Written evidence by Ben O'Loughlin and Alister Miskimmon has been published by the House of Lords International Relations Committee. The authors respond to the Committee's call for recommendations about what Britain's role should be in international affairs and how this can be communicated. Their evidence draws on findings from their research on strategic narratives and public diplomacy, but has wider application for how states communicate in a world where identities and perceptions are difficult to manage. Read their evidence here, and find out more about the committee here.
A Guide To Observing Everyday MP-Constituent Interactions
(Typing up field notes between surgery meetings. Sussex, 2016)
Members of Parliament (MPS) are often viewed negatively in opinion polls and the constituency work they carry out is not often talked about. Over the course of my doctoral research I sought to find out what MPs actually do by closely observing intimate details that made up contemporary interactions and communication between MPs and their constituents. To collect the data required, I carried out an ethnography of MPs in their constituencies over 15 months. This experience proved to be rather challenging, but also the most rewarding component of my PhD. For the purpose of this post, I will focus on briefly discussing the process of selecting this method and challenges I encountered when embarking on my fieldwork.
Guided by the analytically rich ethnographic work of Fenno (1978) and Nielsen (2012), I selected ethnography as one of my methodologies (the other two being semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis). It allowed me intimate access to complex episodic interactions between MPs and their constituents. I primarily focused on the MP-constituent interaction during the advice surgery, which I sat in on as an observer, as long as the constituent was comfortable with me doing so. For the uninitiated, an advice surgery is a one-to-one meeting MPs hold with constituents, where they are able to seek their MPs help or ask for their advice. These are regularly held, and often hosted in a public area in the constituency such as a public library. I also followed MPs as they presented speeches in town halls, attended local council meetings and went on walkabouts in the constituency. Part of my ethnographic work also involved collecting data from MP communications that were produced and disseminated while in the constituency, both in person and what was posted online.
Ethnography involves the full-time involvement of the participant-observer (in this case, myself) over a period of considerable length and demands the interaction with the study of chosen human subjects in their natural environment (Van Maanen, 1988: 1–2). The advantage (and on occasion, drawback) of a method like ethnography is not knowing what you are looking for until you are knee deep in it.
I carried out a pilot study before committing to ethnography as one of my methods. A pilot study, also known as a feasibility study, is a mini version of a full-scale investigation (Teijlingen and Hundley, 2001). Aligned with a reflexive approach to qualitative research, it provides valuable insights and allows adjustments to be made to the research design. I reached out to a Conservative MP who represented a constituency in southeast England. With his consent I shadowed him and his caseworker as they carried out advice surgeries on a Friday afternoon in November 2014. The pilot study confirmed that there were unique details about the face-to-face interaction worth pursuing, including the management of upset or angry constituents. I also uncovered details I missed out or had not thought of during the planning of my fieldwork, such as attempts to influence constituent behaviour with posts on his social media accounts. I fully recommend a pilot study to anyone uncertain about utilising a method as demanding as an ethnography.
Getting In
Having decided to undertake the ethnography, I needed a way in. Gaining access to the group you intend to observe can be tricky, especially a group of busy parliamentarians. I started the project by approaching MPs from three major British political parties for the opportunity to shadow them in their constituency. I sent letters introducing myself, briefly explaining my project aims and invited them to participate.
To this end, here are three things I have learned:
1. Strength of networks
The success of relying on your existing networks of friends and contacts might vary but it never hurts to ask. Often a former classmate might know someone who knows someone who knows someone else… You get the idea. Approximately half of the MPs who agreed to participate in my research (by way of the ethnography and/or granting me an interview) were introduced to me by contacts that had previously worked with them in some capacity or another.
2. Perseverance is key
Short of sounding like a motivational coach, try, try, and try again. To achieve the breadth and depth my research required to be considered rigorously sound, I sent emails to 100 MPs. Some replied and many did not. Do follow up on unanswered emails, or try a polite phone call to check if they received your email. More so than anyone else, MPs are busy individuals and emails do get lost or forgotten. Those who did reply and eventually agreed to let me shadow them often proved to be helpful in more than one way (see below).
3. Maintain good relations with participants
Making an effort to establishing and maintaining relationships with participants demonstrates respect for their time. After all, they have allowed you to trail behind them, observing their every move. This not only includes the MP, but also their staff, as they are the ones who I often interacted with to arrange and confirm each shadowing. I also found that establishing friendly relations with my participants allowed me to snowball my sample. This was often achieved by conversing between meetings. One MP in particular, not only recommended me MPs to approach, but made a call to a fellow Labour MP to arrange a meeting for me that very day.
Ethical Considerations
Any ethical issues or complications that might arise had to be thoroughly considered prior to carrying out the actual fieldwork had. With the sensitivity of surgery interactions and personal issues discussed, I placed importance on assuring participants (MPs, their staff, and constituents) that their identities and anything discussed would remain confidential.
With approval from the departmental research committee, I developed clear and concise consent forms to ensure my participants were aware of what my project was about, the voluntary nature of their participation and allowing me the use of anonymised quotes. These were accompanied by a letter briefly describing my research objectives and sent to all MPs who agreed to be shadowed. This not only created a sense of rapport and trust between myself as the researcher and the MPs, but also with the MP’s caseworkers. In addition, I signed confidentiality statements provided by the representative’s offices, ensuring that nothing incriminating and sensitive would result in the identification of the constituent or the MP (should they choose to be anonymous).
I was also careful to ensure constituents were informed about my research and presence at the start of every interaction. In the event any of them were uncomfortable, I would offer to leave the room. Over the course of fieldwork, all except one of the constituents were comfortable with my presence. When it came to finally writing up my findings, apart from MPs comfortable to be named, all other names (included staffers and constituents) were altered. To further protect the anonymity of the people involved, specific details of locations are intentionally obscured.
Maintaining Boundaries
As the observer becomes accustomed to the community or group of people they are studying, they often run the risk of lines between observer and participant blurring. A concern with ethnographic work, this may result in the researcher’s objectivity being compromised. To ensure boundaries were preserved, I sat close to MPs and their caseworkers during meetings, but did not participate apart from introducing myself at the start of every meeting.
Fears of participants behaving unnaturally with me were allayed the more time I spent with them. I observed them repeatedly carrying out their constituency duties in similar fashions, reducing the possibility of an act. They also became accustomed to my presence, and often focused on the many responsibilities they to attend to. In addition, I carried a small notebook around with me, recording my field notes in as much detail as possible between meetings and individual interactions, rather than during the meetings. This was deliberately done so that constituents, MPs and caseworkers would feel comfortable and natural during meetings.
Despite the difficulties in getting started and amount of effort required, the ethnographic approach was fulfilling. It allowed details about an MP’s constituency life to emerge organically. I also had the opportunity to explore various picturesque parts of England while doing so (see image above)! Along the way, I learned about the challenges faced as they integrated digital tools across their parliamentary and constituency work; the importance of making time for their family; and perhaps most importantly, that they genuinely cared about what they did.
Dr Nikki Soo earned her PhD from the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway’s Department of Politics and International Relations. Find out more about her work here or follow her on Twitter @sniksw.
O'Loughlin to speak at 'Contentious Narratives' event in Washington DC
George Washington University
Ben O'Loughlin has been invited to address a high profile conference in Washington DC next month on the theme of disinformation and the Ukraine crisis. The conference, Contentious Narratives: Digital Technologies and the Attack on Liberal Democratic Norms, is organised by Steven Livingston from Harvard University and takes place at George Washington University in downtown DC on 2-3 April 2018. It brings together three dimensions: 1) Strategic narrative theory, as developed by Miskimmon, O'Loughlin and Roselle; 2) Computational propaganda (speakers include Kate Starbird and Sam Woolley); and 3) The illiberal turn in global politics (speakers include Katharine Sikkink and John Shattuck). Is computational propaganda being used to promote illiberal strategic narratives that undermine the current world order, or is the picture more mixed?
NPCU is grateful to Steven for putting strategic narrative theory front and centre in the debate about the present and future world order.
NPC Wired Episode 4: On Playing Games of Persuasion with Big Data and Micro-targeting
This week's episode, hosted by Professor Ben O'Loughlin and Dr Elinor Carmi, features Dr Jennifer Pybus. She discusses an array of important subjects, from Trump's use of data in his Facebook campaign (read more about that here), the covert shift to consumerist purchasing funnel in politics resulting in a large degree of personalisation, to China's social credit system.
Dr Jennifer Pybus is Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King's College London. Her current research looks at the politics of datafication and everyday life, specifically in relation to those critical points of tension that lie at the intersections between digital culture, Big Data and emerging advertising and marketing practices. Read more about her research here, and follow her on Twitter here.
O'Loughlin visits V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University
Ben O'Loughlin has been visiting V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine this week, one of the partner universities in our Jean Monnet project on EU Diplomacy in Conflict Regions. Ben met film-maker and TV host Lidia Starodubtseva, Head of the School of Media and Communication. He talked to her students about why Ukraine is of interest to researchers in Western Europe, how they as young people can further the democratisation of Ukraine, and addressed their concerns about whether Islamic State pose a threat to cities in Ukraine. Today he will present to the School of Foreign Languages on the topic, 'Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and the Power of Language'.
NPC Wired Episode 3: Discussing Ethics, Technology and Data
This episode of NPC Wired features two doctoral researchers from the New Political Communication Unit, Amber Macintyre and Declan McDowell-Naylor. Their timely research and discussion considers the use of ethnography in their research, data privacy, and autonomous vehicles.
Amber is an NPC PhD candidate at Royal Holloway. Her research examines the use of personal data in political organisations, exploring the tension between the benefits for campaigning and the ethical concerns. The project is inspired by her previous work as Digital Activism Officer at Amnesty International which involved training activists how to be safe online while using the same technologies to campaign effectively. Follow her on Twitter @Silktor.
Declan is a doctoral researcher in the New Political Unit at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway University of London. He is also a visiting tutor, teaching on both political theory and British democracy. He is currently writing up his PhD thesis on autonomous vehicle development in the United Kingdom, with an emphasis on the role of public participation. Declan has previously worked as a research assistant on different research projects with the New Political Communication Unit. His Twitter handle is @declan_djmn1. Follow his work on his website here.
New British Council report on cultural relations by O'Loughlin and colleagues
Ben O'Loughlin and colleagues have published a new report for the British Council comparing how Germany and the UK approach cultural relations. The report stems from comparative research looking at how the British Council and Goethe Institute use cultural relations in Ukraine and Egypt to create social change. The new report provides the historical reasons why each country differs in their approach - how Germany and the UK each engage with the world is part of a much longer set of political histories. This report contextualises the ongoing research project, 'The Cultural Value Project: Cultural Relations in Societies in Transition', funded by the British Council and Goethe Institute. In the next year, the team will publish findings about how cultural programmes lead to different forms of social change in hot political climates. It also reveals the unexpected consequences and tensions that emerge when a society decides whose culture it values.
Read a summary of the report and download the PDF here. Thanks to co-authors Marie Gillespie, Eva Nieto McAvoy and Malte Berneaud-Kötz.
NPC Wired Episode 2: Dr Anna Feigenbaum on Digital Storytelling and Social Change
The second episode of NPC Wired features Dr Anna Feigenbaum, Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling at Bournemouth University. Speaking with Professor Ben O'Loughlin and Dr Elinor Carmi, she discusses her current research (she is presently writing The Data Storytelling Workbook for Routledge, which will be coming out in 2019), draws on practitioners’ experiences and research to investigate how the rise in big and open data can be put to use to tell better data stories for social change. They also talk about the barriers various practitioners face when analysing data, and the fetishisation of data visualisation, among other things.
Her latest book, Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WW1 to the Streets of Today, published with Verso, is available now. Find out more about Anna's work here, and follow her on Twitter here.
New article by Szostek on Russian coercion
Dr. Joanna Szostek has published a new research article in Geopolitics entitled, The Mass Media and Russia’s “Sphere of Interests”: Mechanisms of Regional Hegemony in Belarus and Ukraine. In it, she argues why Russia is becoming more reliant on coercion to secure its regional ambitions, based on analysis in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. A full abstract is below. Congratulations Joanna!
Read the article here.
The Mass Media and Russia’s “Sphere of Interests”: Mechanisms of Regional Hegemony in Belarus and Ukraine
As conduits for ideas, values and geographical knowledge, the mass media contribute to the construction of regional order. Moscow-based media organisations with audiences in post-Soviet republics have been described as ‘soft power tools’ or ‘information weapons’ which aid the Russian state in its pursuit of regional dominance. However, a heavy focus on the agency of the Russian state obscures the important role that local actors and their motives often play in delivering Russian media content to large audiences in neighbouring countries. This article examines several major news providers which export content from Russia to Belarus and Ukraine, reaching large audiences thanks to partnerships that serve particular local interests and accommodate some local sensitivities. These news providers resemble mechanisms of neo-Gramscian regional hegemony, where actors in the ‘periphery’ are involved in perpetuating norms from the ‘centre’. The article argues that Russia’s political leadership, despite promoting consensual hegemony as its preferred regional order, has in fact undermined the type of media mechanisms that might have helped to sustain such an order. As the Russian state has projected narratives without regard for negative local reactions, it has made itself more reliant on coercive means to secure its declared ‘sphere of interests’ across formerly Soviet territory.
Trump, the First Facebook President, a recap of Jennifer Pybus seminar
Written by: Rebecca Curley MSc MPPA.
Big Data. To what extent is it impacting our lives? That is the big debate on Big Data. For Dr Jennifer Pybus it means she is being haunted by a Made.com sofa every click she makes on her tablet and laptop. For Donald Trump it means the once laughable Simpson plot became a reality. Big Data took him all the way to the White House.
The impact of using Big Data for Trump’s 2016 election campaign team was monumental. Like an Urban Myth, teams from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica slogged it out using the data of over 220 million people to transform the election. It is not known how many were in the room, or how exactly they shared the data captured on Facebook, but one by one, certain individuals were targeted and persuaded to vote for the golf-loving genius. Through Facebook advertising and the quarks of the site, such as finding look-alikes, targeting people on ethnicity and gender, people were hand picked based on the data the Project Alamo collected.
Dr Pybus saw the result of the election, heard the one about the social media gurus and the data influencers and became suspicious. Just where is the use of Big Data taking us? During her lecture as part of the Rethinking Politics in Data Times on Monday (15th January, 2018), Dr Pybus shared what she has found in the quest for why politicians need our data and the impact resulting in Trump, the ‘First Facebook President’. Playing particular attention to the three challenges of the web set by Tim Berners-Lee last year, Dr Pybus looked at the loss of control of personal data, the concentration of ownership and algorithmic practices. Such big data practices are facilitating the intensification and spread of misinformation and the need for more accountability and regulation around political advertising. She then sought to see how this was shown through the Trump campaign by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
The impact of the shock result and catastrophic ripple it sent through the world of campaigning, data sharing, data use and genius definition is being felt all over the world and on the internet. If it was that easy to influence the free world, imagine what companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica could do to the rest of it.
Dr Pybus, a lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London, has researched the diverse ways our digital lives are being datafied and in this case, being used to persuade in politics. By looking at advertising platforms like Facebook and their work with companies like Cambridge Analytica, there is power in the use of data. Just like the cookies behind the Made.com sofa she desires (unlike the crumbs down the back of mine) data can track our thoughts, feelings and now our actions. Regulating this is a minefield. And not one that anyone seems to have mastered yet. And should it? Perhaps money spent looking at regulating should be spent on educating. If we wise up to how our data is being exploited then who has the power then?
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica were not the only weapon Trump’s team used to power their way to the top, but with millions of dollars pumped into Facebook advertising it was perhaps the most powerful. And in this digital age it is one tactic for campaigners that is only going to intensify.
The genius behind Trump is the use of the data to influence. But the morality behind any form of persuasive politics is questionable. Replace persuasion with education and strip advertising platforms like Facebook of the chance to influence and we can go back to ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ pics of furniture all we want without interference or trace.
Either that, or pay academics more so Dr Pybus can buy the sofa and be cyber-stalked by a different home interior. Trump’s team took a fresh approach to politics persuasion and it paid off. Trump’s presidency has meant politics has to catch up with what the digital age can do. As we rethink politics in the data age this is one lesson to definitely learn from. Because Big Data is out there and it’s up for grabs! Take note Oprah!