuring high-speed internet connections (including more sparsely populated areas), are under way. Yet in recent research, the importance for fast internet access in relation to municipalities’ work with digital politics has been quite ambiguous. My guess would, however, be that if the infrastructure is in place it will, sooner or later, be impossible for municipalities to refrain from working with more digital forms of politics.

Ed.: I guess a cliche of the Swedes (correct me if I’m wrong!) is that despite the welfare state / tradition of tolerance, they’re not particularly social — making it difficult, for example, for non-Swedes to integrate. How far do you think cultural / societal factors play a role in attempts to create “digital community,” in Sweden, or elsewhere?

Gustav: This cliche is perhaps most commonly related to the Swedish countryside. However, the case studies in my article illustrates a contrary image. Take the municipality of Gagnef as an example, one of my two cases, in which informants describe a vibrant civil society with associations representing a great variety of sectors. One interesting finding, though, is that local engagement is channeled through these traditional forms and not particularly through digital media. Still, from a global perspective, Sweden is rightfully described as an international leader in terms of digitalization. This is perhaps most visible in the more urban parts of the country; even if there are many good examples from the countryside in which the technology is one way to counteract great distances and low population density.

Ed.: And what is the role of the central government in all this? i.e. should they (could they? do they?) provide encouragement and expertise in providing local-level digital services, particularly for the smaller and poorer districts?

Gustav: Due to the considerable autonomy among the municipalities the government has not regulated municipalities working with this issue. However, they have encouraged and supported parts of it, primarily when it comes to the investment of technological infrastructure. My research does show that smaller and poorer municipalities have a hard time finding the right resources for developing digital forms of politics. Local political leaders find it hard to prioritize these issues when there is almost a constant need for more resources for schools and elderly care. But this is hardly unique for Sweden. In a study of the local level in the US, Norris and Reddick show how lack of financial resources is the number one constraint for the development of digital services. I think that government regulation, i.e. forcing municipalities to distribute specific digital channels, could lower inequalities between municipalities but would be unthinkable without additional government funding.

Ed.: Finally: do you see it as “inevitable” that everyone will eventually be online, or could pockets of analog government-citizen interaction persist basically indefinitely?

Gustav: Something of a countermovement opposing the digital society appears to exist in several societies. In general, I think we need to find a more balanced way to describe the consequences of digitalization. Hopefully, most people see both the value and the downsides of a digital society, but the debate tends to be dominated either by naïve optimists or complete pessimists. Policy makers need though, to start thinking of the consequences of both inequalities in relation to this technique and pay more attention to the risks related to it.

Read the full article: Lidén, G. (2016) Inequality in Local Digital Politics: How Different Preconditions for Citizen Engagement Can Be Explained. Policy & Internet 8 (3) doi:10.1002/poi3.122.

Gustav Lidén was talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

See his websites: https://www.miun.se/Personal/gustavliden/ and http://gustavliden.blogspot.se/

Could Voting Advice Applications force politicians to keep their manifesto promises?

In many countries, Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have become an almost indispensable part of the electoral process, playing an important role in the campaigning activities of parties and candidates, an essential element of media coverage of the elections, and being widely used by citizens. A number of studies have shown that VAA use has an impact on the cognitive behaviour of users, on their likelihood to participate in elections, and on the choice of the party they vote for.

These applications are based on the idea of issue and proximity voting — the parties and candidates recommended by VAAs are those with the highest number of matching positions on a number of political questions and issues. Many of these questions are much more specific and detailed than party programs and electoral platforms, and show the voters exactly what the party or candidates stand for and how they will vote in parliament once elected. In his Policy & Internet article “Do VAAs Encourage Issue Voting and Promissory Representation? Evidence From the Swiss Smartvote,” Andreas Ladner examines the extent to which VAAs alter the way voters perceive the meaning of elections, and encourage them to hold politicians to account for election promises.

His main hypothesis is that VAAs lead to “promissory representation” — where parties and candidates are elected for their promises and sanctioned by the electorate if they don’t keep them. He suggests that as these tools become more popular, the “delegate model” is likely to increase in popularity: i.e. one in which politicians are regarded as delegates voted into parliament to keep their promises, rather than being voted a free mandate to act how they see fit (the “trustee model”).

We caught up with Andreas to discuss his findings:

Ed.: You found that issue-voters were more likely (than other voters) to say they would sanction a politician who broke their election promises. But also that issue voters are less politically engaged. So is this maybe a bit moot: i.e. if the people most likely to force the “delegate model” system are the least likely to enforce it?

Andreas: It perhaps looks a bit moot in the first place, but what happens if the less engaged are given the possibility to sanction them more easily or by default. Sanctioning a politician who breaks an election promise is not per se a good thing, it depends on the reason why he or she broke it, on the situation, and on the promise. VAA can easily provide information to what extent candidates keep their promises — and then it gets very easy to sanction them simply for that without taking other arguments into consideration.

Ed.: Do voting advice applications work best in complex, multi-party political systems? (I’m not sure anyone would need one to distinguish between Trump / Clinton, for example?)

Andreas: Yes, I believe that in very complex systems – like for example in the Swiss case where voters not only vote for parties but also for up to 35 different candidates – VAAs are particularly useful since they help to process a huge amount of information. If the choice is only between two parties or two candidates which are completely different, than VAAs are less helpful.

Ed.: I guess the recent elections / referendum I am most familiar with (US, UK, France) have been particularly lurid and nasty: but I guess VAAs rely on a certain quiet rationality to work as intended? How do you see your Swiss results (and Swiss elections, generally) comparing with these examples? Do VAAs not just get lost in the noise?

Andreas: The idea of VAAs is to help voters to make better informed choices. This is, of course, opposed to decisions based on emotions. In Switzerland, elections are not of outmost importance, due to specific features of our political system such as direct democracy and power sharing, but voters seem to appreciate the information provided by smartvote. Almost 20% of the voter cast their vote after having consulted the website.

Ed.: Macron is a recent example of someone who clearly sought (and received) a general mandate, rather than presenting a detailed platform of promises. Is that unusual? He was criticised in his campaign for being “too vague,” but it clearly worked for him. What use are manifesto pledges in politics — as opposed to simply making clear to the electorate where you stand on the political spectrum?

Andreas: Good VAAs combine electoral promises on concrete issues as well as more general political positions. Voters can base their decisions on either of them, or on a combination of both of them. I am not arguing in favour of one or the other, but they clearly have different implications. The former is closer to the delegate model, the latter to the trustee model. I think good VAAs should make the differences clear and should even allow the voters to choose.

Ed.: I guess Trump is a contrasting example of someone whose campaign was all about promises (while also seeking a clear mandate to “make America great again”), but who has lied, and broken these (impossible) promises seemingly faster than people can keep track of them. Do you think his supporters care, though?

Andreas: His promises were too far away from what he can possibly keep. Quite a few of his voters, I believe, do not want them to be fully realized but rather that the US move a bit more into this direction.

Ed.: I suppose another example of an extremely successful quasi-pledge was the Brexit campaign’s obviously meaningless — but hugely successful — “We send the EU £350 million a week; let’s fund our NHS instead.” Not to sound depressing, but do promises actually mean anything? Is it the candidate / issue that matters (and the media response to that), or the actual pledges?

Andreas: I agree that the media play an important role and not always into the direction they intend to do. I do not think that it is the £350 million a week which made the difference. It is much more a general discontent and a situation which was not sufficiently explained and legitimized which led to this unexpected decision. If you lose the support for your policy than it gets much easier for your opponents. It is difficult to imagine that you can get a majority built on nothing.

Ed.: I’ve read all the articles in the Policy & Internet special issue on VAAs: one thing that struck me is that there’s lots of incomplete data, e.g. no knowledge of how people actually voted in the end (or would vote in future). What are the strengths and weaknesses of VAAs as a data source for political research?

Andreas: The quality of the data varies between countries and voting systems. We have a self-selection bias in the use of VAAs and often also into the surveys conducted among the users. In general we don’t know how they voted, and we have to believe them what they tell us. In many respects the data does not differ that much from what we get from classic electoral studies, especially since they also encounter difficulties in addressing a representative sample. VAAs usually have much larger Ns on the side of the voters, generate more information about their political positions and preferences, and provide very interesting information about the candidates and parties.

Read the full article: Ladner, A. (2016) Do VAAs Encourage Issue Voting and Promissory Representation? Evidence From the Swiss Smartvote. Policy & Internet 8 (4). DOI: doi:10.1002/poi3.137.

Andreas Ladner was talking to blog editor David Sutcliffe.

Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: Fake News and Filter Bubbles

This is the second post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: Fake News and Filter Bubbles!

Fake news, post-truth, “alternative facts”, filter bubbles — this is the news and media environment we apparently now inhabit, and that has formed the fabric and backdrop of Brexit (“£350 million a week”) and Trump (“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period”). Do social media divide us, hide us from each other? Are you particularly aware of what content is personalised for you, what it is you’re not seeing? How much can we do with machine-automated or crowd-sourced verification of facts? And are things really any worse now than when Bacon complained in 1620 about the false notions that “are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein”?

 

1. Bernie Hogan: How Facebook divides us [Times Literary Supplement]

27 October 2016 / 1000 words / 5 minutes

“Filter bubbles can create an increasingly fractured population, such as the one developing in America. For the many people shocked by the result of the British EU referendum, we can also partially blame filter bubbles: Facebook literally filters our friends’ views that are least palatable to us, yielding a doctored account of their personalities.”

Bernie Hogan says it’s time Facebook considered ways to use the information it has about us to bring us together across political, ideological and cultural lines, rather than hide us from each other or push us into polarized and hostile camps. He says it’s not only possible for Facebook to help mitigate the issues of filter bubbles and context collapse; it’s imperative, and it’s surprisingly simple.

 

2. Luciano Floridi: Fake news and a 400-year-old problem: we need to resolve the ‘post-truth’ crisis [the Guardian]

29 November 2016 / 1000 words / 5 minutes

“The internet age made big promises to us: a new period of hope and opportunity, connection and empathy, expression and democracy. Yet the digital medium has aged badly because we allowed it to grow chaotically and carelessly, lowering our guard against the deterioration and pollution of our infosphere. […] some of the costs of misinformation may be hard to reverse, especially when confidence and trust are undermined. The tech industry can and must do better to ensure the internet meets its potential to support individuals’ wellbeing and social good.”

The Internet echo chamber satiates our appetite for pleasant lies and reassuring falsehoods, and has become the defining challenge of the 21st century, says Luciano Floridi. So far, the strategy for technology companies has been to deal with the ethical impact of their products retrospectively, but this is not good enough, he says. We need to shape and guide the future of the digital, and stop making it up as we go along. It is time to work on an innovative blueprint for a better kind of infosphere.

 

3. Philip Howard: Facebook and Twitter’s real sin goes beyond spreading fake news

3 January 2017 / 1000 words / 5 minutes

“With the data at their disposal and the platforms they maintain, social media companies could raise standards for civility by refusing to accept ad revenue for placing fake news. They could let others audit and understand the algorithms that determine who sees what on a platform. Just as important, they could be the platforms for doing better opinion, exit and deliberative polling.”

Only Facebook and Twitter know how pervasive fabricated news stories and misinformation campaigns have become during referendums and elections, says Philip Howard — and allowing fake news and computational propaganda to target specific voters is an act against democratic values. But in a time of weakening polling systems, withholding data about public opinion is actually their major crime against democracy, he says.

 

4. Brent Mittelstadt: Should there be a better accounting of the algorithms that choose our news for us?

7 December 2016 / 1800 words / 8 minutes

“Transparency is often treated as the solution, but merely opening up algorithms to public and individual scrutiny will not in itself solve the problem. Information about the functionality and effects of personalisation must be meaningful to users if anything is going to be accomplished. At a minimum, users of personalisation systems should be given more information about their blind spots, about the types of information they are not seeing, or where they lie on the map of values or criteria used by the system to tailor content to users.”

A central ideal of democracy is that political discourse should allow a fair and critical exchange of ideas and values. But political discourse is unavoidably mediated by the mechanisms and technologies we use to communicate and receive information, says Brent Mittelstadt. And content personalization systems and the algorithms they rely upon create a new type of curated media that can undermine the fairness and quality of political discourse.

 

5. Heather Ford: Verification of crowd-sourced information: is this ‘crowd wisdom’ or machine wisdom?

19 November 2013 / 1400 words / 6 minutes

“A key question being asked in the design of future verification mechanisms is the extent to which verification work should be done by humans or non-humans (machines). Here, verification is not a binary categorisation, but rather there is a spectrum between human and non-human verification work, and indeed, projects like Ushahidi, Wikipedia and Galaxy Zoo have all developed different verification mechanisms.”

‘Human’ verification, a process of checking whether a particular report meets a group’s truth standards, is an acutely social process, says Heather Ford. If code is law and if other aspects in addition to code determine how we can act in the world, it is important that we understand the context in which code is deployed. Verification is a practice that determines how we can trust information coming from a variety of sources — only by illuminating such practices and the variety of impacts that code can have in different environments can we begin to understand how code regulates our actions in crowdsourcing environments.

 

.. and just to prove we’re capable of understanding and acknowledging and assimilating multiple viewpoints on complex things, here’s Helen Margetts, with a different slant on filter bubbles: “Even if political echo chambers were as efficient as some seem to think, there is little evidence that this is what actually shapes election results. After all, by definition echo chambers preach to the converted. It is the undecided people who (for example) the Leave and Trump campaigns needed to reach. And from the research, it looks like they managed to do just that.”

 

The Authors

Bernie Hogan is a Research Fellow at the OII; his research interests lie at the intersection of social networks and media convergence.

Luciano Floridi is the OII’s Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information. His  research areas are the philosophy of Information, information and computer ethics, and the philosophy of technology.

Philip Howard is the OII’s Professor of Internet Studies. He investigates the impact of digital media on political life around the world.

Brent Mittelstadt is an OII Postdoc His research interests include the ethics of information handled by medical ICT, theoretical developments in discourse and virtue ethics, and epistemology of information.

Heather Ford completed her doctorate at the OII, where she studied how Wikipedia editors write history as it happens. She is now a University Academic Fellow in Digital Methods at the University of Leeds. Her forthcoming book “Fact Factories: Wikipedia’s Quest for the Sum of All Human Knowledge” will be published by MIT Press.

Helen Margetts is the OII’s Director, and Professor of Society and the Internet. She specialises in digital era government, politics and public policy, and data science and experimental methods. Her most recent book is Political Turbulence (Princeton).

 

Coming up! .. It’s the economy, stupid / Augmented reality and ambient fun / The platform economy / Power and development / Internet past and future / Government / Labour rights / The disconnected / Ethics / Staying critical

Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: The US Election

This is the first post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: The US Election.

This was probably the nastiest Presidential election in recent memory: awash with Twitter bots and scandal, polarisation and filter bubbles, accusations of interference by Russia and the Director of the FBI, and another shock result. We have written about electoral prediction elsewhere: instead, here are five pieces that consider the interaction of social media and democracy — the problems, but also potential ways forward.

 

1. James Williams: The Clickbait Candidate

10 October 2016 / 2700 words / 13 minutes

“Trump is very straightforwardly an embodiment of the dynamics of clickbait: he is the logical product (though not endpoint) in the political domain of a media environment designed to invite, and indeed incentivize, relentless competition for our attention […] Like clickbait or outrage cascades, Donald Trump is merely the sort of informational packet our media environment is designed to select for.”

James Williams says that now is probably the time to have that societal conversation about the design ethics of the attention economy — because in our current media environment, attention trumps everything.

 

2. Sam Woolley, Philip Howard: Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election [Wired]

15 May 2016 / 850 words / 4 minutes

“Donald Trump understands minority communities. Just ask Pepe Luis Lopez, Francisco Palma, and Alberto Contreras […] each tweeted in support of Trump after his victory in the Nevada caucuses earlier this year. The problem is, Pepe, Francisco, and Alberto aren’t people. They’re bots.”

It’s no surprise that automated spam accounts (or bots) are creeping into election politics, say Sam Woolley and Philip Howard. Demanding bot transparency would at least help clean up social media — which, for better or worse, is increasingly where presidents get elected.

 

3. Phil Howard: Is Social Media Killing Democracy?

15 November 2016 / 1100 words / 5 minutes

“This is the big year for computational propaganda — using immense data sets to manipulate public opinion over social media. Both the Brexit referendum and US election have revealed the limits of modern democracy, and social media platforms are currently setting those limits […] these technologies permit too much fake news, encourage our herding instincts, and aren’t expected to provide public goods.”

Phil Howard discusses ways to address fake news, audit social algorithms, and deal with social media’s “moral pass” — social media is damaging democracy, he says, but can also be used to save it.

 

4. Helen Margetts: Don’t Shoot the Messenger! What part did social media play in 2016 US e­lection?

15 November 2016 / 600 words / 3 minutes

“Rather than seeing social media solely as the means by which Trump ensnared his presidential goal, we should appreciate how they can provide a wealth of valuable data to understand the anger and despair that the polls missed, and to analyse political behaviour and opinion in the times ahead.”

New social information and visibility brings change to social behaviour, says Helen Margetts — ushering in political turbulence and unpredictability. Social media made visible what could have remain a country’s dark secret (hatred of women, rampant racism, etc.), but it will also underpin any radical counter-movement that emerges in the future.

 

5. Helen Margetts: Of course social media is transforming politics. But it’s not to blame for Brexit and Trump

9 January 2017 / 1700 words / 8 minutes

“Even if political echo chambers were as efficient as some seem to think, there is little evidence that this is what actually shapes election results. After all, by definition echo chambers preach to the converted. It is the undecided people who (for example) the Leave and Trump campaigns needed to reach. And from the research, it looks like they managed to do just that.”

Politics is a lot messier in the social media era than it used to be, says Helen Margetts, but rather than blaming social media for undermining democracy, we should be thinking about how we can improve the (inevitably major) part that it plays.

 

The Authors

James Williams is an OII doctoral candidate, studying the ethics of attention and persuasion in technology design.

Sam Woolley is a Research Assistant on the OII’s Computational Propaganda project; he is interested in political bots, and the intersection of political communication and automation.

Philip Howard is the OII’s Professor of Internet Studies and PI of the Computational Propaganda project. He investigates the impact of digital media on political life around the world.

Helen Margetts is the OII’s Director, and Professor of Society and the Internet. She specialises in digital era government, politics and public policy, and data science and experimental methods. Her most recent book is Political Turbulence (Princeton).

 

Coming up .. Fake news and filter bubbles / It’s the economy, stupid / Augmented reality and ambient fun / The platform economy / Power and development / Internet past and future / Government / Labour rights / The disconnected / Ethics / Staying critical

#5OIIPieces

Five Pieces You Should Probably Read On: The US Election

This is the first post in a series that will uncover great writing by faculty and students at the Oxford Internet Institute, things you should probably know, and things that deserve to be brought out for another viewing. This week: The US Election.

This was probably the nastiest Presidential election in recent memory: awash with Twitter bots and scandal, polarisation and filter bubbles, accusations of interference by Russia and the Director of the FBI, and another shock result. We have written about electoral prediction elsewhere: instead, here are five pieces that consider the interaction of social media and democracy — the problems, but also potential ways forward.

 

1. James Williams: The Clickbait Candidate

10 October 2016 / 2700 words / 13 minutes

“Trump is very straightforwardly an embodiment of the dynamics of clickbait: he is the logical product (though not endpoint) in the political domain of a media environment designed to invite, and indeed incentivize, relentless competition for our attention […] Like clickbait or outrage cascades, Donald Trump is merely the sort of informational packet our media environment is designed to select for.”

James Williams says that now is probably the time to have that societal conversation about the design ethics of the attention economy — because in our current media environment, attention trumps everything.

 

2. Sam Woolley, Philip Howard: Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election [Wired]

15 May 2016 / 850 words / 4 minutes

“Donald Trump understands minority communities. Just ask Pepe Luis Lopez, Francisco Palma, and Alberto Contreras […] each tweeted in support of Trump after his victory in the Nevada caucuses earlier this year. The problem is, Pepe, Francisco, and Alberto aren’t people. They’re bots.”

It’s no surprise that automated spam accounts (or bots) are creeping into election politics, say Sam Woolley and Philip Howard. Demanding bot transparency would at least help clean up social media — which, for better or worse, is increasingly where presidents get elected.

 

3. Phil Howard: Is Social Media Killing Democracy?

15 November 2016 / 1100 words / 5 minutes

“This is the big year for computational propaganda — using immense data sets to manipulate public opinion over social media. Both the Brexit referendum and US election have revealed the limits of modern democracy, and social media platforms are currently setting those limits […] these technologies permit too much fake news, encourage our herding instincts, and aren’t expected to provide public goods.”

Phil Howard discusses ways to address fake news, audit social algorithms, and deal with social media’s “moral pass” — social media is damaging democracy, he says, but can also be used to save it.

 

4. Helen Margetts: Don’t Shoot the Messenger! What part did social media play in 2016 US e­lection?

15 November 2016 / 600 words / 3 minutes

“Rather than seeing social media solely as the means by which Trump ensnared his presidential goal, we should appreciate how they can provide a wealth of valuable data to understand the anger and despair that the polls missed, and to analyse political behaviour and opinion in the times ahead.”

New social information and visibility brings change to social behaviour, says Helen Margetts — ushering in political turbulence and unpredictability. Social media made visible what could have remain a country’s dark secret (hatred of women, rampant racism, etc.), but it will also underpin any radical counter-movement that emerges in the future.

 

5. Helen Margetts: Of course social media is transforming politics. But it’s not to blame for Brexit and Trump

9 January 2017 / 1700 words / 8 minutes

“Even if political echo chambers were as efficient as some seem to think, there is little evidence that this is what actually shapes election results. After all, by definition echo chambers preach to the converted. It is the undecided people who (for example) the Leave and Trump campaigns needed to reach. And from the research, it looks like they managed to do just that.”

Politics is a lot messier in the social media era than it used to be, says Helen Margetts, but rather than blaming social media for undermining democracy, we should be thinking about how we can improve the (inevitably major) part that it plays.

 

The Authors

James Williams is an OII doctoral candidate, studying the ethics of attention and persuasion in technology design.

Sam Woolley is a Research Assistant on the OII’s Computational Propaganda project; he is interested in political bots, and the intersection of political communication and automation.

Philip Howard is the OII’s Professor of Internet Studies and PI of the Computational Propaganda project. He investigates the impact of digital media on political life around the world.

Helen Margetts is the OII’s Director, and Professor of Society and the Internet. She specialises in digital era government, politics and public policy, and data science and experimental methods. Her most recent book is Political Turbulence (Princeton).

 

Coming up .. Fake news and filter bubbles / It’s the economy, stupid / Augmented reality and ambient fun / The platform economy / Power and development / Internet past and future / Government / Labour rights / The disconnected / Ethics / Staying critical

#5OIIPieces