To engage the young, political parties must dare more democracy

One of the most striking features of recent British general elections is the fall in voter turnout. Since 1997, the number of people voting has plummeted from around 74% in each of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, to an average of only 60% in the 2000s. This trend is most visible amongst younger voters: turnout fell to below 40% in the 18-25 group in 2001 and 2005. Young people are not apathetic but are turned off by electoral politics in its current form.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 showed that young people can become more engaged, not only in voting but also campaigning, but we can safely predict that this will not happen in Britain. Why?

First, politicians do not address issues of concern for young people. Let’s take the subject of university education. Over 40% of young people now go on to higher education (HE), but this policy area has barely been discussed. In fact, it has taken a pro-active campaign by the National Union of Students—to name and shame prospective MPs who support an increase in fees—to even bring HE onto the agenda.

Second, political parties have lost much of their representative capacity. Recent decades have witnessed the individualisation of society in general and young people in particular in terms of values, life-styles and types of political participation. Young people have more diverse interests and participate in democracy through more diverse means, for example demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq or support for Fair Trade products. On the other side of the equation, in their efforts to respond to the demands of the 24-hour media, political parties have become more hierarchical. As a consequence, policy making has become increasingly shut off from ordinary party members.

Third, the first-past-the-post electoral system in Britain does not encourage parties to engage with young people. Since parties’ resources are heavily concentrated in the battle for marginal constituencies, most people in the country are unlikely to come into personal contact with a politician or even a party activist, even in the run-up to the general election. This is particularly true for young people, who, because, they are statistically less likely to vote are viewed as less important by the political marketing experts who now dominate the campaign.

Finally, of course, Britain does not have a politician like Obama. Despite the energising performance of Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, in the first prime ministerial debates, no British politician has yet captured the views and aspirations of young people in this country.

What can we do? Well, certainly increasing political literacy through, for example, improved citizenship education, would be one answer. But the main problem lies with the politicians and the institutions. In short, they must ‘dare more democracy’. They must open up their parties to new social groups. They must reinvigorate local democracy—where people are more likely to succeed in their political endeavours—by granting it more power. They must get involved and actively mobilise young people throughout the whole of the electoral cycle.

Here is one telling experience. Not too long ago I participated in a conference on political participation for academics and politicians at Westminster, where one senior politician complained that he had never been invited to give a talk at a school. That was pathetic. If politicians cannot be bothered to get engaged through their own initiative, how can regular citizens be expected to return the favour?

NPCU@Oxford - Social media monitoring: The next Mass Observation?

Lawrence Ampofo and Ben O'Loughlin will present a paper on social media monitoring at the CRESC Annual Conference on 31 August - 3 September 2010, University of Oxford. Previous CRESC conferences have been an excellent forum bringing together social theory and methodology and this year's theme, 'The Social Life of Methods' allows us to explore the intriguing possibility that our methods dictate our knowledge and action rather than being tools we use to shape social change.

Our paper, 'Real-Time Social Media Monitoring: Automated Mass Observation?', presents a new method of mining and extracting insight from social media feeds. It exemplifies the dilemma of how new forms of tracing and visualising social interactions may channel the questions we ask and the conclusions we seek to draw. Designed by experts in computational linguistics at Linguamatics and researchers at Royal Holloway's New Political Communication Unit, the methodology Real-Time Social Media Monitoring allows researchers to aggregate and analyse data from social media platforms as an event or crisis unfolds to inform timely decision making.  The tools and techniques that constitute the methodology can be used for a broad range of purposes in politics and business, such as identifying shifting brand reputations, key opinion leaders, viral content, and emergent groupings, networks and the geolocation of citizens/users. The paper demonstrates this through a series of case studies examining public responses to H1N1 vaccine take-up, the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, Haiti's earthquake, and the 2010 UK General Election. 

The presentation of this methodology and the case studies raise a number of methodological, conceptual and ethical questions. Methodologically, how do we visualise social networks as they evolve in real-time and how do our visualisations feed back into policy interventions? How can we maintain validity of conceptualisation, measurement and inference in social media analysis? And how do we discern intent? For instance, acts of expression-for-itself, persuasion, and deception all occur in our cases. Conceptually, what does our methodology imply for traditional distinctions of public/private, broadcast/dialogue and directed/emergent communications? Ethically, is social media monitoring simply a non-intrusive instant polling technique, or a form of Mass Observation for the 21st Century?



Next stage in Strategic Narratives research: Dialogue and Diversity in Diplomatic Interaction

On 3-5 June 2010 Ben O'Loughlin will present a paper, 'How do we talk about nukes? EU, US and Iranian Strategic Narratives in Contemporary Diplomacy' at a symposium in Hamburg, Unclenching Fists: Dialogue and Diversity in Diplomatic Interaction. The paper, co-authored with Alister Miskimmon (Royal Holloway) continues the NPCU's research on 'strategic narratives' in international political communication. 

A strategic narrative is a narrative forged by a state with the express purpose of influencing the foreign policy behavior of other actors. This paper will examine whether the EU and the USA’s strategic narratives concerning Iran have been complementary or competitive, taking as its focus the 2009 Geneva talks between the EU3, USA, and Iran concerning Iran’s nuclear programme.  Such moments of high politics represent ‘tests’ in which the (moral, political) criteria of worth present in each actor’s narrative is evaluated by others with reference to an empirical problem: in this case, Iran’s nuclear programme (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991/2006).  We examine the narrative strategies employed by each participant, respectively, as well as the style and mode of delivery or projection, and the manner in which each took the others’ strategic narrative and its delivery into account during interactions in this period. To what extent did each actor take into account the others’ criteria of worth and alter the content and register of their own narrative work by accounting for the perspective of the others; when was this useful and when not, when did this work and when not? How were principles of justice, legality, legitimacy and so forth invoked and negotiated as each actor pursued their interests? We explore the forms of evidence presented and made public by each actor, and the visual and rhetorical modes used to contextualise and frame the meaning of the evidence presented. We also analyse how these stylistic and evidentiary aspects of each actor’s diplomacy was received in the national media of each actor, and the degree to which this fed back into the process being reported on.

Culture, Politics & Arab Media @LSE 29 April

LSE DEPT. OF MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

Research Dialogues 2009-10

THURSDAY 12:30 – 2:00

Room H202, Connaught House

Culture, Politics and Arab Media

Speakers:

Mina Al-Lami, Visiting Fellow, Department of Media and Communication, LSE

Shawn Powers, Visiting Fellow, Department of Media and Communication, LSE

Respondent:

Dr. Ben O'Loughlin, Reader in International Relations and Co-Director of the New Political Communication Unit, Royal Holloway, University of London

Abstracts

Virtual Spaces of Contestation and the futility of closing Jihadist websites

Mina Al-Lami

On 10 September 2008 the three top Jihadist sites sponsored by Al-Fajr Media Centre, an Al-Qaeda media wing, were closed simultaneously. It wasn’t long before the remaining major Jihadist sites were similarly mysteriously closed, forcing Jihadists to look for alternative platforms. The persistent closure of the three Al-Fajr sites, still down today, and “attack” on others prompted rigorous discussions and debates amongst Jihadist forum administrators and members on how to counter this “media attack”. While the closing of the Al-Fajr sites shortly disturbed Jihadists in terms of finding new trustworthy and credible platforms, it did nothing to obstruct the flow and accessibility of Jihadist media nor regrouping of Jihadists. If anything, the closing of the sites - seen as yet another “crusade” by the West - further radicalized Jihadists. It drove them to increase their “media Jihad” efforts and come up with innovative means to survive in a hostile virtual environment.

This paper will try to argue that closing and/or curtailing of Jihadist sites as a means of countering online extremism in general and Al-Qaeda propaganda in particular is technically ineffective in the presence of web 2.0 and morally counterproductive. The paper suggests that allowing Jihadists a platform is more effective in exposing their violence and undermining their narratives. The case of the leading Arabic forum Al-Jazeeratalk, which does allow Jihadists a voice, is used to illustrate such a potentially successful counter-extremism measure.

The Politics of Exclusion: An Examination of American Efforts to Silence Arab Satellite News

Shawn Powers

Manuel Castells (2009) argues that an important area of inquiry in today’s Network Society is that of the politics of inclusion and exclusion into critical networks of power. The three principle types of networks—media, political and financial—provide the backbone for modern society, and those people, groups, organizations and states that are excluded from these networks can thus be shut out of the increasingly essential circuitry of today’s world. Whereas in previous generations exclusion was often identified and examined in more tangible, physical processes, today exclusion to and from critical networks of power—all tied together via the global media—must also be examined as it has profound consequences on how power relations are negotiated and shaped.

This paper examines contemporary American efforts at excluding Arab-based news networks from reaching their target audiences. Two case studies will be examined: Al Jazeera English’s (AJE) attempts to access audiences in North America, and the US government’s recent attempt to sanction satellite providers carrying television networks classified as “terrorist entities” by the American Congress. Each case study will be analyzed in an effort to better understand how corporate and government policymaking influence the flows of international communication, though not always in the ways intended.

Free access to new Media, War & Conflict special issue: Images of War

The April 2010 issue of Media, War & Conflict, Volume 3 Issue 1, is now published and available online to read for free until 30 April. To access the issue click here. Media, War & Conflict is an international, peer-reviewed journal that maps the shifting arena of war, conflict and terrorism in an intensively and extensively mediated age. It explores cultural, political and technological transformations in media-military relations, journalistic practices, and new media, and their impact on policy, publics, and outcomes of warfare.



TV debate: initial twitter analysis shows level of support for party leaders and winners by topic

The NPCU is collaborating with Linguamatics, a leader in enterprise text mining, to carry out social media analysis through a series of events in 2010, including the TV election debates. Below are preliminary results of Linguamatics' linguistic analysis of 211,000 tweets sent by 47,420 twitterers from 8.30pm - 10pm on the night of the first UK election debate, April 15 2010.

The overall tweet analysis (Figure 1) shows that 65% of twitterers who expressed an opinion said that Nick Clegg performed best, followed by Gordon Brown (21%), and then David Cameron (14%). In contrast, the immediate post-debate poll by Sun/YouGov put Clegg ahead at 51%, Cameron at 29%, and Brown at 19%.

Figure 1 - Number of tweets showing positive sentiment towards each party leader

The twitterati also indicated that their top 5 issues were health, immigration, economy, education and crime, with Cameron winning on health, Clegg on immigration and education, and Brown on economy and crime (Figure 2). However, the combined analysis of winner per topic showed that the leaders were more evenly split (Figure 3) than for the debate as a whole (Figure 1).

Figure 2 - Winner per topic from number of relevant positive tweets

Figure 3 - Percentage of specific topics won by each leader

Linguamatics' linguistic analysis of the debate transcript itself (Figure 4) shows that the leaders talked about education most, followed by crime, health, tax and jobs, which revealed different priorities than for the twitterati.

Figure 4 - Words spoken about a particular topic per speaker

Commenting on these preliminary results, John M. Brimacombe, Executive Chairman of Linguamatics said: "For Twitter, we've demonstrated an objective way to detect real world opinion as it develops. However, this ability to filter huge volumes of text in real time has implications for decision-makers across the board."

Rather than only searching for specific keywords, Linguamatics uses natural language-based querying to find and summarize tweets that have the same meaning, however they are worded. The I2E text mining software developed at Linguamatics has been deployed by top-10 pharmaceutical companies since 2003 to analyze high volumes of information and drive decision making. Linguamatics has now adapted this technology for real-time social media analysis. I2E can automatically discover the wide-range of vocabulary used in tweets, including topic tags, and use linguistic processing to collect and summarize the thousands of ways people have of saying the same thing.

More analysis to follow the last two debates, and a detailed survey will follow the election itself. For further information please contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.

Media, Electoral Insurgency, and Nick Clegg

Many overview studies of British politics—including all of the major textbooks—are weak on integrating the role of media in shaping political outcomes. But following Nick Clegg's and the Liberal Democrats' extraordinary surge in the opinion polls over the last few days, on the back of a winning performance in the first live television leaders' debate on April 15, is this neglect justified?

Time will tell if the "yellow wave" endures, but it is unlikely that support will deflate all the way down to pre-campaign levels this side of polling day. 

In America, the internet has helped "insurgent" candidates with little initial support, funding, and campaign infrastructure. Howard Dean, the anti-war candidate who came from nowhere to having a shot at the Democratic party nomination in 2004, led the first major American campaign to harness the power of online networks.

Then there is Barack Obama. It seems strange today, but in the early phases of the 2008 contest, Obama was regarded by the mainstream electorate as a relatively obscure junior Senator. And in Hillary Clinton, he faced a formidable opponent with instant brand recognition and the initial support of the Democratic party elite.

In this British election, things are different. As Charlie Beckett argues, it is television, not the internet, that has played the predominant role in the Liberal Democrats' insurgency by raising public awareness of Clegg's approach as leader and of the Lib Dems as a party.

And yet, the internet is playing a significant role. The Times reports that in the 24 hours following the debate, the Lib Dems received £120,000 in small donations. By American standards, this is a paltry, almost laughable, sum, but by Britain's standards, for reasons explored elsewhere, it is dramatic. Precisely how much of this money was raised online is impossible to discern at this point. The fact, however, that the Lib Dems can name a figure with confidence so soon after the debate ended implies that the majority of it was online.

As Mark Pack has pointed out, the Lib Dems are now the only UK party to have a Facebook group—albeit an unofficial one—that has achieved a higher number of members than the subs-paying membership of the party itself. The group is called "We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!" and as of 10.30am today (April 19) it had 95,000 members, putting it way ahead of all of the other party political Facebook groups and fan pages, official or otherwise. The group takes its name from the successful online charity campaign to prevent the winners of 2009's X-Factor talent show from reaching the number one slot in the music charts. 

The television debate acted as the catalyst, but the "we can get the Lib Dems into office" Facebook group keeps on growing. Mutual dependency between television and new media is what increasingly drives mediated electoral politics in the UK. 

The yellow surge bears some of the hallmarks of recent American electoral insurgencies. Polling shows that the party is picking up significant new support from voters under 35. Clegg is presenting himself as a "fresh" alternative to the "old parties." He is inviting the electorate to "think differently." He presents an image of youth and vitality. During the television debate, this paid off, sparking hugely positive media commentary for the entirety of the crucial weekend news cycle. 

For voters looking to punish MPs in the aftermath of the expenses scandal, the Lib Dems have an obvious advantage because they simply have fewer MPs and are arguably less likely to have been tainted than Labour and the Conservatives. The "we can get the Lib Dems into office" Facebook group could be evidence of this "outsider" appeal. Weakly aligned voters, especially the young to middle-aged, educated, middle-class citizens that dominate online politics, may be looking for something resembling a movement for reform. A hung parliament, leading to electoral reform as the price the Lib Dems will try to exact as a condition of supporting a minority administration, could be the key.

The internet is an insurgent's medium. We may be about to see it become a more prominent, if uncontrollable, force in the election campaign. The ways in which it interacts with broadcast media and the press is what we now need to analyse. This is a prominent theme in the new book I am currently writing in the small spaces between periods spent following what is turning out to be a truly fascinating election campaign...

Beyond the election: #DEBill, Twitter and a glimpse of Internet-enabled direct democracy

In the latest of his guest posts, Simon Collister assesses the campaign over the Digital Economy Bill.

Now that the UK General Election is officially underway the media have gone into overdrive with their coverage of what the BBC is calling the 'Digital Election'. They've even made technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, 'Digital Election Correspondent' for the duration.

Dominating the digital election coverage has been Twitter: from parties using it to mobilise supporters through to its role providing a back-channel for debating the performance of party leaders during the televised debates. The media and political blogosphere have even claimed their first Twitter ‘scalp’ of the election. And, as if further evidence were needed, the BBC's Cellan-Jones took the crucial step of agreeing on what the Election hashtag was going to be.

But I want to argue that Twitter’s most interesting role since the General Election was announced is not how UK political parties plan to use it to campaign, but rather how the online grassroots lobbying over the Government’s Digital Economy Bill has perhaps provided us with a glimpse at what a digitally empowered democracy might look like.

First some background: the Digital Economy Bill (henceforth known by its Twitter hashtag #DEBill) has generated a great deal of contention owing to it's pro-industry and anti-Internet clauses. These include forcing open wifi providers, such as cafes, bars, libraries, etc, to close their networks or face crippling penalties if used to download copyrighted material, handing unprecedented powers to the Government and State to block and censor websites it (or big business) doesn’t like and taking over domain names where it sees fit.

In addition, the Labour government has received further criticism for the way it used the dissolution of Parliament ahead of an election to have the Bill approved with a minimum of debate time and scrutiny.

As a result, a range of disparate groups - from digital rights campaigners to artists and photographers - saw the Internet as key battle-ground for opposing or adequately debating the Digital Economy Bill.

Ahead of #DEBill’s main debate, social media was predominantly used by campaigners to mobilise support, highlight a wide-ranging piece of legislation with low public awareness and lobby MPs to attend the debate.

As soon as the Bill entered the House of Commons, however, Twitter become the de facto real-time social media tool for lobbying and advising MPs on the Bill’s complex content. Moreover, it arguably gave rise to a situation that could almost be described as an emergent form of digital direct democracy.

I plan to take a look at this phenomenon and offer some commentary and analysis on the way Twitter allowed the public to engage with a traditionally closed democratic process. Before I do this, however, it’s helpful to take a quick quantitative look at the #DEBill case study.

According to Twitter analytics tool, What The Hashtag?, the number of tweets containing the #DEBill hashtag across a three day period totalled 55,977. This content only covers the window from 6^th April when the Bill received its first reading in the Commons until 8^th April when it was given its final reading in the Lords before being passed into Law.

Add to this evidence that tracking hashtags alone provides only approximately half of the relevant Twitter content around an issue (See p. 8 of Nick Anstead and Ben O’Louglin’s working paper on Twitter and the Viewertariat [opens as pdf]) and it could be suggested the overall level of public debate was significantly higher.

The sheer volume of Twitter debate during this time-frame and in the immediate pre- and post-debate periods helped push the hashtag to the third highest global trending topic on Twitter that week.

As Twitter’s trending agenda is usually dominated by US current affairs and entertainment topics, to have the debate about a complex piece of UK legislation trending just below Justin Bieber is in itself, a major achievement.

If we drill down into this data we can take a look at some of the specific ways in which the hashtag was used. I argue that there are two outcomes for the #DEBill Twitter debate. The primary outcome is essentially an instrumental one. That is, Twitter was used to connect the public with MPs and the parliamentary process in ways and on a scale not seen before. Secondarily, I believe the way the debate played out over Twitter had an impact on the wider reputation of politics and democracy in the UK. Coincidentally, this effect comes at a crucial time for UK politics as the country prepares itself for an election where many voters have low expectations of the main parties.

Turning to Twitter and the #DEBill’s instrumental effects on UK democracy first, I want to suggest that never before have we seen the detailed machinations of parliamentary process become so transparent and porous.

While parliamentary proceedings have been televised publicly by the BBC since 1998 (although available commercially from 1992-1998), televised content rarely reaches a wide audience unless the debate is particularly newsworthy. And while the Digital Economy Bill made some headlines, its complexity meant it was unlikely to engage a mainstream audience. 

During the debate, however, a group of dedicated individuals augmented live coverage of debate on BBC Parliament with a real-time stream of Twitter updates. This meant anyone with an Internet connection could track the debate live and in real-time by searching for and following the relevant hashtag.

Moreover, the use of Twitter photo and video sharing tools such as Twitpic and Yfrog were put to effective use allowing the Bill to be reported online through multimedia.

In an exchange (via Twitter) with one of the debate's most prolific tweeters, I likened this activity to a 'real-time Hansard'. While she played down the comparison due to Twitter not providing word-for-word coverage of the debate, it was certainly possible to follow the debate’s key arguments based on the verbatim information and contextual links to other online resources being tweeted.  

It's important to remember that it wasn’t just the public who were able to track and read about the debate using Twitter. A relatively small but significant number of MPs leading opposition to the Bill, including Eric Joyce, Tom Watson and Evan Harris, were using Twitter to engage with both constituents and opponents of the Bill during the debate.

Arguably, this sort of direct engagement, where members of the public are able to inform and shape MPs thinking on an issue of legislation is radical in the current professionalised world of lobbying. That this grassroots lobbying took place during a parliamentary debate and in real-time is perhaps a glimpse of what a more direct, Internet-enabled form of democracy might look like.

This glimpse didn’t go unnoticed by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, who noted on his blog that the #DEBill’s Twitter backchannel had 'a real sense that many people outside were connecting with the Parliamentary process for the first time'.

But as suggested above, the #DEBill debate on Twitter served an equally mportant role in influencing public attitudes towards politicians, Parliament and democracy in general. More specifically, it's possible to argue that the #DEBill debate presented the UK’s parliamentary democracy and politicians in a negative light, while at the same time portraying certain, tech-savvy MPs positively.

From a negative perspective, early in the debate a Twitter user took a photograph of a wide-angle shot of the Chamber shown on BBC Parliament’s coverage. The image reveals a largely empty House of Commons which clearly paints a highly unflattering picture of the seat of democracy. Of course, within minutes this image was widely shared via Twitpic.

The image generated outrage online as it appeared to reinforce the lack of interest in both the Bill and democratic process as a whole as, according to many, the Bill’s timing was deliberately scheduled to ensure it was rushed through Parliament with minimum oversight. Sample comments left on the Twitpic image suggest wide-spread contempt for Parliament and politicians:

 “Isn't it ironic how we're lambasted by MP's for not caring and not showing up to vote? Maybe they should lead by example...” - http://twitpic.com/photos/Saevio

 "'Democracy live' ... No, I think it just passed away." - http://twitpic.com/photos/pickoo

As the image was spread around the Internet similar comments emerged and led to many others questioning the number of MPs required for Parliament to be quorate and whether the current figure needs to be reviewed.

Meanwhile one user tallied up the visible number of MPs present to estimated the total percentage of MPs attending. According to the website Didmympbotherttoturnup, created in the hours after the debate, a mere 3% of MPs took part in the debate. This is in stark contrast to the 20,000 emails sent to MPs by the public lobbying them to attend.

Conversely, MPs who were engaging with the public via Twitter received support and personal thanks – both from constituents and non-constituents. In fact, one person went as far as creating a site that mapped the constituencies of MPs that voted against the Bill and who are standing for re-election. The site states its aim clearly:

“If you opposed the Digital Economy bill and want to say thank you, you may want to consider voting for them if they are your constituency MP (having made sure you are registered to vote in time for May 6). Alternatively if you can't vote for them, but are a member of their party you may wish to consider helping them get re-elected by canvassing or volunteering for their campaign. It's your choice."

Interestingly, if the image of an almost empty Parliament has become the negative meme for the #DEBill, a counter-image of tech-savvy MPs as saviours for democracy has also emerged.

Labour MP for West Bromich, Tom Watson, spear-headed the opposition to the Bill, breaking the Party whip in doing so. This image showing Tom updating what appears to be his Twitter feed mid-debate, was shared via Twitpic and tweeted widely.

Owing to his outspoken opposition to the Bill and his personal sacrifices in ensuring the Bill met with as much opposition as possible Tom can be seen as perhaps the first cross-party, cross-consitituency single-issue MP committed to championing authenticity and transparency with politics and parliamentary democracy.

About Simon Collister

Simon is Head of Nonprofit and Public Sector at We Are Social. He wil be guest blogging for us on topics related to the 2010 British general election campaign.

2010-09-02: Andrew Chadwick and James Stanyer presenting at the 2010 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC

Professor Andrew Chadwick and Dr James Stanyer will be presenting a paper based on their ongoing research on change in the systemic characterstics of the British political communication environment to the 2010 APSA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

The conference runs September 2-5, 2010. Scheduling details will be announced in the summer.

2010-03-17 Christina Slade: Transnational Television Cultures: Reshaping Political Identities in the European Union

Christina Slade - Dean of Arts and Sciences,City University

Wednesday 17^th March 2010, 5pm – 6.30pm

Founders West 101

This paper deals with the case of Arabic speakers in the EU, and the results of a seven nation (FP7 funded) enquiry into the ways they use Arabic television and its impact on their identities as citizens of the EU. In the EU Arabic speakers have access to a wide range of transnational television, as well as hundreds of rebroadcast national television channels. Our study is the first broadly based quantitative and qualitative study of these audiences, and raises fundamental questions about the new landscapes of cultural citizenship in the EU. This paper addresses both descriptive and analytic problems that have arisen from the data. How do we describe super (and sub-) national public spheres of this sort, and how do we analyse that data? Some of the conclusions were unexpected:  some communities are primarily bicultural (or translocal) watching local media from the their two nations of belonging, while others engage with  transnational media in Arabic, English and other languages and develop a more archetypally  ‘cosmopolitan’ viewpoint. Paradoxically it is those who travel regularly to their country of origin who are often bicultural, while refugees, students and others more firmly rooted in the EU are transnational in view.

Christina Slade is Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at City University London. She was Dean of Humanities at Macquarie University from 2003-8 and has taught at a number of universities including Universiteit Utrecht, as Professor of Media Theory, New York University, La Universidad Ibero Americana and the ITESM, in Mexico City. Her research interests range from issues in the philosophical foundations of communication theory, through issues of the global public sphere and its fragmentation under the impact of new technologies to questions relating to the development of reasoning skills using television product. She leads a seven nation EU-funded FP7 project entitled Media & Citizenship: Transnational Television Cultures: Reshaping Political Identities in the European Union.

For further information about the seminar please contact Ben.OLoughlin@rhul.ac.uk.