With a hat tip to e.politics for the link, this is an interesting example of campaigning using new forms - in this case a little flash game, which, whilst it borrows heavily from space invaders, is politically themed. The site also looks to create an activist list / petition. And if you were wondering, my top score is 260.
TV's democratic deposit
A very interesting blog post by Andy (cross posted on his personal weblog) on developments in television and why "reality" TV may now no longer be able to claim it is genuinely participatory. Andy's point, based on the daddy of reality shows, Big Brother, was that this kind of TV now lacks the sense of authenticity that it once had. Emblematic of this was the possibility that a contestant on the most recent series might have been sponsored - before she went into the house - to sing a Janis Joplin song about Mercedes cars at regular intervals. Her reward for doing this was (apparently) a shiny new Mercedes sports car (although presumably Mercedes would have been less pleased if she got onto the second line of the song, which name checks another well known brand of German sports car).
This certainly seems to jar with the original claims of Big Brother when it launched in the UK in 2000 and in the years immediately afterwards. Back then, the show had pretensions not only to being entertainment, but also to being a serious enquiry into the human condition. There were frequent allusions to the Stanford Experiment as a pre-cursor to the show, and zoologist Desmond Morris said he was fascinated by the concept, to the extent that he was willing to write articles for the Channel Four website about the show. The programme created as many column inches in the broadsheets as it did in the tabloids, with media commentators like Mark Lawson frequently writing about it.
However, we shouldn't be surprised that this situation has now changed and the sort of example that Andy cites is occurring. A vital element in the early installments of Big Brother was the security blanket the contestants were wrapped in - because no one had done TV like this before, none of the people in the house had a notion of how they would be received when they left, or, indeed, if anyone was even watching the show. They were genuinely locked inside a bubble. Now, contestants are completely aware of what is likely to be going on outside the house and they have a good idea what will happen to them when they leave. That changes the whole nature of the series and the expectations of the people appearing on it.
More generally, the format may have additional problems, which undermine claims it has to being genuinely participatory television. If we go back to the original conception of Big Brother, we can see something that went further than promises of either authenticity or genuine sociological enquiry. Big Brother, along with shows like Pop Idol, was in a wave of telly that proclaimed to employ a democratic model. This had two aspects to it. Firstly, the people on the show were regular folks - that is, people like us. Anyone could audition and be selected to go on telly and become a star. Secondly, whilst there would be celebratory and expert panelists, it was ultimately viewers who would be given the power to decide the course and outcome of the show. At the time it might have been argued that this type of television heralded the rise of a new kind of "bottom up" (as opposed to "top down") television.
But such arguments don't stack up, for at least three reasons. Firstly, when the television companies adopted this model of programming, they did not do so because they had come to believe that democratic television was good television. In contrast, they saw this type of programme as providing an effective economic model that allowed them to continue making profits in a very adverse environment. Once upon a time, when there were only four channels, top-rated TV programmes could get audiences of twenty million viewers. The top soaps might pull in, week-in-week-out, audiences of more than 15 million people (although, apparently Coronation Street had an all time high viewing figure of 27 million). Of these four channels, only two - ITV and Channel 4 - were able to sell advertising. This situation had two impacts. Firstly, an advert placed on television would be seen by many, many people, so the advertising space was tremendously valuable. Secondly, companies wishing to advertise products had few outlets to undertake this activity.
Compare that with the situation now. Viewing figures have dropped massively. Last week, not a single programme was watched by more than 10 million people. The media market has become atomized, not only because many homes have many more than the five terrestrial channels, but also because of the development of DVDs, computer games and the Internet. This not only means that advertising space - for example the interval of Coronation Street - is worth less than it once was, but also that companies hoping to advertise are looking at alternative means of reaching the public. Do they necessarily want to spend their ad budget at ITV, or would they rather buy Google banner ads, for example?
The democratic model of television offered one solution to this problem. The people appearing on the programme weren't famous, so didn't demand high appearance fees (heck, a lot of them would probably have done it for free). Generally - although I would actually imagine Big Brother is something of an exception to this, as it quite an intricate production - reality TV is cheaper to make than drama. And, most crucially of all, the programme can be financed from the revenues made from members of the public phoning into vote. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised then that a model of media economics that was adopted because it was profitable has ultimately come to be seen as corrupt and untrustworthy.
Secondly, the early promise of TV featuring "people like us" clearly wasn't happening. In fact, the people chosen for these participatory forms of programming were in no way representative of the British public. On occasions, this might have had positive impacts in combating prejudices against certain people in our society - for example, transsexuals or those who suffered from Tourette's Syndrome - but often it left the impression that the producers of the show were actually trying hard to do the opposite of what they had claimed originally - instead of "people like us", the were giving viewers people "who were not like us at all, thank god". More often than not, it seemed the reality TV shows were pandering to people's prejudices, rather than seeking to undermine them. And to be fair, we rewarded them. The more conflict, the more outlandish the housemates, the louder the arguments - the more we watched and more we voted.
At the other end of the scale, talent-based participatory programmes weren't really showing people like us either. The people doing the auditions weren't off the streets or working ordinary jobs. Often they had been to stage school or even worked in theatre or performance. These programmes were becoming established as an alternative root into show business rather than discoverers of new talent.
Thirdly, we really need to question where power lies in reality TV. On the surface, it might appear that viewers do have a great deal of control, via the medium of telephone voting (let's assume for the a second that the voting process itself is beyond reproach). But how free and informed are the choices that viewers make? There are at least two reasons to have doubts about this.
Firstly, producers still control who appears on programmes through the audition process, and they decide the rules of the game. I used to watch Big Brother for the first few series (I think the last one I really watched was Big Brother Four and - unlike most people - I really enjoyed it). However, I found that Germaine Greer's critique of the programme, after she had briefly appeared in the celebrity version of the show, was very powerful. The producers have stupendous power to control and modify the behavior of the people in the house - they control the diet of the contestants, their access to alcohol and other substances (for example, tobacco), their activities, the furniture, their sleep patterns, and everything else that goes on in their lives. This is a stupendous degree of control to have over a group of human beings, and could easily be abused. That's certainly what seemed to be happening when, following the low ratings of series four, the producers of the show proudly proclaimed it was getting "evil". That made me feel deeply uncomfortable (power and evil, after all, are probably not a good mix).
Additionally, as well as the control they have over what is actually happening in the house, the producers of the show have a second power that further undermines the ability of viewers to make informed decisions, and thus the claims of the programme to be genuinely participatory. Any level of participation on the part of the viewers requires them to have access to information about what is going on in the house. What they actually have access to is a version of what is going on in the house, created by producers and editors of the programme by splicing together video and sound that has been recorded to make a narrative. As a result, events can be emphasized, downplayed or even removed from existence altogether. On some levels, we have to acknowledge that this is how TV works (as has been highlighted recently), but how does it relate to a TV form that claims to be authentic and participatory?
The decline of participatory television
Over the last few months in the UK, there has been a fierce debate regarding the ethics of television. This has been fuelled by a number of scandals around racism, sexism and homophobia in reality TV shows (Celebrity Big Brother, the recent series of 'ordinary' Big Brother, now Hell's Kitchen); 'rip-off' or fabricated viewer phone-ins; and general concern over hypercommercialization in less regulated areas of satellite and cable TV, such as the quiz channels that occupy the obscure reaches of the satellite listings. Public trust in viewer participation formats seems to be at a low ebb.
The parlous state of some British television, and surely one of the forces driving the exodus away from the medium among the under-30s was brought home to me last Friday.
I was watching a Channel 4 programme about what had happened to the latest Big Brother contestants following the end of the series. There were the usual tours of radio and TV studios, tabloid photo sessions, and so on. There was also a rather heated argument between two of the housemates: Charley and Chanelle. The argument itself was not interesting, but one of Charley's outbursts was. At one point, she started singing the hook line from the well-known Janis Joplin song 'Mercedes Benz' (you know it: "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz").
Charley proceeded to boastfully explain that she had sung that line regularly during her time in the Big Brother house because she had been 'sponsored' by Mercedes to do so. She went on to state that she had been rewarded with a Mercedes sports car. This particular scene lasted only a few seconds, then it was off to the next photo session, and so on.
Was it true? Well, yes: she did sing that song on several occasions while in the house.
Did she get the car for doing so? This is where it becomes more difficult. We do not know. A web search has thrown up nothing more than a speculative thread on the entertainment and gossip website Digital Spy.
Let's suppose it is true. If it is, this was one of those rare, often very brief, moments which seem to crystallise something perfectly. The great hopes for participatory television formats, especially the sense of wonder at Big Brother when it first emerged, must now be put in contexts such as this: a housemate (possibly) 'sponsored' by a car manufacturer to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds, to spread brand awareness by behaving in a deceptively spontaneous manner.
And then we wonder why the participatory web has taken off so rapidly. People are turning to it for multiple reasons, but authenticity must surely be one of them.
[Crossposted from my Internet Politics blog].
You say reflexivity, I say waffle, let’s….
A week ago Gordon Brown was announcing citizen juries, the latest consultation technique to allow government to listen and learn by sitting in a room with that magical category, ‘ordinary voters’. Politicians and officials would use these chats to inform policy by drawing on “the wisdom and experience of the British people”. A new book casts light on government-citizen relations in the UK, with one insight that might be telling for the value of citizen juries and other such exercises. In Media Consumption and Public Engagement, Couldry, Livingstone and Markham present a study showing that however informed citizens may be about political issues, they felt unable to act on this and make a difference at any level of politics. It may be that they were able to act, but they didn’t feel that way, often because politicians offered little signal that they actually listen to citizens. The authors argue governments must ‘take fuller account of not just citizens’ choices but also their reflexivity’ (p190, italics added). This corresponds to research I’ve been involved in, in which interviews with policymakers suggests they have a very limited view of the public. They often have simplistic assumptions about how citizens think about politics, and are surprised that citizens, when presented with a news story, will interpret it in various different ways and on a number of levels; moreover, it is in the process of interpreting news and talking with friends or strangers that their knowledge of politics is often generated.
How a government could take account of citizens’ reflexivity is a thorny challenge, however. Brown and Cameron cannot sit listening to every citizen work through their thoughts and confusions. Would citizen juries offer a step towards what Couldry, Livingstone and Markham call for, or do they raise questions about representation that only muddy the matter further, e.g. which citizens are chosen, who do they speak for, and if they are juries, what powers do their judgements have?
Mayor Idol # 4
A little wait for this one, as it has taken me a while to get round to doing it, but here is the final Conservative Mayor Idol, Warwick Lightfoot. Lightfoot is a former government special advisor who has also served as a councillor in Kensington and Chelsea for a number of years. And here's his website:
First thing to say: It's loooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnngggggggg..... And it isn't even in blog format (by which I mean having entries tagged and organised, and published in chronological order). They just seem to have crammed loads of information on to the homepage, and it is a bit of a mess. The obvious solution to this would be to have a nice, self-contained front page and a blog. But the site has no blog, which is a big limiting feature. Most of the content on the front page of the site comes from press releases. Whilst these are clearly well-ordered and up-to-date (there is a release on today's tube strike for example), it also says something about the type of audience that the site is reaching out to - namely the mainstream media.
The site does have some nice features. For example, it has podcasts on it (which are actually called podcasts and have an RSS feed). And there is an RSS feed for content. Although, once again, I am left wondering why anyone - unless they were a jounro - would subscribe to a dry, press release-based feed? Successful political blogging, as everyone since Dean '04 has showed, is about personality and humour, as much as it is about policy and organisation. Without that, I suspect that the number of people subscribing to a feed will be very low.
Overall, whilst the site, looks OK (aside from the extreme length of the homepage), has quite a lot of stuff on it, and, I have no doubt, would be useful to a journalist, something really, really big is missing - the site is almost completely lacking in interactive features. Basically, these are limited to an email address, the ability to sign a supporters list and donating. There is no option to publicly comment anywhere. And as all the media is held on the site, and doesn't use a third party site such as YouTube, there is no possibility of commenting on or rating it. There are not even online polls. And, given the populist nature of London Mayoral contest, that really misses a trick.
Measuring online success
I've added this to my del.icio.us feed, but it seemed worth flagging up on its own, as it is so interesting. Spartan Internet has just launched an index of online political success. The index combines a whole host of measures - hits, tags on social bookmarks, outreach on social networking sites and search engine placement - to assess just how well candidates are doing online. At the moment, Barack Obama leads the line, with a score of 21.29 per cent, followed by Ron Paul (11.51 per cent) and Hillary Clinton (11.36 per cent).
Spartan's efforts are probably the most complete index, as they seek to amalgamate a range of measures, but they aren't the only people seeking to order data created from online presence. TechPresident has been counting Facebook and MySpace friends, and YouTube viewers, whilst Hitwise has been calculating scores for individual candidate websites based on the number of visits and search queries they receive. I reckon there are two things to remember about these measures. Firstly, these measures aren't an exact science - they are constructed with weightings and variable methodologies after all - and, as I blogged a while back, the real significance of online success is how it fits into the wider campaign.
Mayor Idol # 2 and # 3
After my efforts at analyzing Boris's website (such as it was), I was hoping that the other, less famous, candidates for the Conservative mayoral nomination would do a bit better and maybe prove that the Internet really is the home of the underdog, and the place where the little guy can take on the political behemoth on something like even terms.
Well, Andrew Boff blew that theory out of the water, as his site manages to be worse the Boris Johnson's (once again, click on the thumbnails for more detail). Actually though, it's not quite fair referring to Boff as the little guy. Had Johnson not entered the race at the last minute, he probably would have been regarded as a big hitter. Previously a councillor and then a GLA members, he ran for the mayoral nomination in 2000 and, thanks for unforeseen circumstances (Jeffrey Archer's little local difficulty), he found himself in the last two, against Steve Norris. Although he lost, Boff made quite a name for himself, getting a fair amount of national press coverage. He also very much fits into the mould of being a modernising, Cameron-type Conservative. He was one of the first openly gay and prominent Conservatives, and his rhetoric is certainly very post-ideological and centrist in tone.
So what's his site like? All-in-all, it's not good. Although Johnson's site was content-lite (and that's an understatement), but fairly pretty, Boff's is content-lite and ugly as sin. The background is all white, the font's are all over the place and quite scratchy. And the organization of the content is very poor, with seemingly random links, dotted around the middle of the page taking you to press releases.
What content there is isn't that well put together either. Boff's big headline at the moment is that he is going to campaign for more houses and family-friendly dwellings to be built; which seems like a pretty good and appealing idea. But the tag line his press release has on it is: "Funding for new one- and two-bedroom, affordable flats in London would be slashed if Andrew Boff becomes the Conservative Mayor of London". I don't think that advertising a desire to cut affordable housing is necessarily a vote winner, whatever the underlying argument is.
The one good thing about the site is that it has some functions of a pseudo-blog - RSS feeds are active on the page and you can comment on the stories that are highlighted (you will perhaps be unsurprised to hear that, thus far, no one has). However, because the original "posts" are nothing more than press releases, they contain none of the familiarity or humour that marks the best political blogs, so the additional features are really not that useful.
This exercise isn't going so well so far, is it? I'm going to press on and do another site in this post, run by Victoria Borwick, who is a councillor in Kensington and Chelsea. And, I'm pleased to report, it's a much better site than either of the two I have previously commented on. It's far from perfect - it hardly drips Web 2.0 action - but at least it has touched all the bases for what most people would now regard as the bare minimum for a website run by a politician campaigning for an office as significant as Mayor of London. It has a blog, video and MP3 files, as well online polls and a nice feedback form through which the candidate can be contacted. It is also fairly pretty, with a nice blue-green combo going on (although I would say the design is far from perfect; the front page for example is far too long and relies too much on overly long and not very nicely laid out sidebars).
Two other interesting things about the site stand out and are worthy of note. Firstly, the url. Whilst other candidates have used their name or slogans based around their name, Borwick has gone for mayor-for-london.org. That strikes me as a risky strategy, not least because it might make her harder to find for potential supporters; although she could presumably argue that, as a candidate with low name recognition, she might as well choose a generic name. Secondly, her site links directly to 18 Doughty Street, the right-wing Internet TV channel. This is something of a trail-blazing organisation (although estimates as to its impact vary, depending on how it is assessed). What it shows is that Borwick is seeking to link her site to the wider Tory-leaning blogosphere, perhaps in the hope they can give her campaign some much needed momentum against the juggernaut of Johnson's candidacy.
One more candidate to do, who I shall try to look at in the next few days.
Extremism and the Dark Side of Facebook
Today the Globe and Mail ran an interesting story about a Canadian MP who received a threat over Facebook (pasted below).
"The vile message was posted, of all places, on Facebook. While this was new, the sentiments, sadly, were not. Once again, MP Ujjal Dosanjh had been targeted for a threat to his physical safety.
An e-mail sent late last week to the Vancouver MP's Facebook site said that he should be beaten "just like they did before," a chilling reference to the near-fatal beating Mr. Dosanjh received in 1985 after speaking out against violence within the Sikh community. It was the second reference to violence against the federal Liberals' foreign affairs critic and one-time NDP premier in recent months.
An editorial in an Ontario Sikh newspaper last May referred to the brutal attack on Mr. Dosanjh as a time when "some guru's loved one beat him well" and left it as an open question for readers to decide whether the beating was deserved or not.
Yesterday, an undeterred Mr. Dosanjh said the time has come for politicians of all stripes to wake up to the dangers such threats pose to the fabric of free speech in the country. "We like to believe these things can't happen in Canada. That's naive. They can happen here," Mr. Dosanjh said. "I've never been afraid in my life and I don't intend to be afraid. But the fact is, there are always dangers lurking out there and people need to speak out. We can't allow these hate-mongers to stifle the free expression of those they don't agree with."
The most recent threats against Mr. Dosanjh follow his call for police to investigate a huge Sikh parade this spring that featured a float extolling Talwinder Singh Parmar as a martyr. Mr. Parmar, named in the Air India judgment as ringleader of the 1985 terrorist bombing plot that claimed 331 lives, was subsequently killed by police in India.
The Facebook e-mail that urged Mr. Dosanjh's beating referred to the veteran politician as "the biggest disgrace to the Sikh panth [community]. "It's disgusting to know that a person like you calls themselves a Sikh. ... you support those moderates." The sender's Facebook site contained pictures of some elderly Sikhs and the Sikh Golden Temple of Amritsar. The sender identified himself as Jag Singh.
Mr. Dosanjh, who has turned both recent threats over to the RCMP, said he is taking the Facebook warning far more seriously than the provocative editorial. "I hope it is a harmless crank. Nothing would make me happier. But this is a strong threat. More direct. You just never know. One has to be concerned," said Mr. Dosanjh, for years a consistent, outspoken opponent of Sikh extremism. "The fact that there have been two of these so close together tells me that there is a systematic campaign going on out there to intimidate and silence anyone who has the courage to speak out."
In 1998, Surrey, B.C., newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer, who wrote numerous scathing editorials against Sikh extremists and their sometimes violent quest for an independent Sikh homeland, was assassinated. Mr. Hayer's son David, a member of the provincial legislature, joined Mr. Dosanjh yesterday in urging politicians of all parties to begin speaking out more forcefully against groups who support such terrorism. David Hayer said that he, too, receives threats when he condemns supporters of Sikh violence. "All politicians have to stand up and say clearly that terrorism is wrong, and societies that promote terrorism are not acceptable," he said. "If we close our minds to it, then these kinds of threats will just continue."
Mr. Dosanjh, 59, said the many threats he has weathered over the years have taken a toll. "My kids were young in the 1980s when I used to receive dozens of threats. They've grown up with it," he said. "They're always worried about their father, and their father's always worried about them."
But neither the savage beating he received more than 20 years ago, nor the fire-bombing of his office in the 1990s, nor any of the numerous verbal threats have weakened his will to speak his mind. "I've lived through this stuff for years. If anything, it always makes me more determined to exercise my right to free speech," Mr. Dosanjh said."
Mayor Idol # 1
OK, so I'm going to be nowhere near as good at this as the past masters at the Biving's Report, but I thought it would be quite good fun anyway. The Conservatives are running a slightly unusual contest - for the UK, at least - to decide who is going to the their candidate for Mayor of London. They are holding an open primary, wherein, if they register with the party, any Londoner is eligible to vote. There are four candidates seeking the nomination: Andrew Boff, Victoria Borwick, Warwick Lightfoot and, of course, Boris Johnson. It struck me, a few weeks after they all declared their candidacy, to have a look at their websites and see what I thought. In such a contest, there really is only one person you can start with - Boris. I have captured an image of his site below, which I have annotated. You can click on the thumbnail to get an enlarged view.
Boris is noted for being pretty web-savy and, almost uniquely amongst British political figures, his blog gets thousands of hits and hundred of comments. For that reason I am pretty under whelmed by his efforts. The page has a nice colour scheme and doesn't feel overcrowded - which is a good thing - but there is nothing there! Actually, that's not quite true. There are prominently displayed volunteer and donate options, which is obviously good, especially given that Boris is a populist politician and the London Mayoral contest is probably the single most populist contest going. But the site has no features at all. There is no video or YouTube stream, no link to the Boris for Mayor facebook group (which has nearly 5000 members), no blog (or even a link to his regular blog), or podcasts. The whole thing looks like it was knocked together in half an hour - to the extent that there is even a typo in the candidate's name (note to Boris Johnson's staffer - the correct way to use an ownership apostrophe on a singular ending in s is to add 's i.e. Boris's, not Boris').
In fact, I very much get the impression that this is placeholder page. This indicates a couple of interesting things. Firstly, if you look at American examples, candidates who announce their candidacy for high office will tend to have an all-singing, all-dancing website ready to go, so that when they announce their intention to run, it is just a case of flicking a switch to create an instant web-presense. Maybe the lack of a better site indicates that Boris's decision to run really was as sudden as the media portrayed it, and not a cleverly planned political masterstroke. And secondly, and quite depressingly, the state of this site possibly indicates the Internet is still deeply undervalued in British politics. After all, even if Boris Johnson did only decide to run suddenly, it is more than a month since he announced that he was standing. On paper Boris, a politician who is popular because of who he is, and not because of his party affiliation or his beliefs, would seem absolutely perfect for a web-driven campaign. Furthermore, the open primary model adopted by the Conservatives would seem to suit this kind of campaigning. It is really very strange that more effort has not been made.
I shall be back with more on the other candidates in the near future.
Update on 2007-08-23 00:18 by Nick Anstead
OK... it suddenly occurred to me that readers outside the UK might not be that familiar with Boris Johnson, and as a result, the post above might only make limited sense. Let's just say Boris is a phenomenon - a genuine political superstar. He is probably the single most popular British politician of any party, despite the electoral disasters that have befallen his party in the past decade. Some argue he is a lovable buffoon, whilst other claim his eccentric character hides a keen intellect. However, he has never been immune from controversy, having had affairs whilst married and managing to insult the entire city of Liverpool. But his reputation seems to thrive on it. His Wikipedia entry gives a decent biography and this homemade YouTube mashup demonstrates the kind of politician Boris Johnson is, but also why people really like him.
I also have to include my absolute favourite Boris clip. It occurred when he was asked to play in a charity football match. Boris entered into the spirit of it with his usual gusto (in case you aren't familiar with how he looks, he's the one with the very big, blonde hair).
Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference - Call For Papers
Hosted by the New Political Communication Unit, Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London. http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk
April 17-18, 2008.
Call for papers
Has there been a shift in political use of the Internet and digital new media - a new Web 2.0 politics based on participatory values? How do broader social, cultural, and economic shifts towards Web 2.0 impact, if at all, on the contexts, the organizational structures, and the communication of politics and policy? Does Web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship? This conference provides an opportunity for researchers to share and debate perspectives.
Potential themes could include (in no particular order):
- Theorizing Web 2.0.
- Changes in political journalism, news production, and consumption.
- Social networking (MySpace, Facebook) and election campaigning.
- Citizen activism from the local to the transnational.
- Blogs, wikis, and user-generated content.
- Changing social, cultural, and political identities.
- Social software and social media: design, technologies, tools, and techniques.
- Social network analysis.
- Surveillance, privacy, and security.
- Security, foreign policy and international communication.
- Hacktivism.
- Radical transparency.
- The impact of online video.
- E-government, web 2.0, and new models of public service delivery.
- New models of social and political collaboration and problem-solving.
- 'Little brother' phenomena.
- Political life in virtual worlds.
- Netroots versus the war room model of election campaigning.
- New challenges for media regulation.
- Collaborative production of political knowledge networks.
- Changing party, interest group, and social movement strategies.
- Web 2.0 and political marketing.
- Collective intelligence, smart mobs, crowdsourcing.
- Fragmenting audiences, the long tail, and the political economy of web 2.0 media.
- Civil society, civic engagement, and mobilization.
- Web 2.0, ICT4D and the changing digital divide.
- The politics of intellectual property.
- Hyperlocalism.
- The political aesthetics of Web 2.0.
Journal of Information Technology and Politics special issue
Conference presenters will be invited to submit their papers to a peer review process for publication in a special issue of the new Journal of Information Technology and Politics. http://www.jitp.net.
Submitting a paper or panel proposal
Paper proposals should be submitted via the secure online form.
Deadline for all proposals: November 2, 2007.
Further information, including details of keynote speakers and plenary sessions will be released in early autumn. Details of accommodation packages will be released early in 2008.
About the New Political Communication Unit
Led by the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, the New Political Communication Unit was created in the Spring of 2007. Our research agenda consists of three strands:
- Comparative and international political communication: the Internet's impact on political mobilization, campaigning and identity; the relationship between media, war, new security challenges and conflict; audience reception studies in the context of the proliferation of media; the dynamic between citizens’ changing uses of media and a transforming news environment; citizen journalism; technology and mobilities.
- Communication and comparative governance: e-government, e-democracy and the changing interface between representative institutions, public bureaucracies and citizens; changing organizational practices shaped by new patterns of communication.
- Comparative and international communication policy: Internet and new media governance and regulation; privacy, surveillance and security, the political economy of new media; cultural diversity policy; digital divide and development issues.
We offer a taught Masters stream in New Political Communication and PhD supervision in our areas of expertise.
The Unit's network inside Royal Holloway incorporates academic staff from the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Department of Media Arts, the School of Management, the UNESCO Centre for ICT4D in the Department of Geography, the Department of Psychology and the Department of Computer Science.
Our external networks include scholars and practitioners in a wide variety of organisations and countries.
For more information, please visit our home page
About Royal Holloway
Royal Holloway is one of the major Colleges of the federal University of London and is among the elite group of ten university institutions whose departments all hold the top three ratings for research, with scores of 4, 5 and 5*. Our beautiful parkland campus is about 15 minutes by taxi from London Heathrow airport, and about 35 minutes from central London by train. For further information visit the College home page: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/