Digital Politics in Western Democracies
Digital Politics in Western Democracies

Author: Cristian Vaccari

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1421411172

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A comparative analysis of political websites and their users from seven Western democracies. Digital politics is shorthand for how internet technologies have fueled the complex interactions between political actors and their constituents. Cristian Vaccari analyzes the presentation and consumption of online politics in seven advanced Western democracies—Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States—from 2006 to 2010. His study not only refutes claims that the web creates homogenized American-style politics and political interaction but also empirically reveals how a nation’s unique constraints and opportunities create digital responses. Digital Politics in Western Democracies is the first large-scale comparative treatment of both the supply and the demand sides of digital politics among different countries and national political actors. It is divided into four parts: theoretical challenges and research methodology; how parties and candidates structure their websites (supply); how citizens use the websites to access campaign information (demand); and how the research results tie back to inequalities, engagement, and competition in digital politics. Because a key aspect of any political system is how its actors and citizens communicate, this book will be invaluable for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in political communication, party competition, party organization, and the study of the contemporary media landscape writ large.

Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies
Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies

Author: Joel D. ABERBACH

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0674020049

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In uneasy partnership at the helm of the modern state stand elected party politicians and professional bureaucrats. This book is the first comprehensive comparison of these two powerful elites. In seven countries--the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands--researchers questioned 700 bureaucrats and 6OO politicians in an effort to understand how their aims, attitudes, and ambitions differ within cultural settings. One of the authors' most significant findings is that the worlds of these two elites overlap much more in the United States than in Europe. But throughout the West bureaucrats and politicians each wear special blinders and each have special virtues. In a well-ordered polity, the authors conclude, politicians articulate society's dreams and bureaucrats bring them gingerly to earth.

Outside the Bubble
Outside the Bubble

Author: Cristian Vaccari

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0190858508

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Much time has been spent over the past decade debating whether social media contribute to democracy. Drawing on an original study of internet users across nine Western democracies, Outside the Bubble offers an unprecedented look at the effects of social media on democratic participation. This book argues that social media do indeed increase political participation in both online and face-to-face activities--and that they expand political equality across Western democracies. In fact, Cristian Vaccari and Augusto Valeriani find that, for the most part, social media do not constitute echo chambers or filter bubbles as most users see a mixture of political content they agree and disagree with. Various political experiences on social media have positive implications for participation and active political involvement: social media allow citizens to encounter clearly identifiable political viewpoints, facilitate accidental exposure to political news, and enable political actors and ordinary citizens to reach voters with electoral messages designed to mobilize them. Moreover, political interactions occurring on social media do not only benefit citizens who are already involved, but boost participation across the board. This is because social media offer both additional participatory incentives to the already engaged and new political opportunities for the less engaged. By adopting a comparative approach, Vaccari and Valeriani also show that political institutions matter since some political experiences on social media are more strongly associated with participation in majoritarian systems and in party-centric systems. While social media may contribute to many societal problems, they can help address at least two important democratic ills: citizens' apathy towards politics, and inequalities between those who choose to exercise their voice and those who remain silent.

Digital, Political, Radical
Digital, Political, Radical

Author: Natalie Fenton

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-09-26

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1509511709

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Digital, Political, Radical is a siren call to the field of media and communications and the study of social and political movements. We must put the politics of transformation at the very heart of our analyses to meet the global challenges of gross inequality and ever-more impoverished democracies. Fenton makes an impassioned plea for re-invigorating critical research on digital media such that it can be explanatory, practical and normative. She dares us to be politically emboldened. She urges us to seek out an emancipatory politics that aims to deepen our democratic horizons. To ask: how can we do democracy better? What are the conditions required to live together well? Then, what is the role of the media and how can we reclaim media, power and politics for progressive ends? Journeying through a range of protest and political movements, Fenton debunks myths of digital media along the way and points us in the direction of newly emergent politics of the Left. Digital, Political, Radical contributes to political debate on contemporary (re)configurations of radical progressive politics through a consideration of how we experience (counter) politics in the digital age and how this may influence our being political.

Managing Democracy in the Digital Age
Managing Democracy in the Digital Age

Author: Julia Schwanholz

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-09-22

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783319617077

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In light of the increased utilization of information technologies, such as social media and the ‘Internet of Things,’ this book investigates how this digital transformation process creates new challenges and opportunities for political participation, political election campaigns and political regulation of the Internet. Within the context of Western democracies and China, the contributors analyze these challenges and opportunities from three perspectives: the regulatory state, the political use of social media, and through the lens of the public sphere. The first part of the book discusses key challenges for Internet regulation, such as data protection and censorship, while the second addresses the use of social media in political communication and political elections. In turn, the third and last part highlights various opportunities offered by digital media for online civic engagement and protest in the public sphere. Drawing on different academic fields, including political science, communication science, and journalism studies, the contributors raise a number of innovative research questions and provide fascinating theoretical and empirical insights into the topic of digital transformation.

Political Oppositions in Western Democracies
Political Oppositions in Western Democracies

Author: Robert A. Dahl

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1966-03-11

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 9780300094787

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The idea that the opposition has a right to organize and to appeal for votes against the government in elections and in parliament is one of the most important milestones in the development of democratic institutions. Mr. Dahl and nine collaborators analyze the role of the opposition in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. In introductory and concluding chapters, Dahl compares the patterns of opposition in these countries and makes predictions for the future. He carries forward on the basis of this evidence the theory of a pluralistic society he has explored in earlier books such as Who Governs? Mr. Dahl is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His collaborators are Samuel Barnes, Hans Daalder, Frederick Engelmann, Alfred Grosser, Otto Kirchheimer, Val R. Lorwin, Allen Potter, Stein Rokkan, and Nils Stjernquist. "This stately volume is distinguished by several unusual features. First, it straightforwardly focuses on a crucial issue of Comparative Politics without being vitiated by the familiar behaviorist semantics and jargon. Secondly, contrary to the ubiquitous trend in this country, flooded by discussion—more journalistic than scientific—on the emergent states, it centers on constitutional democracy in Western Europe, a region which for a decade and more had been badly neglected by the rampant computerizers. Thirdly, for the ten countries under discussion Professor Dahl was fortunate to enlist the services of genuine experts, the majority of whom are specialists in their field. . . . On the whole the volume is one of the major contributions to Comparative Politics that have appeared in this country for some time. The study of the issue as such as well as of the individual reviews is highly rewarding."—Karl Loewenstein, The Annals.

Democracy's Double-Edged Sword
Democracy's Double-Edged Sword

Author: Catie Snow Bailard

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2014-09-22

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1421415259

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"As digital media becomes more omnipresent in our lives, it becomes ever more important for political scientists and communication scholars to understand its influence on all aspects of the political process--from campaigning to governance. Catie Snow Bailard seeks to determine the Internet's influence on citizens' evaluations of their governments' performance, particularly whether the Internet influences their satisfaction regarding the quality of democratic practices available in their nation. While it is clearly important to understand how the Internet can streamline political organization once people are moved to action, the discipline has afforded less attention to whether the Internet influences citizens at this more foundational, antecedent stage of political action. Bailard originates two theories for democratization specialists to consider: mirror-holding and window-opening. Mirror-holding explores how accessing the Internet allows citizens to see a more detailed and nuanced view of their own government's performance, dirty laundry and all. Window-opening, on the other hand, enables those same citizens to see how other governments' perform in general, particularly in comparison to their own. The author offers a theory of the impact of Internet use on evaluations of government, as well as tests of that theory at the country and individual levels based on survey data collected in 73 countries and two field experiments conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tanzania"--

Political Advertising in Western Democracies
Political Advertising in Western Democracies

Author: Lynda Lee Kaid

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated

Published: 1994-12-14

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780803953529

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In recent years political campaigns in Western democracies have relied increasingly upon television advertising to promote candidates and//or political parties. Campaigns in North America were the first to channel political messages in this way and many European campaigns have been based on the United States models. This comparative analysis highlights the differences and the similarities of campaigns in Western democracies. The various campaign styles, their methods and approaches reflect the unique political and cultural traditions of each country. Written by renowned contributors, the chapters are based on the most recent campaigns in the countries represented.

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics
Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics

Author: Nanjala Nyabola

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 178699433X

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From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa. While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life. Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how 'fake news', a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola's ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.

The Digital Party
The Digital Party

Author: Paolo Gerbaudo

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)

Published: 2018-07-20

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780745335803

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From the Pirate Parties in Northern Europe to Podemos in Spain and the 5-Star Movement in Italy, from the movements behind Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, to Jean-Luc Melenchon's presidential bid in France, the last decade has witnessed the rise of a new blueprint for political organization: the digital party. These new political formations tap into the potential of social media to gain consensus, and use online participatory platforms to include the rank-and-file. Paolo Gerbaudo looks at the restructuring of political parties and campaigns in the time of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and big data. Drawing on interviews with key political leaders and digital organizers, he argues that the digital party is very different from the class-based "mass party" of the industrial era, and offers promising new solutions to social polarization and the failures of liberal democracy today.