(TheyWorkForYou.com is a website to get information about political representatives in the UK, while WriteToThem.com can be used to contact these representatives)

These reports are for you if you want to know:

• how popular the sites are: You get detailed usage stats dating back to the inception of the sites.
• who is using the site: We carried out a survey of users, comparing their demographic profile to that of the British (Internet) population.
• what the sites cost to build and maintain: There is a summary table, comparing the costs of the respective site to other mySociety projects.
• how the site came to be what they are: You find information on the history of the sites as well as some interesting stories around them.
• and much much more

Overall, these documents offer a comprehensive picture of two political websites that have hundreds of thousands of users every year. The official release post gives a good summary of the results, as do the executive summaries at the beginning of each report. What I wanted to share here briefly, is some background on the creation of these reports and my understanding of this research:

Several years ago, Tom Steinberg of mySociety asked me carry out an evaluation of the major mySociety sites. The aim was to create a framework with some key indicators that could be measured and compared across different websites of mySociety. At that time, it was not entirely clear what aspects such an evaluation should cover. We envisaged some value-for-money analysis, but what exactly was the “value” that the sites brought? We finally decided to focus on the people who use the site: Are these the usual political animals, or can the site engage people who are traditionally rarely involved in politics, such as people with a low income and/or without a degree from higher education. We carried out extensive surveys of users of these websites and compared their demographics with data from the British population. This reference data that was provided by our very own Oxford Internet Institute’s Oxford Internet Survey – Thank you very much!

But the reports are much more than that: They collect a vast variety of information about the sites, such as statistics on visitor numbers for the last years, popular content sections or the number of messages sent to MPs and other representatives (via WriteToThem), a history of the site, some interesting anecdotes as well as some background about the ecosystem in which these sites evolve. It has turned out that compiling this information has been a major task, as it entails collecting bits and pieces from various parts of the organisation. In the process we chose to apply a new web traffic analyser (Piwik), all in order to get consistent and comparable data from all the sites.

The reports are first of all important for mySociety itself, in order to create a better understanding of how the sites work and what users are looking for. Beyond this, these reports are intended for a wide range of audiences:

1. eDemocracy practitioners – to learn for their sites
2. researchers in online political participation – to get information on the performance of large-scale projects
3. journalists – as the reports show where the sites have made an impact in the political landscape
4. potential funders – to see what can be achieved

What I hope the research results show is that engaging citizens with the help of the Internet is neither simple nor impossible, and that there are few simple answers in relation to whether the Internet is good for democracy [my PhD focuses on this question in much more detail, using some of the data from this research]. In addition, I hope it encourages other projects in this area to open up their efforts to the same level of scrutiny. From my experiences, I know that it is often somewhat difficult for NGOs to engage in evaluation, for lack of money or time, and sometimes also for a lack of understanding of why this is useful. However, I firmly believe that it is crucial to do evaluation both to get some critical assessment of one’s own achievements – to help improve the site – as well as to give other initiatives in this space the chance to learn from the successes and failures of others.

In this regard, I hope the reports reach a wide audience. We very much encourage feedback, both on the results of the report as well as on the methodology applied. We decided to start with WriteToThem and TheyWorkForYou, but the plan is to publish more reports on sites such as FixMyStreet.com, WhatDoTheyKnow.com, PledgeBank.com etc.

Disclaimer: mySociety gave me money to do this research, and they provided data, help and advice throughout the process. However, at no point did they interfere with the results or question my interpretation of the findings.

In the latest issue of UK magazine Prospect, Georgetown University fellow Evgeny Morozov offers his critical take on what the Internet will do to democracy. Under the title “How dictators watch us on the web” he gives various examples in which digital technologies have not only failed to democratise states (by whatever measure) but rather to strengthen authoritarian regimes and indeed helped to actively harm those  striving for more civil liberties.

The list includes islamist bloggers in Lebanon, increased control through social networking in Belarus, hate crime YouTube videos in Mexico and racial agitation in Russia. Now few of this is novel – technologies are (neutral?) tools that can be used to do both good and bad. But having worked on Western-funded Internet Projects in the former Soviet Union, Morozov is an insider and in the light of various (often government supported) drives to promote “democracy” through blogging, Twitter etc,  his article acts as an important reminder of all the downsides of a technology that is indeed powerful but not inherently as democratic as many people want us to believe:

Yet while the internet may take the power away from an authoritarian (or any other) state or institution, that power is not necessarily transferred to pro-democracy groups. Instead it often flows to groups who, if anything, are nastier than the regime. Social media’s greatest assets—anonymity, “virality,” interconnectedness—are also its main weaknesses.

I particularly liked his argument about the existence of a new social contract that is being formed between authoritarian regimes and their citizens. Under this new deal citizens get access to as much entertainment as they want, be it pornographic or pirated or both, just as long as they accept their narrow political freedoms. A new form of golden cage so to speak:

Authoritarian governments know that the internet could be a new opium for the masses. They are tolerant of rampant internet piracy, as in China. In many cases, they push the cyber-hedonistic pursuits of their youth. Government-controlled internet providers in Belarus, for example, run dedicated servers full of pirated digital goodies for their clients to download for free. Under this new social contract, internet users are allowed plenty of autonomy online—just so long as they don’t venture into politics.

Overall, Morozov is not quite as pessimistic as it might sound. While he heavily criticises the current approach of many Western governments to promote democracy through technology he ends his article with a number of suggestions, one of which is to fund more bottom-up, entrepreneurial initiatives instead of overly bureaucratic NGO-style project funding – an idea that is for example currently piloted by mySociety and the Open Society Institute for Central and Eastern Europe.

There seems to be a chance to hear a first-hand account of this by Morozov himself on an event next week. More information here.

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!

There will be a specialised track focusing on Politics 2.0 and political publics online to which I will contribute some of the findings of my recent work on WriteToThem.com. Among the variety of activists presenting for example insights from the Obama campaign it will be my role to provide some empirical data from a large and successful eDemocracy project, serving as a reminder of the fact that the problems of political participation are not easily solved by technology.

Last year doctoral students of the OII went to the conference as part of our student trip to Berlin. This year again a delegation of the Oxford Internet Institute will be in Berlin as co-located with re:publica there will be the PrivacyOS conference of the European Privacy Open Space project that is promoted by the Oxford Internet Institute.

The Internet & Democracy workshop here in Oxford has been filled with very valuable presentations and discussions. Corinna di Gennaro, who was instrumental in setting this up, has a good summary on her blog.

I presented results from the recent evaluation of usage and users of WriteToThem.com, a website by mySociety that allows UK citizens to get in touch with their political representatives. This is part of my doctoral research into comparative political participation online and offline in both the UK and Germany. Here is a link to the presentation. The short summary is that the website suceeds in engaging people who would otherwise be inactive but it recruits those primarly from parts of the population that are traditionally more likely to participate politically (ie. higher education, higher income, etc).

Of course this is not the first workshop on this topic but it brings together a brilliant array of speakers who are distinguished in this field. Yesterday we already heard Matthew Hindman (Googlearchy, The Myth of Open Source Politics) but he is joined by

• Stephen Coleman (the UK authority on eDemocracy),
• Jay Blumler (a very established Communications scholar),
• John Horrigan (from the Pew Internet & American Life project),
• John Kelly (who is mapping different language blogospheres),
• Andrew Chadwick (who is heading the New Political Communication Unit over at Royal Holloway)
• Rachel Gibson (who has done a lot of empirical work on eDemocracy).

Of course I have not done justice to any of the other great minds sitting at this very table. So did the day start off with a very valuable look to the situation of Internet use (for civic activities) in Eastern Europe and more is to come so stay tuned.

The truly amazing finding is that people who use the site are not the ones who are already politically engaged and organized. Those are using the site too but many have never before contacted their representative and most are not politically active at all – so here we observe a clear effect of engagement as the site activates people to participate politically who have not done so before.

Another interesting finding is that many citizens make very positive experiences when using the site to contact their representatives. Given a general climate of distrust between represented and representatives many user comments indicate a profound surprise at the respect and help they receive from their politicians. Crucially we can observe that the online experiences do at times translate into political participation offline e.g. in the form of voting as the quote below nicely illustrates:

“Mr [name of representative] went above and beyond what I expected to get, I thought I would just be totally ignored, this experience has made me decide to definitely vote in the next elections”

However, of course it also works exactly the other way around which should be a clear sign of warning for many of those politicians who do rarely reply to their constituents (see for example the MP responsiveness league table) as this participant makes clear:

“What’s the point when your councillor doesn’t reply? He’s not getting my vote in the next election, nor from any of my nuclear and extended families and I’ll tell everyone at work about my lack of a reply as well. 23 of them live in his constituency.“

For more details see the presentation (pdf, 2.6MB).

The results are based on a user survey I set up on behalf of mySociety as part of a bigger project that aims to evaluate the impact of many of their by now well-known eDemocracy websites (e.g. TheyWorkForYou.com or FixMyStreet.com). There is much more to come so keep an eye on this space. Also, if there are certain questions of particular interest to you in relation to mySociety projects that you think could/should/might be answered by this research, do drop me a line or comment below!

The BBC has a strong track-record of encouraging user contributions via the “Have Your Say” section and she cited a number of occasions in which this traditional news organisation has relied heavily on videos, pictures and comments sent in from the general public, including the 7 July bombings and last year’s floodings. It is worthwhile noting that the BBC now has a hub for user generated content, staffed by an impressive 23 people that work there 24/7 to deal with 12,000 emails and 200 pictures send in by BBC viewers and listener on any average day.

It made me think that maybe the real future of citizen journalism does not lie with blogs etc but with its incorporation into the established media organisations. Now I have long argued that citizen journalism will not kill mainstream media as I see clearly a demand for both, the traditional, vetted, selected reporting as well as the whole array of news, commentary and discussion “from below”. I would not want to trade one for the other. At the same time I have been critical of the use of blogs etc by newspapers and TV stations as only giving yet another voice to those who we already hear loud and clear in the public sphere (see my discussion with the Guardian blogs editor).

But what made me think was that contributions by the public to established news organisations might be the most viable solution for both established media and citizen journalism to survive. For once it addresses several challenges that citizen journalism and user generated content in general face:

1. Instead of existing at the fringes on some obscure websites hardly any one ever visits mainstream media can give stories from citizen journalists the publicity they deserve.
2. Media organisations with their established routines for fact-checking can solve the credibility dilemma of user-generated content that acts as an obstacle for many to rely on this kind of news: By carefully vetting the information sent in it can relied upon by others.
3. Although as of yet the BBC is not paying their contributors I could certainly envisage a situation where citizen journalists are remunerated for stories that make it into the news (as a matter of fact they probably should be anyway) which would solve another problem of the Web 2.0 revolution: That only few can afford to contribute time (and sometimes money) in order to provide content. Also using the already existing structures means a lot less overhead for potential contributors (such as creating your own blog/news portal/whatever) and makes easier one-off contributions.

However, it is also beneficial for established news providers such as the BBC:

1. User-generated content gives them the opportunity to get quicker and better coverage, maybe even for less money although it is doubtful given the considerable resources necessary to deal with the wealth of contributions.
2. They can be closer to the people and their concerns instead of relying solely on market research to find out what their audience is interested in.
3. Eventually this could also lead to a more representative news coverage instead of a highly selective collection of stories focused mainly on “mainstream” issues although this will rely heavily on whether the population as a whole will have sufficient digital literacy in order to participate.

Summarising I could see a real potential there for the future of “old” and “new” journalism. However, this will only work if mainstream media will take user contributions seriously and not just as a fig leave for audience participation that ends in a black hole. Should they deal seriously with user generated content, then this would not be an incorporation or a buy-out of emancipatory journalism but instead could result in a more democratic mass media, thereby offering a remedy to many of the well-documented and much lamented problems of mass media that are what motivated citizen journalism in the first place.

While this is mainly a summary of the problems, in the coming weeks I will talk about some of my own attempts to find answers to this question. For some time now I have been busy working for mySociety to evaluate the usage of their main sites (such as WriteToThem.com and TheyWorkForYou.com) and I will be speaking about some initial findings from this work at the upcoming e-Democracy ’08 conference in London on 11 November and earlier at an academic conference in Germany. If you cannot make it to either of them stay tuned as there should be more information on this in the near future and I would love to get your views.

Last but not least the article in the E-Government Bulletin naturally does not carry any references but I owe some of my insights to these people below:

• Forss, K. (2005). Evaluating Public Participation in Policy Making. Paris, OECD.
• Macintosh, A. and S. Coleman (2007). eParticipation Research Direction based on barriers, challenges and needs, DEMO-Net Deliverable 12.3.
• Macintosh, A. and A. Whyte (2008). “Towards an Evaluation Framework for eParticipation.” Transforming Government: People, Process & Policy 2(1)

So what was it about? The focus of the course was to highlight ways in which digital technologies can be used in order for citizens to take part in the political process – both formally and informally. Given that the students had little background in the academic study of the Internet I started with highlighting the features arising from the shift towards a networked public sphere, the new activities it enables (e.g. citizen journalism) and possible problems associated with it (e.g. think cyberbalkanization).

Having laid the foundations in this way we would subsequently move on to discuss ways in which governments encourage participation via online means (e.g. online petitions and online consultations) as well as initiatives by non-governmental actors (e.g. mySociety or abgeordnetenwatch.de). Emphasis was laid on an empirical examination of those efforts and a comparative perspective mainly between the UK and Germany.

Judging from the discussions during the seminar I would argue we reached its aim as I stated it originally in the lecture list:

“At the end of this course you should have a good overview about the opportunities offered by the Internet to re-invigorate democracy and civil society as well as the current state of the art in digital democracy together with an understanding of current research that should enable you to critically evaluate claims about the promise of the Internet for a more participative democracy.”

The material is still being developed and having taught the seminar there are already a number of issues I plan on revising. Nevertheless I thought it might be a good idea to post the slides below as to give others some inspiration but mainly to get your comments.

Internet and Democracy – I Introduction

Internet and Democracy – II Networked Public Sphere

Internet and Democracy – III Networked Public Sphere

Internet and Democracy – IV eParticipation

Internet and Democracy – V eParticipation and eDemocracy

The seminar was greatly contributed to by a number of people that agreed to share their expertise with the class, in particular Oliver Märker of Zebralog and Markus Beckedahl of netzpolitik.org. Thank you very much!

PS: I use eParticipation to denote governmental efforts to utilise the Internet for increased political participation while I refer to eDemocracy as applications and initiatives that are built by non-governmental actors. This terminology is somewhat in contrast to other people’s usage of these terms. For one visualization of the different typologies see e-demokratie.org.