Toward a Research Agenda on Whether/How
Political Engagement is Enhanced Through Technology

Kirsten Foot
University of Washington
kfoot@u.washington.edu

Prepared for ICA Preconference Workshop “Electronic Networks and Democracy: Setting the Research Agenda”, May 23, 2003

Whether and how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be created and/or configured to enhance political engagement is a “holy grail” question. Many who study ICTs and politics seek answers to this question, but empirically grounded and theoretically satisfying answers are elusive. Researchers aiming to illuminate paths toward this grail need to define and situate notions of “democracy”, “political engagement” and “enhancing” individually and in relation to the others—and perhaps consider new dimensions of these concepts in view of the emerging virtual public sphere.

Beginning with the concept of democracy, is the ideal direct or representative democracy, communitarian or deliberative, strong or thin or something else (Barber, 1984, 1999; Dahl, 1989; Dahlberg, 2001)? Whatever the ideal type of democracy, is an incrementally more functional, achievable type of democracy more desirable than the ideal type? What is political engagement online and is it any different than offline political engagement? Is it currently/ideally catalyzed through widespread mobilization or targeted activation (Schier, 2000)? How is political engagement related to the democratic ideal? Does enhancing mean broadening the spectrum of the politically engaged population, intensifying the efforts of those currently engaged, and/or creating new forms of engagement? Conversely, what constitutes the diminishment of engagement and (how) are ICTs imbricated in that process?

Furthermore, research on “technology” needs to be grounded in specific types of ICT applications. Among the current panopoly of ICTs, I am most fascinated by the Web and its evolving role in political processes. I view the Web conceptually as an evolving set of structures that enable and manifest the production of social and political relations. I suggest that in regard to the Web, a question that is foundational to the holy grail, but largely overlooked, is what kinds of political engagement are currently potentiated by which kinds of political actors in which ways, under which conditions and in which social/political/cultural contexts, and when?

There are many iterations of this question that need to be posed and pursued in order to build theory about the whether/how political engagement is enhanced through the Web. The fundamental thesis from which this question arises is a familiar one, drawing on Gibson’s (Gibson, 1977) affordance theory, that Web technologies are developed and appropriated in particular ways that carry particular affordances-- constraints and opportunities for political engagement. Steve Schneider and I, as well as Pippa Norris, have also drawn on some strands of social mobilization theory to argue that the Web can be viewed as a type of online opportunity structure which mediates various forms of political action (Norris, 2001; Schneider & Foot, 2002) . An absence or low level of political actions via the Web can be viewed as an invitation to investigate the affordances of the Web structure for particular types of political action.

Answering this kind of question about online structure requires close examination of the Web production practices of political actors, (e.g. parties, campaigns, citizens, civic/advocacy groups and news organizations), over time, as these practices are manifested on the Web and described/represented by the actors themselves and experienced by users. Steve and I are developing a multi-method approach we call Web sphere analysis as a way of investigating the affordances of online structure (Foot & Schneider, 2002; Schneider, Harnett, & Foot, 2001). We define a Web sphere as an aggregate unit of analysis, boundable by time and object-orientation, and sensitive to developmental changes, within which social, political and cultural relations can be analyzed in a variety of ways. (For more on Web sphere analysis and other methods of studying socio-political Web phenomena, come to our panel “Online Structure for Communicative Action: Methods of Analysis” on Monday morning.)

Many questions could follow from the fundamental online structure question. I suggest two. The first is what factors predict the provision of online structure for political action/engagement? For example, in the context of elections in a representative democracy, one might ask what race conditions and candidate characteristics are correlated with the provision of advanced online structure for mobilization? (For some intriguing findings on that topic come to our panel on the Web in the 2002 U.S. Elections on Saturday afternoon.)

The second corollary question I propose is what, if anything, is shifting in the relations between political actors through the production of online structure on for political engagement on the Web? In other words, is anything different about the forms of interaction in which they engage online vs. offline? How? When? I suggest that as parties, campaigns, citizens and the press produce Web objects in relation to a political issue, event or process, they are engaging in a type of political interaction, whether diffuse/indirect or concentrated/direct. More specifically, the co-production of hyperlinks, Web texts, features, blogs and other types of sites can be conceptualized as a distinctly online form of political engagement and deserves systematic investigation (Foot & Schneider, 2002).

The pursuit of these questions regarding current practices in the production of online structure, and the factors and shifts in political relations that correspond with it, creates research paths that lead (closer) to the holy grail question of whether and how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be created and/or configured to enhance political engagement.

References

Barber, B. R. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barber, B. R. (1999). Three Scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy. Political Science Quarterly, 113(4), 573-589.

Dahl, R. A. (1989). Introduction. In Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Dahlberg, L. (2001). Democracy via cyberspace – mapping the rhetorics and practices of three prominent camps. New Media & Society, 3(2), 157-177.

Foot, K. A., & Schneider, S. M. (2002). Online Action in Campaign 2000: An Exploratory Analysis of the U.S. Political Web Sphere. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 46(2), 222-244.

Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (Eds.), Perceiving, acting and knowing: Toward an ecological psychology (pp. 67-82). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schier, S. E. (2000). By invitation only: The rise of exclusive politics in the United States. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Schneider, S. M., & Foot, K. A. (2002). Online Structure for Political Action: Exploring Presidential Web Sites from the 2000 American Election. Javnost (The Public), 9(2), 43-60.

Schneider, S. M., Harnett, B. H., & Foot, K. A. (2001, May 23-28). Catch and code: A method for mapping and analyzing complex web spheres. Paper presented at the International Communication Association, Washington, DC.