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Colloquium "Internet and the new forms of political participation" in Lille on March 28-29, 2019

Published on 09 January 2019
Update on 26 September 2022
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Summary

This colloquium, organized by the ANR APPEL project (ANR-14-CE29-0010) in Lille on March 28-29, 2019, aims to bring together empirically grounded work that, using new data and/or new methods, reinterrogates this now traditional question of the effects of new technologies on political participation.

  • "Studies on political participation have long highlighted a profound difference between the small number of people who participate a lot and the vast majority of citizens who participate in very few political activities, and not always according to considerations that are themselves "political. The lowering of participation costs, made possible by the Internet, would have favored the inclusion of new participants, notably from social groups that were previously kept away from the "instituted and temporally circumscribed forms of participation" by their own structural constraints.
  • Online activism would thus be added to offline activism according to articulations that are still partly to be questioned. "For some, it would open up new logics of engagement, the logics of "connected" action, different from the traditional logics of collective action, which would translate, as for offline activism, into sub-models of e-participation, refracting a plurality of relationships to politics, from the most distant to the most active. It would thus result in the emergence of new modes of action, or even new repertoires of action.
  • For others, "there would rather be forms of hybridization between online and offline activism. In particular, it could contribute to the revitalization of a set of old political practices, by opening them up to new actors and new themes. It could also allow for the subversion of some of the traditional limits of collective action. Above all, it would result in forms of hybridization between offline and online engagement, varying according to the modes of action and the individuals.
  • "These new actors, involved in new forms of action, would also come to say politics differently. Internet and social media would indeed be the theater of new forms of political enunciation, more personal, more "expressive", more creative, associated with own figures and formats. Whether in the old garb of petitioning, or via new platforms such as YouTube, new ways of speaking politically and engaging politically would be invented.
  • "Finally, these forms of political participation, new as much by their authors as by their modes and contents, would be supposed, according to some, to benefit from a new impact as well.
The conclusions of this work remain contested.
  • "To the cyberenthusiasts of the Western democracies and to the supporters of the "mobilization" thesis, are opposed either the supporters of the "normalization" thesis, according to which, for the most part, the Internet would not change anything to the political participation, or those of the "substitution" thesis who argue that the new technologies could nourish the "clicktivism" (or "slacktivism" : soft" or "lazy" activism), of individuals whose unconventional political activity/activism would only be conceived and expressed through the internet (online petitions, Facebook groups, etc.), as they would have given up crossing the threshold of the political spectrum.) as they would have renounced to take the step of offline activism for which they would not want to bear the costs and risks (travel, public exposure, police repression, etc.)".
  • "Thus, there is an increasing number of studies that, by focusing on different countries, media and modes of action, and using different methodological devices, conclude that, for the most part, it is citizens who are already active offline that are involved in online activities, so that the Internet offers new opportunities to them rather than leading to the mobilization of previously passive citizens.
  • "Some even argue that "the Internet would add to the 'social divide' a 'digital divide', not only for technical reasons, but also and especially for cognitive reasons. The Internet would exacerbate the differences in activity between citizens insofar as only the most educated and the most interested in politics would benefit from the new technological opportunities.
  • "Still others question "the novelty of the repertoires of action, by putting forward, on the one hand, the filiations with the old contents and, on the other hand, the weakly deliberative character of the exchanges linked to these new modes of action which hold more of "flame wars" than of the Habermasian space".
  • "Beyond questioning the impact of new media in the recent mobilization movements in the "Arab world", we question their effectiveness by comparing it to that of "traditional" modes of action or by underlining more globally the incapacity of these modes of action to obtain in the "real" world the hoped-for results".
The conclusions of these various studies remain contradictory.
  • "When some point to Facebook's politicizing role, others demonstrate its role as "entertainment" for politics".
  • "While some point out that the Internet would not have allowed a rebalancing of political participation between men and women, others highlight an equalizing effect".
  • "Part of the difficulty in reaching a conclusion may be that proven methods for studying offline political participation are being used to analyze what it is like to participate online.
  • "Conversely, one could assume that the emergence, multiplication and diversification of forms of "political" participation online (Facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, discussion forums, site comments, online petition sites, more institutional platforms,...), as well as the opportunities opened to researchers by the possibility of accessing new massive data, could allow us to ask these traditional questions anew, based on novel data and from methodological devices that are themselves innovative."
It is precisely around this "bet" that this conference is conceived.

"It aims to bring together empirically grounded work that, using new data and/or new methods, reinterrogates this now traditional question of the effects of new technologies on political participation, posing it from the different angles that may have been addressed:
  • that of the participants, with in particular the question of the articulation between the "social divide in political participation" ("participatory divide") and the "digital divide
  • modes of action, including the question of the articulation between online and offline modes of action
  • that of the contents, with in particular the question of the renewal or not of the forms of enunciation of the political
  • or even, that of the impacts, with in particular the question of the forms of impact and the articulation with the impact of the other forms of political participation".

    • Référence :

Sources

Colloquium "Internet and the new forms of political participation" in Lille on March 28-29, 2019

This colloquium, organized by the ANR APPEL project (ANR-14-CE29-0010) in Lille on March 28-29, 2019, aims to bring together empirically grounded work that, using new data and/or new methods, reinterrogates this now traditional question of the effects of new technologies on political participation.

  • "Studies on political participation have long highlighted a profound difference between the small number of people who participate a lot and the vast majority of citizens who participate in very few political activities, and not always according to considerations that are themselves "political. The lowering of participation costs, made possible by the Internet, would have favored the inclusion of new participants, notably from social groups that were previously kept away from the "instituted and temporally circumscribed forms of participation" by their own structural constraints.
  • Online activism would thus be added to offline activism according to articulations that are still partly to be questioned. "For some, it would open up new logics of engagement, the logics of "connected" action, different from the traditional logics of collective action, which would translate, as for offline activism, into sub-models of e-participation, refracting a plurality of relationships to politics, from the most distant to the most active. It would thus result in the emergence of new modes of action, or even new repertoires of action.
  • For others, "there would rather be forms of hybridization between online and offline activism. In particular, it could contribute to the revitalization of a set of old political practices, by opening them up to new actors and new themes. It could also allow for the subversion of some of the traditional limits of collective action. Above all, it would result in forms of hybridization between offline and online engagement, varying according to the modes of action and the individuals.
  • "These new actors, involved in new forms of action, would also come to say politics differently. Internet and social media would indeed be the theater of new forms of political enunciation, more personal, more "expressive", more creative, associated with own figures and formats. Whether in the old garb of petitioning, or via new platforms such as YouTube, new ways of speaking politically and engaging politically would be invented.
  • "Finally, these forms of political participation, new as much by their authors as by their modes and contents, would be supposed, according to some, to benefit from a new impact as well.
The conclusions of this work remain contested.
  • "To the cyberenthusiasts of the Western democracies and to the supporters of the "mobilization" thesis, are opposed either the supporters of the "normalization" thesis, according to which, for the most part, the Internet would not change anything to the political participation, or those of the "substitution" thesis who argue that the new technologies could nourish the "clicktivism" (or "slacktivism" : soft" or "lazy" activism), of individuals whose unconventional political activity/activism would only be conceived and expressed through the internet (online petitions, Facebook groups, etc.), as they would have given up crossing the threshold of the political spectrum.) as they would have renounced to take the step of offline activism for which they would not want to bear the costs and risks (travel, public exposure, police repression, etc.)".
  • "Thus, there is an increasing number of studies that, by focusing on different countries, media and modes of action, and using different methodological devices, conclude that, for the most part, it is citizens who are already active offline that are involved in online activities, so that the Internet offers new opportunities to them rather than leading to the mobilization of previously passive citizens.
  • "Some even argue that "the Internet would add to the 'social divide' a 'digital divide', not only for technical reasons, but also and especially for cognitive reasons. The Internet would exacerbate the differences in activity between citizens insofar as only the most educated and the most interested in politics would benefit from the new technological opportunities.
  • "Still others question "the novelty of the repertoires of action, by putting forward, on the one hand, the filiations with the old contents and, on the other hand, the weakly deliberative character of the exchanges linked to these new modes of action which hold more of "flame wars" than of the Habermasian space".
  • "Beyond questioning the impact of new media in the recent mobilization movements in the "Arab world", we question their effectiveness by comparing it to that of "traditional" modes of action or by underlining more globally the incapacity of these modes of action to obtain in the "real" world the hoped-for results".
The conclusions of these various studies remain contradictory.
  • "When some point to Facebook's politicizing role, others demonstrate its role as "entertainment" for politics".
  • "While some point out that the Internet would not have allowed a rebalancing of political participation between men and women, others highlight an equalizing effect".
  • "Part of the difficulty in reaching a conclusion may be that proven methods for studying offline political participation are being used to analyze what it is like to participate online.
  • "Conversely, one could assume that the emergence, multiplication and diversification of forms of "political" participation online (Facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, discussion forums, site comments, online petition sites, more institutional platforms,...), as well as the opportunities opened to researchers by the possibility of accessing new massive data, could allow us to ask these traditional questions anew, based on novel data and from methodological devices that are themselves innovative."
It is precisely around this "bet" that this conference is conceived.

"It aims to bring together empirically grounded work that, using new data and/or new methods, reinterrogates this now traditional question of the effects of new technologies on political participation, posing it from the different angles that may have been addressed:
  • that of the participants, with in particular the question of the articulation between the "social divide in political participation" ("participatory divide") and the "digital divide
  • modes of action, including the question of the articulation between online and offline modes of action
  • that of the contents, with in particular the question of the renewal or not of the forms of enunciation of the political
  • or even, that of the impacts, with in particular the question of the forms of impact and the articulation with the impact of the other forms of political participation".

    • Référence :

Sources

Labo Société Numérique

Labo République Française Agence nationale de cohésion des territoires
Colloquium "Internet and the new forms of political participation" in Lille on March 28-29, 2019