The story so far

The story itself is quickly told: Basically, an MP says “please remove my parliamentary e-mail address from your website as I only receive countless mass campaign emails from your site that prevent me from getting other stuff done such as answering real constituents’ queries“, and the response of the campaigning site is to accuse the MP of being unresponsive and unwilling to listen to the people, to urge its supporters to confront the MP and generally, to try to get as much publicity out of this as possible. The simple conclusion is:  It was not a very smart move by Dominic Raab (the MP) which provided the campaigning website with a golden opportunity to get some easy PR by bashing an apparently lazy MP, in particular as it was suggested that the amount of emails he was receiving averaged about two a day.

However, given this is an issue very much related to my PhD research, I do believe it illustrates a bigger paradox related to the role of the Internet for the constituent-representative relationship. That is, while I think that Dominic Raab had a right to complain, he was not right to actually do so. He had a right to complain as some features of the technology have put him in a difficult spot, and he was not right to actually do so as the technology would not allow him to control who is contacting him, even though it might help him in other ways. Let me explain

Did he have a right to complain? – YES

There can be little doubt that online communication has a great potential for making representatives more accessible to their constituents and for enabling them to receive more input on which to base their decisions. While access to the Internet remains an issue, emailing an MP is cheap and fast and there are now many websites that make it easy to find out the contact details of your MP or similar, even if you don’t know the name.

There is a flip-side of course and that is that sometimes sending these messages might be too easy. Now, mass-mailing campaigns are nothing new but with copy-and-paste it is considerably easier, cheaper and faster to send 5 emails than 5 postcards. This creates what American academic Bruce Bimber has called “the cheap-talk problem“.  While the capacity to talk, ie. send messages, expands vastly, the capacity to listen ie. deal with the messages, cannot keep up, despite a number of parliamentary initiatives such as the Communications Allowance. This general overload risks that there won’t be an adequate response to all constituents with queries. Worse, it might mean that only those will find help or an open ear who have the power of the masses behind them, even though it seems that currently that state of affairs is rather different in that mass emails have less chance of being picked up than what is perceived to be individual concerns. So writes Bimber that “members of Congress learned to recognize and discount centrally orchestrated communication” (Bimber, 2003: 108). Is this wrong? Well, while I would argue they should have any such issue on the radar, the amount of messages they receive is less a sign of the urgency of the issue than one of the class or success of mobilisation of the campaign.

There can also be no doubt that an MP has to deal with constituent concerns. As a matter of fact, most MPs in the UK, at least if they are backbenchers, do little else than being at the service of their constituents. By and large, the role seems to be accepted and if, for example, we look at some of the responsiveness statistics published  by the website WriteToThem.com, it seems that at least the majority of representatives does also actively pursue their constituency role and answer their constituents.

Still for the reason highlighted earlier, I believe Raab was right to complain. He was basically saying, I get a lot of stuff that I deal with but if I see this is just a rather simple copy-and-past campaign I delete it. So you might as well stop emailing me in the first place.

Was he right to complain? – NO

The paradox of the situation is that despite I believe in his right to complain, it was still wrong to actually do so. This is for two reasons. First of all, it allowed the campaigning website to bash him by using the familiar reflex of accusing the MP of not being up for what his constituents have to say. This is a simple message that works as it serves all the usual stereotypes about politicians (to which, admittedly, they themselves have contributed their fair share, the MP expense scandal being a case in point). The thing is that Raab (of whom I don’t know anything about apart from the few things I have read by now) seems to be a rather responsive MP as well as inclined to the Internet – he seems to rather regularly maintain a blog, can be contacted through his websites and has highlighted his responsiveness throughout the controversy. He was honest and regrettably, that was his problem: He should have continued to just delete the messages (as probably many others do) instead of openly complaining. That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two was that, in his quest for somehow controlling the communication that reaches him, he has started to demand withdrawal of his email address not just from the campaigning website – he even tries not to quote it anywhere, even suggesting people should phone his office to obtain the proper email address. This really seems like a fight against windmills as it really is impossible to hide your official email address if your are a Member of Parliament.

So Raab picked a fight he could not win: He was always bound to loose against public opinion (even if deliberately misled as I think was the case in this story) and for all his Internet affinity, he does not seem to have understood the technology completely. The smarter move would have been to make more effective use of email filtering or similar. In this way, the very technology that has created his problem could have helped him to cope with it.

References

• Bimber, Bruce A. 2003. Information and American democracy : technology in the evolution of political power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Read more about Max and his work.

In my doctoral research I look at the communication between constituents and their Members of Parliament. I was looking for a simple way to judge the relevance of the mail that MPs receive from their constituents. As I found, MPs tend to refer to their “postbag” in order to emphasize the importance of an issue as e.g. the Simon Hughes did in a recent debate on climate change (see video below):

So in order to judge how often that happens, I needed to have a look at Hansard, the written record of proceedings in parliament. Now the main online Hansard record at the UK Parliament website is rather difficult and does not provide a search functionality so I turned to TheyWorkForYou.com, one of mySociety’s projects that does not only provide detailed information on MPs but also offers a nicely formatted, searchable version of Hansard, now dating back to 1935 (!).

In this way it was a matter of seconds to find out how often MPs and Lords have mentioned their postbags in parliamentary proceedings since 1935 (it was 1,621 times). A multitude of options allow to filter your search accordingly so that now I know that the majority of these mentions were made during House of Commons debates (989) and that in the current parliament Conservative MP Mark Field leads the table (with 9 references to his postbags). Finally I could quickly produce a figure showing the development of references to their constituent mail:

btw the search is intelligent enough to look for the word “postbag” as well as similar words such as “postbags” or “post bag”

I cannot start to imagine how long it would have taken to produce this figure with the limited capabilities of the official Hansard and it would not have been possible at all at the time when all this data was really only a written record in the literal sense. Not saying that this particular piece of information is a world-changing discovery but it is a good example of how the availability of data in a structured and searchable format (!) can contribute to scholarship nevertheless. In this respect the various Open Data initiatives by governments offer a huge potential for social scientists with the appropriate statistical and computational skills to offer fresh insights. See for example the Guardian World Government Data Initiative that offers the datasets opened up by various different governments in a uniform format.

The Internet and the Representativeness of Political Participation

A comparison of citizen-initiated contacts with
Members of Parliament in Germany and the UK

This thesis explores the implications of the Internet for democracy, based on an understanding of democracy that emphasizes popular control and political equality of that control, re-evaluating the various claims and counter-claims that have been made for the Internet’s democratic potential. It does so by assessing whether the Internet gives a greater and more representative share of the population the opportunity to participate in the political process, thereby extending popular control and reducing political inequalities, focusing on one particular form of participation; citizen-initiated contacts with political representatives. This activity is examined over time in Germany and the UK, two stable liberal democracies with similar levels of Internet penetration and political participation but different political systems, institutions and cultures.

The research is based on analysis of survey evidence of political participation from the 1980s and today; new data collected through user surveys from two large-scale eParticipation projects that allow citizens to contact their MPs online in the UK and Germany (WriteToThem.com and Abgeordnetenwatch.de); and new surveys of and interviews with MPs and their staff to examine the practice and culture of communication between representatives and the represented.

The study assesses the Internet’s impact for political equality by measuring the degree to which those who participate online are descriptively representative of the population along politically relevant characteristics such as income, education and gender. It compares their representativeness across the two countries; with ‘offline’ participation today; and in historical perspective with participation in the pre-Internet era. If this study finds differences between the two countries then this design will allow to identify factors that shape these patterns. Should there be little differences in the findings between Germany and the UK then this would suggest that the observed effects may be sustained across parliamentary and federal systems and proportional and plurality electoral systems.

While the findings have a particular relevance to the activity of contacting, they will also allow to re-assess various claims made for the democratic potential of the Internet in the light of empirical evidence and could have important implications for the design of future online initiatives by identifying factors that can determine their success or failure.

In addition, a chapter outline is also available. Comments and suggestions are very welcome!

While last year’s trip brought some of us to Berlin, this time we stayed closer to home and made a day trip to Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes. Bletchley Park was at the heart of Britain’s successful efforts to break the ciphers used by the Germans to encode their military messages which mainly involved the Engima machine.

For people like us who are studying the various social dynamics around information technologies the destination was apt for a number of reason: First and foremost, the history of Bletchley Park provides a very tangible illustration of the crucial role of information and communication technology. What is more, it was the birthplace of the first computer and the workplace of such great (and tragic!) minds as Alan Turing. Today it also houses the National Museum of Computing which features a vast array of computing technology throughout the decades with insightful commentary by the most dedicated enthusiasts who keep this museum alive. There is also a somehow indirect connection between Bletchley Park and the OII, given that a couple of us (including me) have been beneficiaries of the PGP scholarship, a company that makes its money by providing encryption technology for everybody.

All together we did have a great day out and we do hope to make this a regular event which might even involve having someone paying for our lunch (hint hint)! 

It is no minor feature of this programme that it actually lasts for a full two weeks because this really enables people to start engaging with each other beyond the initial difficulties of interdisciplinary research. Even if we are still trying to get to grips with how to exactly define Web Science and how our work might (or should?) fit in this concept, it seems to me that this programme was a rare occassion in which Computer Scientists and non-technical scholars were really starting to learn something from each other.

Key themes during the course of this two weeks have been how to ensure privacy, what to do about copyright and privacy, how to research (and predict) web-based social behaviour on a large scale, how to build and make sense of a semantic web and over and over again, how a Web Science that is inclusive of all many academic disciplines could look like. Of course these are mostly open questions but amongst the things we’ve learned are (ranging from the serious to the slightly more humorous):

• Using IRC as a back channel during presentations works very well and also produces some highly enjoyable unintended consequences. The blog did not work so well for some reason – maybe because this year saw less avid bloggers take part in the SDP than last year. The wiki kind of worked.
• It takes some time but if you put Computer Science people together with Social Scientist and Humanities scholars they will talk to each other eventually and maybe even understand what they are saying.
• Porn on the Internet is a worthwhile subject of study, even for academic purposes.
• While a dingo has nothing to do whatsoever with Internet research it is a very useful way of keeping the attention of your audience focused during your presentation.
• At the end of the programme for most participants Web Science remains as elusive a concept as before we came to Oxford. It has however generated many interesting discussions and provides a great opportunity for ongoing student exchanges.
• Sonny has recorded a number of other memorable takeaways from the programme.

A big thanks to the OII’s Director of Graduate Studies Vicki Nash who has made it all happen as well as all the other people from the OII (and beyond) that helped to pull off this event. Good job!

PS: If you are a doctoral student working on roughly Internet related questions (mainly but not exclusively on social implications) you might be interested to know that next year the SDP will take place in Brisbane, Australia. So watch the SDP section of the OII website to keep abreast with all developments so that you can get in your applications nice and early!

However, the major asset are of course its students and there is a really fine group of 30 people assembled here in Oxford. Every student has to present his or her work and there is a long feedback session after each presentation. It has been very good so far and crucially it has forced me to synthesize a lot of my thoughts on my topic that has recently shifted considerably. In tune with many of my other activities I am now mainly focusing on political participation on the Web and the presentation gives an overview about my current approach. Feedback welcome!

Hao Zhang researches into blogs as platforms for political debate in China, Chih-Jung Fan analyses the policy regarding the switch-over to digital terrestrial television in Taiwan and Jin Shang analyses the development strategy of China’s and in particular Beijing’s digital economy. Very much as we had hoped, the seminar sparked discussions that were not only useful to guide our colleagues in their future research but that also helped the whole group to reflect on how we approach our subject in terms of methods, discipline and framework.

We have organised a few PhD seminars in the past and hope to do so more often in the next academic year. The idea is to invite students from other universities in order to hear about their work, learn about different disciplinary approaches and to further links with our peers. This particular research seminar came out of my ties to Leicester, having done my MA in Globalization & Communications there in 2003/04. The Department of Media and Communication (which used to be called Centre for Mass Communication Research) has been doing a lot of pioneering work in the area of New Media and given that Media and Communication Studies are not represented in Oxford we are naturally keen to further our exchange.

Anna Barford talked a bit about her recent work with Worldmapper which aims to represent the world map as you’ve never seen it as each country is grown or shrunk to its relative size according to some measure, in this example for example Internet users. As you can see, Africa basically does not exist on this map of the world…

Christian Castle just finished his PhD developing an agent-based simulation of how pedestrians move in the currently built King’s Cross tube station(s) in order to find out how people could be evacuated quickly in case of an emergency.

Cory Knobel was my esteemed co-chair on the student volunteer program for the conference and he should get a price simply for having the most creative titles: Apart from having a website called “Scholar Warrior” he talked about “Cyberinfrastructure and OEP Choreography”. It is hard stuff but basically he tries to find ways to help researchers from different disciplines overcome their problems in communicating and collaborating with each other due to their different backgrounds and understandings. For everybody having been working on an interdisciplinary project, this is a big issue and it is important for e-Social Science as a lot of it actually requires co-operation across various disciplines.

For the first time in my life I also had to prepare a poster which is available for download and summarizes the current state of my research in a hopefully aesthetically pleasing way. I should add my thanks to the National Science Foundation for actually paying the whole trip!

So, now the crucial question: What is e-Social Science? The answer is: depends on you, really. Even at this conference there were several different definitions. For some it is basically to apply ever more powerful technology to crunch problems, following on from e-Science. Therefore it is no wonder that in the US e-Social Science is called cyberinfrastructure. For others it is more a new way of doing social science, maybe by using new tools or by looking at novel sources of data. I certainly belong to the latter camp. Obviously the borders can be fluent but the main distinction is whether you get excited if people talk about tera and petaflop computers or whether you ask yourself what to do with ever more computing power if you do not even know how to put together some sound research that helps explain a little bit about the Internet/information/network society.

I have been thinking of a way to test whether the blogosphere really does constitute a counter public. I have developed a tool that compares the media agenda – that is a ranking of stories reported within 24 hours – to the blogging agenda and measures the overlap between the two. The main objective is to find out whether bloggers are applying different criteria to rank the importance (salience) of a news story than traditional journalists.

My paper describes it in more detail but basically I construct the agenda from the stories on Google News, extract the key words for each story with the Yahoo Term Extractor and search with the help of Google Blog Search how many posts cover this story. You can have a look at the data on this website but you will realise that data collection stopped some time ago.

In due course there will be an update of the tool along with the paper that will improve the data reliability but for now I very much welcome your feedback on it!