Setting A Research Agenda: The Internet and Political Talk

Jennifer Stromer-Galley
Assistant Professor
University at Albany, SUNY
Department of Communication
Social Science, 340
Albany, NY 12222
jstromer@albany.edu
phone: 518-442-4879
www.albany.edu/~jstromer

To be presented at the ICA preconference, “Electronic Networks and Democracy: Setting the Research Agenda,” San Diego, CA, 2003.

The Wide Web is ten years old, which seems an opportune moment to reflect on what we have yet to know about the role of the Internet in social, political, and economic life. Plato once reflected on the role writing technology would have on the individual and on the social environment. The Internet, by some estimates, enables a magnificent extension of writing technology, taking text to new dimensions; although, I’m not sure Plato would have been pleased.

One dimension of this extension is in political life. Political life, as an aspect of individual and social life, has many facets in a democratic system. Perhaps the most obvious facet is voting. Voting is an action with direct effect on government, and it is the one act tasked of citizens in the United States. The Internet may be used in the future for voting, but it may not revolutionize our voting habits (Stromer-Galley, (forthcoming, 2003)).

Other behaviors are important for a functioning democracy, such as being exposed to and seeking information so as to become better informed and more knowledgeable about the people and processes of government and politics (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). The World Wide Web coupled with email may facilitate information seeking and information dissemination, given the wide range of news and opinion sources available. The Internet may enrich the news media and information sharing environment, providing people a broad range of information and news about events (Norris, 2000). It remains to be seen, however, whether the quality of information online is high, whether people actively seek and use the information and news they learn online, and to what uses they put that information.

Participating in civic activities from volunteering in a community group to giving money or working on a political campaign are also important elements to a functioning democracy (Putnam, 2000; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). The jury is still out, however, on whether the Internet facilitates civic and political participation. Some scholars have argued that the Internet enables and can increase such participation (Hacker, 1996). Others have argued that there is little positive effect in this area (Margolis & Resnick, 2000). More case studies, surveys, and ethnographic analyses are needed on this question.

What’s left? Political talk. But, what is political talk? Denton and Woodward’s (1998) definition is useful in establishing some parameters. They define it as public discussion about the allocation of public resources, official authority, official sanctions, and social meaning. Thus, discussions concerning the allocation of resources, of justice and equity, and of the struggle against hegemonic social practices and social meaning are all “political.” The political part, then, seems fairly clear, but what about talk?

Many scholars in this area have adopted the phrase “political deliberation” to demarcate the behavior. Theorists and empiricists have argued that political deliberation is essential for a healthy democracy (Arendt, 1958; Dewey, 1946; Eliasoph, 1998; Fishkin, 1991, 1995; Gastil, 1992, 2000; Gastil & Dillard, 1999; Habermas, 1962/1989; Price & Cappella, 2002; Zaret, 2000). The deliberation scholarship has adopted the framework offered by Habermas (1984): a situation in which all those in the discussion are treated as equals, who leave their personal agenda and private interests out of the conversation, who are willing to change their opinion on an issue, and who will engage in the interaction until consensus is reached (Dahlberg, 2001). Elaborating on the notion of deliberation and its counterpart conversation, Schudson (1997) argues that the former entails a problem-solving model, the latter a sociable model. Political deliberation, he explains should be uncomfortable, public, and with a heterogeneous mix, gathered together to puzzle through a problem and come to some solution. “The justification of talk [is] in its practical relationship to the articulation of common ends” he explains (p. 300). In contrast, the sociability model suggests conversation for its own sake. Its purpose is for entertainment or for socializing with others. The substance of these conversation should not disrupt such sociability; such conversations should not be contentious or uncomfortable, because that would defeat the purpose.

Schudson’s distinctions have been adopted implicitly or explicitly in the political conversation research, with most scholarship focused on deliberation. The difficulty as I see it is that deliberation rarely happens, at least as defined by Schudson and Habermas. First, people tend to talk politics with people they know, and the people they know are likely to be similar to them in at least some ways. For example, Wyatt, Katz, and Kim (2000) surveyed people regarding their political conversation behaviors and found that conversation on political talk happened in a fairly intertwined manner with talk on other matters, such as sports or family, and occurred primarily in the home. The home is typically defined as the private sphere, where family members and friends co-mingle free from demands placed on them in the public sphere (Arendt, 1958; Gobetti, 1997; Weintraub, 1997). Criticizing Schudson’s (1997) distinction, Wyatt et al argued that sociable interaction is the closest people get to political deliberation. Indeed, the only time average people may be involved in the problem-solving model offered by Schudson is if they are lucky enough to be invited to participate in Fishkin’s (1991) deliberative polls.

Political deliberation as its typically conceived also does not account for the importance of political talk for its own sake. Arendt (1958) makes a compelling argument for the importance of praxis, political action that is an end in itself. Political theorists have focused primarily on the importance of political conversation as a means to an end, as a way for people to address problems and arrive at solutions through consensus. In this means-ends model, conversation is a vehicle towards some greater good. Arendt urges consideration of political conversation as an end in itself. In this vision, political conversation enables people to understand themselves better and their situation in the world. It fosters the bettering of the individual, which in turn makes him or her a better citizen in the society. Political conversation, then, is an important avenue for self-betterment, or virtue in Aristotle’s terminology. Political conversation in such a view has merit in itself.

But, what does political conversation and political deliberation have to do with a panel on the Internet and civic engagement? Quite a bit, I think. The Internet, since its inception, has been used a way for people to talk to each other (Hafner & Lyon, 1998). Email lists and bulletin board systems allowed not only friends and family members to talk to each other, but also professionals in the same field scattered around the country or people who shared a passion or hobby. With the diffusion of the Internet and the development of the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, Hypertext Markup Language, and the opening of the Internet for commercial use, the Internet became a household word. Email, both person-to-person and email lists, continues to be a heavily used feature, and according to a survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (2000), approximately five million U.S. residents reported participating in an online chat in 2000. Online chat can range from the old forum of Usenet to the new chat forums enabled through java clients and instant message programs.

The Internet facilitates talk, text-based interaction (interaction in Rafaeli’s (1988) definition of the term) with friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, and strangers, extending writing technology in the intriguing new directions I mentioned at the start. Some of this talk is, of course, focused on work, relationships, gossip, hobbies. But, some proportion of it falls within the domain of politics, touches on the allocation of public resources, official authority, official sanctions, social meaning, and political news and events. How much of Internet talk is political, we don’t know.

There are a number of things we don’t know about political talk online, and by political talk I mean both conversation and deliberation. My aim is not to offer one question that needs to be answered related to political talk online, but rather to identify the range of issues, from the descriptive to the theoretical, that still need our attention.

From a descriptive perspective, aside from a few attempts (Dahlberg, 2000; Schneider, 1997), we still do not fully know how much is unstructured, sociable political conversation and how much is the sort of interaction that Schudson (1997) and Habermas (1984) would identify as political deliberation. Indeed, we don’t really know what the environment of political talk looks like online. We have no index of the range and number of types of spaces for public, political discussion online. We don’t know how much political talk occurs in private channels, such as person-to-person email messages, and how much occurs in public channels, such as the political chat hosted by Yahoo. We do not know how and when political talk emerges within the range of discussion spaces. In other words, we do not know if or when, in a non-political discussion space such as a Usenet topic devoted to skiing, if or under what conditions political talk emerges. We do not have a sense of how public, political discussion spaces emerge, who initially populates them, and if and how the population of users changes over time.

We also don’t know if there are more or fewer spaces devoted to political discussion than there used to be. There is no account of the fluctuations in number of public spaces devoted to political talk and whether they have blossomed or shrunk as the Internet has grown increasingly commercial. So, we have no longitudinal measures of the changes in the political talk environment. Similarly, we have no comparative analysis across countries. We do not know if all countries share a similar range of kinds of discussion spaces, and we do not know if some countries are seeing a rise or fall in types of discussion spaces due to commercial, regulatory, or social factors.

We have yet to take a full account of who participates in public, political talk spaces online, although a few scholars have attempted to address this through content analysis and surveys (Bimber, 1999; Davis, 1999; Hill & Hughes, 1998). We do not have a full sense of whether the participants share similar characteristics or are different, although some have speculated that they are fairly homogenous (Sunstein, 2001), while others argue that they are heterogenous (Stromer-Galley, 2002a).

Such descriptive elements matter. They provide an understanding of the opportunities available for public, political conversation online. If the opportunities are limited, then even if people would have the motivation to participate in them, they are unlikely to encounter them accidentally or find them intentionally in order to participate. Whether people share similar characteristics or different characteristics matters, too, for it helps to determine if the political talk is likely to be deliberative or sociable (assuming these distinctions even matter).

In terms of the users’ experiences and perceptions, more work is needed to understand why people talk politics online and how they perceive the experience. Although a limited amount of work has been done in this area (Garramone, Harris, & Anderson, 1986; Garramone, Harris, & Pizante, 1986; Stromer-Galley, 2002b), more is needed. Understanding what motives draw people to use the Internet for political talk can provide richer understanding on whether the Internet actually has some positive effect on the political process. If few people are motivated or see value in using the Internet as a vehicle for political talk and political engagement, then the debate of whether the Internet contributes to political engagement may not be worth having. If people do see value and are drawn to use the Internet for political talk, then questions emerge about that experience. Is the experience different than offline political talk, and if so, in what ways? Are there differences in the experiences of those who participate in one public, political talk space versus another? Do the channel characteristics seem to matter to the satisfaction of the experience for users?

Probably the largest growing area of research on the Internet is on the question of direct effects (how the Internet affects relationships, community, the economy, for example). There is little, however, that we know about the social- and individual-level effects that occur when people talk politics online. We don’t even know if it matters if people talk politics in a sociable versus deliberative way (on- or off-line). Do people become more knowledgeable as they participate in online discussion spaces? Do people feel more trusting of other individuals, government officials, institutions after participating? Do they feel more empowered and engaged after participating? Are they more likely to vote because of the political conversation they experience. Experimental research has attempted to get at this (Price & Cappella, 2002), but research is needed of actual users in the “natural” environment of the Internet.

In terms of theory, more work is still needed to understand what political talk contributes to public opinion and the public sphere—the “so what” question. More theoretical consideration is needed into delineating whether the activity that people participate in online is political talk of the sociable sort of political deliberation. Once that is considered, does online deliberation affect people differently than political talk online? What about the offline political talk environment? How do they compare? More theoretical work is needed on the public and private spaces that are created online, and consideration should be given to the effects of public and private on thought and practice of individuals and, in turn, on society.

As I mentioned at the start, my guess is that Plato would not be happy with the advances of writing technology made possible through the Internet. Among other things, he was concerned that writing technology would distance the speaker from his or her audience, that there would be less interaction between them and a decrease in knowledge exchange and understanding. From the perspective of living and breathing thinkers today, however, there is much wonder about what effects the Internet will have on social and political relations. The Internet seems to close distance, and draw people together in new ways. Although some have concluded that the Internet will “normalize” and reflect the character and shape of political society offline (Margolis & Resnick, 2000), others are optimistic that the Internet might have some positive contribution, perhaps marginal but still positive influence, on political engagement. Like research on the effects of television on political engagement, we may never come to a resounding conclusion, but it’s worth trying.

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