Javnost - The Public, Vol. 27 - 2020, No. 3
Online Deliberation and the Public Sphere: Developing a Coding Manual to Assess Deliberation in Twitter Political Networks
To what extent are elements of rational-critical debate present in Twitter political networks? And to what extent are the discursive practices in these networks constitutive of a public sphere online? This research presents the different phases of a coding manual we developed to assess deliberation in Twitter political networks. To exemplify the use and value of the coding manual, we manually annotated communications (N = 3657) in the Dutch MPs’ mentions Twitter network. Our results show clear signs of positive empathy and cross-ideological interactions in the MPs’ communications, yet they also point to low levels of internal justification, reflexivity and critique. Therefore, although communications in the Dutch MPs’ mentions Twitter network exhibit important components of rational-critical debate, they cannot be considered full-fledged deliberative.
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Who Actually Becomes a Silver Surfer? Prerequisites for Digital Inclusion
The notion of silver surfers has been recurring in research for two decades. It often refers to elderly skilled and affluent users of digital media. Departing from domestication theory, and drawing on the concept of online repertoires, this article sets out to offer critical insights into what it actually takes, sociologically speaking, to become a silver surfer. The analysis starts from a set of interviews with 19 respondents (66–82 years) covering appropriation and incorporation of digital media and online repertoires. Based on insights from interview data, we turn to a quantitative analysis of a national postal survey (Swedish). In these data (N = 1,264), we first filter out the silver surfers and then perform a logistic regression analysis in order to investigate the factors that promote the status of being a silver surfer. Our analysis shows that only 19% of the sample could be categorised as silver surfers. It further reveals the important influence of factors such as age, income, interest and self-efficacy in particular. Silver surfers are a privileged group. However, contemporary ICT policy tends to assume that they are representative of senior users in general. Thus, there is a significant risk that current policy objectives will be misdirected.
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Which Online Counter-Publics on Facebook are Fostering Agonistic Respect? An Assessment of Counter-Publics Debating Germany’s Refugee Policy
Online publics offer new spaces for actors to counteract hegemonic narratives within mainstream publics. At the same time, they can also offer spaces for anti-pluralist movements to delegitimise their political opponents—which threatens the agonistic respect modern democracies are dependent on. This paper aims to show whether counter-publics on Facebook do in fact foster or threaten such respect. To do so, the posts of 1465 public Facebook pages and groups debating refugee policy in Germany were downloaded and analysed. Using network analysis, I identified the largest eight communities of pro- and contra-refugee pages. Using discourse analysis, I found that, on the contra-refugee side, agonistic respect for opposing positions was sparse, even in moderate pages, while on the pro-refugee side, agonistic respect is shown more often within more moderate and activist pages. I discuss possible causes for this divergence and argue how further research could enhance these findings.
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Locally, Regionally and Nationally Online: Online News Comments Sections as Public Arenas in Geographically Anchored Media Structures
This article examines online news comments sections as both representing an example of and a subject concerning changing media structures, the changing relationship between users and media outlets, the way this relationship is influenced by the (changing) understanding of place and, especially, the way users participate in the new public arenas provided by geographically anchored online media sources. The focus is on Finnish online media in its golden era, the early 2010s. The analysis of user comments left in the comments sections of a small local newspaper, a regional newspaper and a national newspaper suggests that geography matters. Comments sections serve as public arenas for discussions of shared issues, specified through geography, and construct public spheres. Especially in the local context, the meaning of such public arenas should not be underestimated.
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One Leader, One Party, One Truth: Public Television Under the Rule of the Populist Right in Poland in the Pre-Election Period in 2019
The article analyses the way in which public television operates under the rule of right-wing populists in Poland. The author examines the content of the main mews programmes in the period preceding the parliamentary election in 2019 and defends the thesis that state-owned media in Poland have become a propaganda tool of the ruling party. The propaganda of the populist Right in the analysed programmes was based on two threads: the promise of social assistance from the populist authorities and nationalist, homophobic and exclusionary ideology. From this perspective, the government's opponents were portrayed not as competitors in the political dispute, but as ‘enemies of the nation’ subordinated to ‘foreign forces’. The political opposition, LGBT communities, liberals, the Left and cultural elites played the role of dark characters on state-owned television. On the other hand, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the Law and Justice party, played the role of the almighty ‘father of the nation’ and was the source of truth and the author of the main message in the news programme. It was he who enhanced the ideological message of television, and his statements constituted the main and final arguments in political assessments presented in the news programmes.
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A Fractured and Weaker Public Service Media: Territorial Organisation, Public Media Policy and Economic Crisis in Spain
The economic crisis that began in 2008 has brought to the table the unstructured nature of the Spanish public broadcasting system. In Spain, the Public Service Media is organised into three almost watertight territorial levels that do not collaborate with each other, and even sometimes compete for the same resources. In addition, the different political elites (local, regional and national) see their media as their own, and those of the other administrations as opponents. This division, which we call a geographic-administrative fracture, has prevented a global management of the system, which has led to more consequences other than merely economic ones. This article provides a novel vision of the (permanent) crisis of the Spanish public media, highlighting a defining characteristic of the system, hardly ever considered as a key factor in its (bad) functioning: territorial division.
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