Is Digitally Networked Participation a Form of Political
Participation?
Yannis Theocharis
∗
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
University of Mannheim
Abstract
The conceptualisation and measurement of political participation has been an issue vibrantly debated for more than 50 years. Recent social and technological advances, and more specifically the
expansion of opportunities for participation and the rise of the internet, have come to add important
parameters to the debate, seemingly complicating matters further. The present paper argues that digitally networked participation - and its manifestations - is a form of political participation and should
be conceptualised, and measured as one. Relying on the conceptual map of participation proposed
by van Deth (2014), it shows how various common manifestations of digitally networked participation conform to minimalist, targeted and motivational definitions. Tackling common misconceptions
about the value of such acts, the paper argues that non-political forms of digitally networked participation often evolve to become specimens of political pressure that can occasionally be far more
impactful than forms of participation commonly accepted as political. The paper concludes by recommending the systematic development of measures for digitally networked participation and its
formal integration in the study of participation through large-scale comparative surveys.
What happens on Twitter, stays on Twitter. . . or not?1
On August 9 2014, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot down Michael Brown, an unarmed black
man. Four days after the shooting more than six million tweets have been sent about Ferguson. For
many people, coverage of the resulting protest and civil unrest among black communities in the area
begun only four days after the incident, when people started tweeting and retweeting pictures of heavily armored vehicles and policemen along with angry statements about racism and the militarisation of
∗
Paper prepared for delivery to the Conceptualizing Political Participation Conference, September 2014, Mannheim, Germany. Please address any correspondence to: [email protected]
1
The title of this section is inspired by Zeynep Tufekci’s insightful blog post What happens on #Ferguson affects Ferguson:
Net Neutrality, Algorithmic Filtering and Ferguson.
1
Figure 1: Brandon Friedman’s tweet about the militarization of US police departments and an example
of the personalization of the symbol “Hands up, Don’t Shoot”
US police departments. On Twitter, various thematic hashtags emerged during the protests. #ifTheyGunnedMeDown, referred to the portrayal of young minorities by mainstream media, and #Dontshoot
was devoted to excessive police force against peaceful protests. Tweets such as that of the war veteran
Brandon Friedman, declaring that policemen in Ferguson were more heavily armed than when he was
invading Iraq, and the virally personalised symbol “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” (Figure 1), were shared by
tens of thousands on Twitter and Facebook.
Isolated violent incidents such as this one rarely make national news. Yet, the events in Ferguson
gained international attention and shaped US public opinion largely due to documentation, images,
live-feeds and real-time content distributed by digital media (Tufekci, 2014). They were picked up
quickly by mainstream media bringing the issues of race relations and the militarization of US police
to the forefront of domestic and international news (Der Spiegel, 2014). Experts argue that reactions
on social media had a political impact and attribute the return of race relations to the top of the agenda
in Ferguson (CBS News, 2014) and the stripping of local police of their law-enforcement authority after
four days of clashes, to the digital media coverage of the incident (New York Times, 2014). Yet, are
the acts of “liking” a Facebook post, or gathering one’s friends, taking a photo with raised hands, and
sharing it with one’s network through Twitter’s #Dontshoot stream forms of political participation? If
not, what properties are missing, making them ineligible for consideration alongside demonstrations,
boycotts or buycotts?
Although initial debates about the political use of digital media saw them mainly as tools for activist
network building and coordination (Juris, 2005), recent events and in-depth studies show that their
(political) user base has expanded. Research by Rainie and colleagues (Rainie et al., 2012b), for
example, shows that 66 per cent of American social media users (or 40 per cent of the American
population) have carried out civic or political activities using social media. Insightful studies by Howard
and colleagues have also shown that digital media are important political tools for a significant amount
2
of people in Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East (Howard and
Hussain, 2013). In Europe, where a decline of political engagement through traditional electoral
avenues has been extensively discussed (Fieldhouse et al., 2007; Henn et al., 2005), social media have
become means of political expression and participation for previously politically uninvolved citizens in
Spain, Greece, Norway, the Netherlands and elsewhere (Anduiza et al., 2014; Mercea et al., 2013).
Digitally networked acts are the latest addition to an expanding repertoire of opportunities through
which citizens can engage with politics. There is, however, disagreement as to whether such acts
constitute a form of political participation (Gladwell, 2010; Zuckerman, 2014). Depending on the
concept of participation employed, for some scholars these acts may simply be creative expressions
that have nothing to do with politics, while for others the online equivalents of offline political acts
– and thus legitimate forms of political participation. Still, for others, these acts may be an entirely
new way of participating in politics that has no offline equivalent and needs to be conceptualised
and measured as such to enable us to capture a new type of “engaged” citizenship (Bennett, 2012;
Dalton, 2008a). The consequences of not arriving into a common conceptualisation for these forms of
participation are thus important because, as this type of engagement becomes more common among
citizens, scholars who accept a more inclusive concept will tend to see more participation than those
who only accept a narrow one. As the notion of political participation is at the centre of the concept
of democracy (Pateman, 1970), different conceptions of participation will lead to different predictions
about its future.
This contribution argues that digitally networked participation - and its manifestations - is a form
of political engagement and should be conceptualised and measured as one. In what follows I offer an
overview of the concept of political participation and the main dilemmas that its expansion has posed
for political scientists. I then provide a definition of digitally networked participation and, relying on
the conceptual map proposed by van Deth (van Deth, 2014), show how various common manifestations
of digitally networked participation conform to minimalist, targeted and motivational definitions.
Political participation: Conceptual approaches and dilemmas
A brief overview of the concept’s development
In one of the earliest works in the field, Milbrath wrote that “the first task is to find a way to think about
political participation. Participation must be defined; variables relating to it must be specified; and the
subject must be bounded so that it is kept to manageable size” (Milbrath, 1965, p.5), emphasis added).
Milbrath set a narrow conceptual boundary offering a hierarchy of political involvement based on costs,
and focused exclusively on the electoral arena. Subsequently, participation was defined by Verba and
Nie (Verba and Nie, 1972, p.2) as “those activities by private citizens that are more or less directly
aimed at influencing the selection of governmental personnel and/or they actions they take”. Verba
and Nie did not only provide a working definition but also took steps towards empirically assessing
3
and binding the subject; they organised participation into four broad modes (voting, campaign activity,
cooperative activity and citizen-initiated contacts) and subsequently specified their empirical measures
by breaking them down into a set of thirteen specific political activities. Their approach expanded
previous conceptual and empirical boundaries by considering “alternative” forms of participation (such
as activities involving groups, or organisational activity by citizens) that stretched beyond the context
of electoral politics (Verba and Nie, 1972, p.47). Seven years later, Kaase and Marsh (Kaase and Marsh,
1979) went on to add at least seven new “unconventional” modes of participation (such as attending
lawful demonstrations and joining boycotts).
Although the repertoire of political participation acts included in large cross-national surveys has
not changed much since then, the definition of political participation did evolve in subsequent works.
Macedo and colleagues (Macedo et al., 2005), for example, noted that the boundaries between political and civic participation are blurred, allowing the concept of participation to expanded to civic
activities. This is reflected in Norris’s definition according to which we can consider as participation
“any dimensions of social activity that are either designed directly to influence government agencies
and the policy process, or indirectly to impact civil society, or which attempt to alter systematic patterns
of social behaviour” (Norris, 2002, p.16).
This brief tour through the evolution of political participation shows that the attempt to bind the
concept and keep it in a manageable size is a formidable task. It becomes especially challenging when
the meaning of citizenship is itself shifting and, with it, the arenas for political engagement and the
means by which citizens engage into politics. Since the late 1970s scholars have shown that there has
been a process of change in the political culture of liberal democracies (Cain et al., 2003; Inglehart,
2007). Modernisation changes have contributed to the transformation from a more traditional, “dutiful” model of citizenship that sees voting as the epitome of participation in the democratic process,
to a more “engaged” one that is based on expanding means of political participation through lifestyle
choices, self-expression values and non-institutionalised actions (Dalton, 2008a). Participation is now
aimed at diverse, moving targets, ranging from governments and parties to corporations, banks and
brands. In Bennett’s words, today’s mobilisations:
. . . often include a multitude of issues brought into the same protests through a widely
shared late modern ethos of diversity and inclusiveness. The identity politics of the “new
social movements” that arose after the 1960s centered on group identity [. . . ] or cause
issues [. . . ] still exist, of course, but they have been joined by more heterogeneous mobilizations in which diverse causes such as economic justice [. . . ], environmental protection,
and war and peace are directed at moving targets from local to national and transnational
an from government to business. The more diverse the mobilization, the more personalized the expressions often become, typically involving communication technologies that
allow individuals to active their loosely tied social networks. There are still plenty of conventional politics based on identification with parties, ideologies, and common causes.
However, the rise of a more personalized politics has become a notable trend (Bennett,
2012, p.21).
Bennett’s last three sentences convey precisely the challenge that the expansion of political participa4
tion poses for political participation scholars: binding the concept of political participation.
Binding the concept of political participation
Binding political participation as a concept is crucial for efficiently identifying, systematically measuring, and understanding the democratic consequences of political participation (or of its absence).
But how can we bind a concept - let alone keep it in a “manageable size” - that depends on personal
identity, and individual self-expression, thus expanding into every aspect of social life (Norris, 2002)2 ?
If we go down that road then we are not far from accepting that political participation has endless
permutations, adopting what van Deth (van Deth, 2001) perceptively called a “theory of everything”.
In light of this challenge two paths are presented to the political scientist interested in studying the
expansion of forms of participation, and more specifically digitally networked participation. The first
path is to sacrifice conceptual clarity and let the concept evolve, gratifying ourselves with general allembracing definitions and using measures that are hardly ever comparable with those used by others.
The second path is to attempt to bind the concept by providing systematic criteria that will allow to
“recognize a mode of participation if you see one” (van Deth, 2014, p.5) and, subsequently, to establish
valid measures for assessing its pervasiveness.
The first path is unhelpful for two reasons:
• First because it promotes the unsystematic study of the new ways in which citizens express themselves politically and feel politically efficacious, and helps conceal potential empirical variation.
For example, although forms of digitally networked participation are included in individual case
studies, the aspects of participation examined vary wildly as they are obviously aimed at capturing diverse research interests and aspects of engagement. The lack of agreement on specific
survey items has led to arbitrary measures and inconsistent question wording that complicate
cross-national comparisons and strengthen the uncertainty that what is being observed can be
used for conclusions of more general validity.
• Second, because it implicitly suggests to continue measuring participation only in a way that for
many citizens is becoming obsolete, and prevents us from capturing what is potentially a new
way of exercising citizenship.
In light of these issues, the second path seems to be the way forward. Yet, despite the widespread
recognition that participation has expanded, and that old definitions may need updating (Fox, 2013),
2
Scholars have started to conceptualise and measure creative forms of engagement (Stolle et al., 2005) and expand our
understanding about their value for democracy (van Deth, 2011). Some forms of creative participation, such as political consumerism, have received elaborate and stimulating theoretical, and comparative empirical treatment (Stolle et al., 2005; Stolle
and Hooghe, 2004) and have even been included in cross-national surveys such as the European Social Survey (ESS). This
has enabled cross-national comparisons that led to the crucial realisation that, especially young, citizens in advanced Western
democracies may not be abandoning politics - as initially assumed - but rather that their model of citizenship and preferred
forms of participation are in transformation (Cain et al., 2003; Dalton, 2008b). The same, however, is not true for digitally
networked forms of participation which, save the large number of case studies, have not been included in large cross-national
surveys such as the ESS or the World Values Survey (WVS).
5
few attempts have been made towards a constructive debate on how to conceptually and empirically
deal with the expansion of forms of political participation in general, and digital media-based in particular (for notable exceptions see Gibson Cantijoch, 2013; van Deth, 2001, 2014). Digitally networked
participation, and its manifestations, has often been criticized as “non-participation”. Its reliance on
digital media that are primarily used for entertainment and recreation, and its much trumpeted ineffectiveness, have created a dispute as to whether it can be considered political. Aiming to contribute to
the better understanding of the political nature digitally networked acts, I hereafter focus on assessing
this type of participation.
Digitally networked participation
The variety of internet-based forms of participation, their reliance on digital platforms with diverse affordances and capacity for personalisation, and their frequently non-political character, often leads to
their understanding as specimens of non-political, “creative participation” (Micheleti and McFarland,
2011). Yet, online participatory acts have been shown to be standalone forms of engaging with politics. As Gibson and Cantijoch show, online forms of participation “can be differentiated into distinct
clusters of interrelated activities as is the case with offline participation” (Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013,
p.714). Such online acts are not structurally different from offline acts such as signing petitions or
donating money. However, especially more expressive behaviours that take “a more active, collective,
and networked quality in the online environment” (such as uploading videos, posting and forwarding content in social networking sites or microblogs) can be independent acts (Gibson and Cantijoch,
2013, p.714)3 . With this in mind, these forms of participation are of particular interest as they can be
more than just the online versions of offline political acts.
Specific components of digitally networked participation indeed distinguish it from other political
acts carried out using the internet. Following recent theorising about the participatory properties of
digital media, (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013; Freelon, 2014; Zuckerman, 2014), I propose to think
about digitally networked participation in relation to three core elements:
1. the act of (digital) communication as integral to political participation,
2. the deliberate activation of social networks as a method of diffusing awareness about a social/political problem, or of exerting social and/or political pressure for its resolution,
3. the frequent embededdness of self-expressive, identity and personalised elements as part of the
action
Based on these properties, digitally networked participation, can be understood as a digital mediabased action that is carried out by individual citizens with the intent to activate their social networks in
3
see also (Hirzalla and Van Zoonen, 2010; Oser et al., 2013; Rainie et al., 2012b)
6
order to raise awareness about, or exert social and political pressure for the solution of, a social or political
problem.
There is mounting evidence that citizens engage into such digitally networked acts extensively
(Anduiza et al., 2012; Bennett and Segerberg, 2013; Loader and Mercea, 2012; Loader et al., 2014;
Rainie et al., 2012b). The PEW Research Internet Project found that 40 per cent of American adults
have done at least one out of the eight digital media-based civic or political activities, including “liking”,
promoting and reporting political content (such as news)4 . To put these findings into perspective,
according to the latest wave of the WVS (2010-2014), 34 per cent of Americans signed a petition and
attended a peaceful demonstration at least once during the last year. Almost 35 per cent joined a
boycott. Although data are scarce for Europe, comparative sources show that there are similarities in
political social media use (Xenos et al., 2014).
Many of the studies investigating digitally networked acts reveal that citizens use these participatory avenues regardless of their socioeconomic status, political interest or organisational affiliation.
This means that, if we accept these acts as forms of political participation, then it is likely that we
will detect not only a greater number of people participating in politics, but also citizens that have
traditionally been disengaged from politics and for whom this type of participation may be their only
repertoire (Earl, 2014). Evidence indeed shows a marginal reduction of traditional participatory inequalities when digital media-based civic or political acts are considered (Rainie et al., 2012b; Xenos
et al., 2014).
Engagement through digitally networked participation acts is, therefore, not just a notable popular trend, but rather a new form of participation that can be structurally similar to forms of offline
participation, and potentially capture an updated conception of citizenship (Bennett, 2012; Dalton,
2008a). It is thus worth asking what we might be gaining by continuing to include only traditional
(and sometimes long-declining) forms of participation, and what we might be missing by not studying digital media-based forms of participation in a systematic way5 . The quick answer is that these
forms of participation are too many, too diverse and, most of the times, have nothing to do with the
conventional meaning of the term.
Is digitally networked participation a form of political participation?
To answer this question one must look at the defining elements of widely accepted definitions of political participation. This will allow for the examination of how digitally networked participation differs
(or not) from acts traditionally considered as participation. Fortunately, recent contributions have laid
4
These are activities carried out through social networking sites and microblogging platforms and extant research provides
some support that they are independent forms of participation (as opposed to being replications of offline acts) (Gibson and
Cantijoch, 2013; Hirzalla and Van Zoonen, 2010)
5
Interestingly, the last wave of the ESS, the most authoritative data source for European political scientists, did not even
include a question about whether participants had access to the internet.
7
the groundwork for such an endeavour (van Deth, 2014; Hooghe, 2014; Hosch-Dayican, 2014). Van
Deth (van Deth, 2014, p.315) notes that four points are common among widely used definitions of political participation. The first is that participation is an activity, the second that it is done by people in
their role as citizens, the third that it should be voluntary, and the fourth that it deals with government,
politics or the state (van Deth, 2014, p.351). In a conceptual map of participation shown in Figure
2, van Deth offers a set of decision rules for determining whether an act can be classified as political
participation. There are three reasons why the proposed system is helpful for deciding whether various
forms of digitally networked participation can be considered as political.
First, it allows for arriving at basic, minimalist, definitions based on the abovementioned four common points shared by widely available definitions. Second, it integrates the expansion of self-expressive
forms of engagement that may take place outside the realm of formal politics by considering the target
towards which the act is directed as an additional specification. Third, by considering the role of political motivations, it allows for deciding on acts that are removed from the locus of formal politics and
are not directed towards political actors, but may nevertheless be politically motivated. Although this
addition is criticised by Hooghe (Hooghe, 2014, p.339), who correctly stresses the difficulty of determining what the individual’s exact intentions are, I argue that it is nevertheless of critical significance
- especially as far as acts of digitally networked participation are concerned - for the following reason:
One of the most forceful impacts of modernisation has been the gradual change in the model of
citizenship and along with it the ideas about what it means to participate in politics (Dalton, 2008a,b).
Especially young people - although clearly not only them - have been showing increasingly high levels
of distrust towards politics, politicians and political parties, prompting questions about why people
“hate” politics (Hay, 2007). The answer has been given multiple times, most recently in a study investigating new forms of participation which concludes: “young people are willing to engage politically
but are turned off by the focus and nature of existing mainstream political discourse and practice,
which many believe excludes them and ignores their needs and interests” (Cammaerts et al., 2014,
p.645). The authors argue that “there is a strong desire for participation in democratic life by young
people” which, however, “is not met by existing democratic institutions and discourses” (Cammaerts
et al., 2014, p.645). These findings corroborate evidence documenting especially young Europeans’
feeling of powerlessness (Russell, 2007), as well as their turn to more self-expressive and digitally
networked forms of participation (Civic Web, 2009). As Tufekci also notes, drawing on ethnographic
studies with young protesters in Europe, the US and the Middle East, young people no longer expect
politics to solve their deeply political demands (Tufekci, 2014, p.207). These insights illustrate that
developments on attitudes towards organised politics make the consideration of motivations behind
seemingly non-political acts not only crucial, but possibly one of the most effective ways for identifying
an act as political nowadays.
Even with this in mind, the majority of digitally networked participatory acts conform to the minimalist definition. Take for example the following diverse but common acts: sending a tweet that
8
Figure 2: van Deth’s conceptual map of political participation (van Deth, 2014, p. 355)
9
addresses a policy maker; posting a photo of a rubbish-filled area near your house on the Facebook
page of your municipality; re-posting information about a protest event in Tahrir square on your Facebook page; uploading and sharing a video of yourself providing legal information to Occupy protesters
about their rights in case of arrest; taking and tweeting a photo of a policeman pepper-spraying a
bunch of students protesting at your university; and personalising and sharing a tweeted petition by
Avaaz that demands from your government to stop selling arms to Syria. These are all, quite clearly,
activities. They require accessing a digital media platform and using embedded features to create content and open it to one’s social network. They are done by people in their role as citizens, voluntarily
from their semi-private spaces (depending on the platform), and they deal with political or community
issues. As they also target the government or a community problem, the abovementioned acts conform
to both minimal and targeted definitions of participation. As far as these definitions go, thus, a good
number of common digitally networked atcs are forms of political participation.
The sceptical reader will detect two problematic issues here. The first is that I have avoided acts
such as one-click Facebook “likes” and simple retweets whose commonness and extreme low cost makes
them too easy, too insubstantial and, most importantly, too ineffective. The other issue is that I have
not referred to “hard” cases of purely self-expressive non-political acts. Examples may include a photo
tweeted under #Dontshoot, depicting a group of youngsters in Ferguson raising their hands. Can these
entirely symbolic acts really be considered as political participation? These “problematic” issues are
interrelated and underline one of the major objections for considering digitally networked participation
as a form of political participation. This objection, as Tufekci (Tufekci, 2014, p.205) notes, assumes
that “technical ease corresponds to the depth of the engagement”. It is based on the idea that digitally
networked participation is predominantly a formerly offline and potentially high-cost act, carried out
online in a purely symbolic way, with zero cost, and almost certainly zero outcomes, by people who
have no interest in, or knowledge about, politics.
The proponents of the so-called “slacktivism”, defined as “feel-good online activism that has zero
political or social impact” (Morozov, 2009), are effectively uncomfortable with three aspects of digitally networked participation. The action’s extreme low-cost thanks to digital media, its purely symbolic
aspect, and the potential feeling of empowerment for the individual when in fact the impact is close
to or nothing. However, none of the traditional definitions excludes acts based on their costs, their
symbolic nature or their low impact, as long as other definitional requirements are fulfilled. Following van Deth (van Deth, 2014, p.359), therefore, who suggests that political motivation is a sufficient
condition for considering a non-political activity as political participation, in most cases digitally networked acts fulfil those requirements. Tweeting a picture of oneself with the hands raised and sticking
#Dontshoot next to it is a politically motivated non-political act, performed voluntarily and aimed at
raising awareness of one’s social network about police violence and race relations (two quintessentially
political issues) in Ferguson.
Van Deth’s system allows also for the exclusion of common digitally networked acts. The way the
10
system of decision rules deals with Facebook “likes” is instructive. “Liking” something, be it a video
with cute cats on YouTube, or a friend’s post on Facebook about donating money to Obama’s campaign,
is an expression of preference, not an action. An expression of preference through “liking” is not an
attempt to raise awareness, or exert any kind of political pressure for the solution of a social or political
problem (but see below); in other words, strictly speaking not only there is no action, but no political
intention is adequately conveyed. In contrast, the act of redistributing a link about how to donate to
the Obama campaign to one’s followers, is a form of political participation. As van Deth notes, for
some acts “only the expression of political aims or intentions transforms them into modes of political
participation” (van Deth, 2014, p.350).
There is, however, an important point to be made here. Although “liking” something on Facebook
cannot be considered a form of political participation, an expression of preference before the eyes of
one’s social network can become an act of political significance that evolves into political participation.
As Tufekci notes:
just showing up in a symbolic manner for legalizing gay marriage is an assertion, often with
consequences, and a commitment to a very real policy (and cultural) fight [. . . ] symbolic
acts can be consequential, especially over the long-term, in some contexts, while indeed
being superficial and largely irrelevant in others. The key distinction for symbolic acts is not
whether they are online or not, but the political context within which they are committed
(Tufekci, 2014, p.204).
In digital media platforms, what may often be a simple expression of preference may have serious consequences, especially in countries where access to the internet is heavily controlled. Liking a friend’s
post about the legalisation of gay marriage, “checking-in” at CDU’s headquarters, or RSVP-ing on Facebook for “Yes Scotland!” campaign event, may quickly evolve into a heated discussion involving multiple friends. For some - probably few - this may become the first step for subsequent political participation. Although this is not to say that all, or even most, symbolic actions will have political outcomes,
research does show that being exposed to political information and discussion on social networking
sites can lead to discussion and, subsequently, participation (Tang and Lee, 2013).
Finally, some argue that acts such as “liking” detract people from “real” offline activism by persuading them that they have an impact when they actually have none. The argument deals with two
issues: the participant’s feeling of efficacy, and that of the action’s impact (both irrelevant for defining
participation). Problems with this argument have been pointed out by various scholars. However, it
is worth repeating them as they offer additional support as to why digitally networked participation
should not be considered as different from acts such as boycotting, petitioning and demonstrations on
the sometimes instinctive and intuitive assumption that it is less impactful. First, with the exception
of voting, it is notoriously hard to show that a political action, be it high or low cost, online or offline,
has an impact (Earl, 2014, p.172). Second, impact is itself a contentious term; for some people impact translates into policy change, for others into media attention that helps set the agenda, and for
others into the public endorsement by the policy elite. Depending on one’s notion of impact, the same
11
action or event can have a massive, minor or no impact whatsoever. In reference to the persistence
of summoning the 1960s protest activism as an example of impactful politics, Earl notes that “a careful comparison of what social movement scholarship knows about effectiveness and different kinds of
social movement outcomes suggests that thinner forms of online participation may not fare as badly
in comparison to thicker forms of participation as many people suggest” (Earl, 2014, p.172). Third,
it would indeed be hard to argue that recent digital media-based actions and events did not produce
outcomes that “mattered” more than those most often produced by traditional street protests (Amenta
et al., 2012).
Examples of such actions abound. The coordinated protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA) which saw more than 115.000 websites joining the internet protest, 3 million people emailing
the Congress to express opposition and a petition at Google with 4.5 million signatures (New York
Times, 2012). Along with demonstrations in various cities, the online action resulted in the shifting of
the formerly positive environment surrounding the bill and, eventually, its removal from further voting.
Two months later, the internet-born KONY 2012 campaign went viral on social media and garnered
so many “likes”, views and shares that, according to PEW, it reached more than half of young adult
Americans just a few days after its release on social media (Rainie et al., 2012a). It was called the
most viral video ever by the TIME magazine, resulted in a resolution by the United States Senate, and
contributed to the decision to send troops by the Africa Union.
Clearly the majority of online campaigns that are based solely on digitally networked acts hardly
ever get a mention in the media – let alone a response from the policy elite. Yet, rather than having
zero impact, both cases exemplify that, exactly because of their low cost and opportunities for symbolic
action, innovative uses of digital media that often require small-time investment by participants, can
lead to a “massive influx of participation” (Earl and Kimport, 2011, p.73). Due to the strength in
numbers, such acts may end up having a direct and very visible outcome.
Conclusion
By reviewing available definitions of political participation, this contribution has argued that common
digitally networked participatory acts can be comfortably classified as political. Using van Deth’s conceptual map of political participation, I further substantiated this claim with examples which show that
specimens of digitally networked participation conform to minimal, targeted and motivational definitions. Based on this exercise, I have provided a working definition of digitally networked participation
which will, I hope, help thinking about how its properties make it political and how they distinguish it
from purely expressive acts. Finally, I have discussed the common view that digitally networked participation is a totally ineffective act that has no place alongside forms of participation we traditionally
consider political.
Van Deth’s conceptual map is an important addition to recent efforts to conceptualise political par-
12
ticipation, especially for recognising political digitally networked acts. By introducing specific decision
rules, it allows for excluding forms of expression from those of political action, it helps coming down
to a narrower list of potential measures, and enables for systematically showing the irrelevance of the
slacktivism argument for digitally networked participation. Although the proposed system helps in
the classification of most digitally networked acts that have an (rough) offline equivalent (clustering
them under minimalist and targeted definitions), purely self-expressive and seemingly non-political
online acts - often found only online - require the consideration of motivations. This consideration
has been criticised, not least because the identification of a person’s actual motivations (especially
in survey research) is notoriously hard. Yet, if motivations are not taken into consideration, a good
number of seemingly non-political acts will be classified as non-political. As I have argued, shifts in
the conception of citizenship and the novel forms of digitally networked engagement that capture it
render this option unattractive for further understanding contemporary participatory trends. Despite
the advances made by the conceptual map, thus, there is still room for improvement. Further attempts
should focus on alternatives or additions to motivational definitions taking into consideration recent
theorising about the utility of symbolic acts (Tufekci, 2014). Following Tufekci’s (Tufekci, 2014, p.204)
thinking, a promising avenue for future improvements may be the consideration of the context within
which an act is committed; as a new filter or even as a replacement of motivations. Such a consideration could even tackle the issue of identifying acts which the participants themselves often do not
(want to) recognise or label as political - a tendency often seen among people that are particularly
disillusioned with politics (Zuckerman, 2014).
This contribution raises another pressing question. Should, especially European, scholars continue
to rely only on traditional political participation repertoires, and concepts of political participation
that exclude digitally networked forms of participation? Or should they make a systematic effort to
produce a set of valid measures that can subsequently become part of cross-national studies? In her
meta-analysis of research on how internet use affects political participation, Boulianne found that the
likelihood of finding a positive or large effect depended on how internet was measured and urged
that future research should use more nuanced measures that take into consideration specific civic and
political activities (Boulianne, 2009, p.205). Surprisingly, although studies have shown that online
participation is a distinct form of participation (Hirzalla and Van Zoonen, 2010; Oser et al., 2013), that
there are distinct sub-modes of online participation that are comparable to those occurring offline, and
that a new social media-based type of political behavior is on the rise (Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013),
little has been done in terms of studying such forms in a more systematic and comparative way. Part of
the reason is that these forms of participation evolve too fast and will soon be replaced by new ones.
Yet, there is clearly a number of very common digitally networked acts that have been around since at
least 2005. Much can be gained by (a) settling on a set of already existing measures developed by the
PEW Research Internet Project, (Kohut, 2008; Rainie et al., 2012b; Smith, 2013) or other, comparative,
studies (Xenos et al., 2014), (b) establishing that they have validity by using them consistently across
13
a number of studies and, finally, (c) using them in cross-national surveys.
Europeans are a deeply disillusioned with politics people, especially after the recent financial and
economic crisis (della Porta, 2013). Comparative research on young Europeans shows that people not
only feel disempowered, but have increasingly serious doubts that traditional engagement with formal
politics can solve their problems. Digitally networked participation with its personalised nature and
immediate reach is, as Tufekci notes, suitable for individuals who see their own agency as crucial,
aspire to be empowered individuals and cherish this empowerment (Tufekci, 2014, p.204). As this
form of participation is not only popular in quantitative terms but seems to capture a new conception of
citizenship based on alternative means of engagement, it also carries political significance. Continuing
to focus only on whether European publics voted, demonstrated or boycotted products means that we
may be missing, as others have noted (Dalton, 2008a; Kahne et al., 2013), a very important part of
the picture, gaining instead a distorted understanding of what political participation is shaping into
(or fails to). The perception of young people as disengaged from politics, and the continuous criticism
of their model of citizenship as one that may lead democracy into trouble, may itself be based on
an obsolete understanding of youth participation. As Zuckerman perceptively notes, “people who are
disengaged from traditional politics might not be bad citizens under an old paradigm but good citizens
under a new one”.
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