Abstract
For those who take a dim view of the state of health of contemporary democratic practice and public participation, the findings of these books may give pause for thought. They both seek answers to pressing and timely questions pertaining to communication and politics, both attempting to replace observational assumptions with rigorous empirical enquiry. These books share a sanguinity that runs contrary not only to widespread perception but also to the manifestations of social discontent on the streets, particularly in long-established liberal democracies. Perhaps more than anything else they expose a gulf between the worldviews of those unhappy bedfellows – political scientists on the one side and political philosophers and sociologists on the other, many of whom may experience the findings as unpalatable and contrary to the theoretical standpoints to which they have grown accustomed. While these authors suggest answers to important questions, they do so with varying degrees of success and inevitably raise further questions.
Pippa Norris will be familiar to many as a prominent political scientist and communications scholar who has produced a body of important work in the area of civic engagement, specifically political communications. She was a pioneering commentator on the question of the digital divide as it impacts on the political sphere. As she notes in the volume under consideration, her earlier book, Critical Citizens concluded that: Citizens in many countries…proved increasingly sceptical about the actual workings of the core institutions of representative democracy, notably political parties, parliaments, and governments. At the same time, however, public aspirations towards democratic ideals, values and principles, or the demand for democracy, proved almost universal around the globe. (10)
This is the idea of the democratic deficit in a nutshell. Conceptually, it is drawn from a debate which considered the legitimacy of the European Union’s decision making processes against those of its component member states. Now, she proposes, ‘the standard interpretation of ever-growing public disenchantment with politics and government in established democracies is oversimplified and misleading, requiring significant revision’ (13). This is the work of the current book, which takes up where Critical Citizens left off. The results are both counterintuitive and intriguing.
Her thesis begins with the assertion that, contrary to what is a widespread belief, public support for the political system has not eroded across the world; rather it ebbs and flows at different times and in different places. She tempers this with the acknowledgement that satisfaction levels do not necessarily suggest politicians are fulfilling the aspirations of the citizenry and that the democratic deficit is one to be watched vigilantly by political actors. The early chapters set out the theoretical foundations and delve more deeply into the concept of ‘system support’, making a case for the inclusion of both behavioural factors and social psychological attitudes. All of this is very effectively accomplished. Support for the political system, she proposes: …continues to be understood as a multidimensional phenomenon ranging from the most generalised feelings of attachment and belonging to the nation state, through confidence and trust in the regime and its institutions, down to specific approval of particular authorities and leaders. (11)
Norris sets up a medical metaphor that is used to structure the book. She examines and analyses a set of symptoms, offers a diagnosis, and concludes with a prognosis. The section outlining the range of data deployed for the study is impressive and comprehensive. Its content ranges across, for instance, survey evidence of trust in domestic institutions, feelings of nationalism, and news media content analysis. Extensive longitudinal and comparative work is undertaken. She justifies this range of inquiry: ‘any single approach, taken in isolation, has limits. Consequently this study opts for a mixed research design, combining the virtues of pooled survey data in more than ninety nations with rich and detailed narrative studies of contrasting paired cases’ (53). The appendices to the book provide clear and effective roadmaps to the mechanics of the methodologies used, and the graphic representations throughout the book are clear and useful. Norris is most attentive to the degrees of development in the particular countries examined and their history of democratic rule and this is all laudable and substantial in building her argument.
The question of political communication is surprisingly under-considered. An entire chapter is devoted to the issue of ‘Negative News’, examining and countering the suggestion that perceived discontent or fatigue with the political system is somehow a result of negative press coverage. This section is rather short and does not probe many of the questions and preoccupations taken up by Parmelee and Bichard in their study of Twitter. The question of emergent online communication practices is neglected and this omission is unfortunate, particularly in the light of her attention to these matters in earlier work. In the same vein, some consideration could have been given to the discussions regarding the educative potential of online platforms and the circulation of political education generally in the chapter entitled ‘Democratic Knowledge’. These are live debates and extremely relevant to the topic. It is, however, an understandable omission given the vast nature of the project in hand.
The section on cultural theories of democratisation is compelling and fits well into the study. It includes a treatment of the concept of congruence theory, which links to the question of legitimacy: A sense of popular legitimacy implies that the core institutions of the regime are widely regarded as appropriate and proper, so even if citizens dislike specific leaders, dissent from particular policies, or disagree vehemently with certain government decisions, they nevertheless accept the authority of officeholders and the processes that put them in power…the greater legitimacy a democratic regime accumulates, the more it will possess the potential to elicit compliance without excessive monitoring or punitive action… (229)
Norris concludes her work with a call for attention to the question of democratic deficits and implies a need for an enhancement of communication and knowledge building practices as key factors in keeping citizens informed and active within this realm. Thus, she is at variance with those who suggest we are living through a ubiquitous crisis of legitimacy.
What makes Norris’ work somewhat convincing is a position that rather than universalising pays deep and exhaustive attention to trends and findings over time and across nation states and supranational organisations alike. The central theme of Democratic Deficit is immediately compelling to the reader as it counters commonly proposed ideas of a post-political world, a culture of civic apathy and a politic replaced by individual self-interest and rampant consumption. It might, however, be suggested that what is not accounted for here is the multiple other factors that now govern people’s lives: the influence of lobby groups, the rise of the corporation as a core political actor and the question of the growing informality with which influence is wielded. In other words, the populace is governed by nebulous and not easily locatable forces and agencies which are disconnected from mainstream and identifiable political organs and traditional conceptions of the nation state and, indeed, democracy. New forms of communications technologies invariably play a part in this. Taking this viewpoint, it is almost worrying that the findings of the book infer steady fealty to the nation state and its apparatuses. As populations across the world endure the effects of ‘the Great Recession’, biting austerity regimes (often imposed by non-elected international bodies), and the spectre of odious indebtedness, one cannot help but wonder how support for democratic regimes remains steady, as Norris suggests. Increased financialisation, globalisation and neoliberal ideology across the world makes any consideration of the political sphere in isolation seem outmoded. Noam Chomsky’s observations drive this point home: Personally I’m in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can’t have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there’s a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I’m opposed to political fascism, I’m opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it’s pointless to talk about democracy. (2004: 138)
Norris’s book creates space for a large scale examination of the questions raised here, alongside deep scrutiny of the role of nascent communications practices within the democratic field, but it must be aligned to a realisation of the shifting nature of political reality within capitalism.
The Twitter phenomenon has created a rift between those who fetishise it (and speak endlessly of ‘joining the conversation’) and those who have been quick to dismiss it as trivial at best and dangerous at worst. Numerous high profile examples of the efficacy of Twitter as a political tool, as well as the blurring of public and private spheres, have emanated from many countries in recent years. Clearly, a need has existed for a thorough examination of Twitter’s role in the political sphere beyond hype or condemnation. The relationship between public buy-in for democratic institutions and actors, as well as the informational component, is important to understand. Parmelee and Bichard undoubtedly contribute something to a furthering of these understandings. The shift from a set of modernist communication practices to a more immediate, more switched on, accountable set of post-modern practices has been how the potential of tools like Twitter has been problematised by many commentators. It is this sort of analysis, however, that is lacking at the core of their book.
Parmelee and Bichard make no assumptions about the reader’s previous knowledge, providing a clear and comprehensive guide to Twitter for absolute beginners. This serves to make the book accessible to non-users and examines the pragmatic and commonplace uses of the medium within political discourse. What would have been of additional utility in context-setting are two things: a recognition that Twitter is a corporate platform and not without constraints based on its terms of service, and also an acknowledgement of the rise in the policing of Twitter, especially in the European and Middle Eastern context. Increasingly, governments are paying attention to Twitter and demanding access to user profiles. A series of arrests in the UK in 2012 for speech acts with consequential punitive measures points to the possibility of greater attention to Twitter by those who might wish to monitor and limit the discourse it produces.
Parmelee and Bichard nonetheless set up a sturdy and thorough set of methodologies which provide instructive findings. They speak to users, and this in itself is refreshing amid the evangelism that has often surrounded this ‘liberation technology’ in popular discourse. Their analysis seeks to answer questions about the uses and gratifications of following political leaders’ tweets, the impact of political tweets as a form of word of mouth communication, whether or not this form of activity is actually good for democracy, where the practice of following fits into people’s lives, and more. They then turn their attention to the question of frames used in one particular campaign and draw their conclusions regarding how Twitter influences the relationship between political leaders and the public. Again a set of mixed methodologies is employed here, encompassing surveys, in-depth interviews, frame analysis and content analysis. They outline the triangulation and cross-checking process the co-authored study facilitated. The orientation of their work is, however, somewhat bothersome; they are firmly located within a safe political science mindset which takes little or no account of the possibilities for direct action, resistance or disruption as components of a dynamic political sphere and a frequently considered potential of Twitter as a tool. The composition of many of the questions they posed to their participants suggests a passive audience and the tone is one of consumption of tweets rather than giving rise to deep engagement or a public sphere level of communicative activity. A very effective and well crafted section on the nature of word of mouth and what they term ‘eWOM’ (electronic word of mouth) makes for interesting reading and provides findings that are applicable elsewhere in communications research. In this section the sociological theory, particularly concerning the nature of networks and the influence of various types of ties, is illuminating and very much on point.
Among the findings, one in particular is revealing and somewhat alarming (this is a point that emerged in a piece of research on a similar theme by the current reviewer: see Candon (2012)): From the leaders’ perspective, the relationship is based on using Twitter mainly as a one-way communication vehicle to transmit their policies and ideas. However, their followers want to use Twitter as a forum for two-way communication with leaders and other politically interested individuals. As a result, many followers crave engagement with leaders but are often left disappointed. (205)
If we were to engage in a prediction exercise, we might suggest that far from being the forum of revolutionary communicative activity that is implied here, users may simply abandon their following of political leaders through sheer boredom and dissatisfaction.
What is not in evidence in this book is a robust theoretical platform on which to place their results; this leads to a sense of dislocation from wider political debates and certain taken-for-granted statements regarding the nature of contemporary democratic practice. Absent too is an acknowledgement of social movements which, although not part of the mainstream, are nonetheless compelling voices in the public sphere. An example of this is the inclusion of the Tea Party and the omission of the Occupy movement (a political movement in spite of its stated desire not to be so described). The worldview is rather narrow focusing as it examines only the US context, yet adopts a universalising tone throughout. One cannot help wondering if such a study would benefit from being more clearly located within a conversation of contemporary communications and political theory (perhaps drawing on Habermas’s communicative action, Dean’s theory of communicative capital or some of the theoretical work of Leclau and Mouffe), as well as a consideration of findings on Twitter from beyond the US. An instructive counterpoint to both of these books may be found in the work of Brants and Voltmer (2011) in Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy. It is this kind of analysis, which attends to the hybrid and diffuse nature of contemporary trajectories of power, that is absent in both of the titles under consideration here.
Parmelee and Bichard’s book suffers also from a lack of attention to the central question of accountability and the power imbalance that obtains between political leaders and their followers. If a case is to be made for the revolutionary potential of Twitter, then surely this ought to be considered more closely. Otherwise what is undertaken is business as usual, spin, PR, the dissemination of a point of view and the restriction of disparate voices within the public sphere. On the matter of the increasing commercialisation of politics, Papacharissi points out that: The ongoing commercialisation of online digital technologies is remediating newer media into simply newer versions of older media, thus expanding shopping catalogues for the consumer, but not affording democratic options for the citizen. Net-based technologies are susceptible to the systemic limitations that influence the democratizing potential of all media and have little ability to revive democratic ideals that never really existed in the first place. (2010: 20)
What is also problematic is the ascription of the term ‘revolution’ to Twitter in the book’s title without making a clear case for why this is so beyond being eye catching. Likewise a comparative consideration of other potentially revolutionary media shifts, even the use of email would serve to place this in context a little better. Tellingly, the authors point to the demographics that suggest Twitter is mainly in the hands of an educated affluent elite within Western liberal democracies, and the limitations of the tool begin to become apparent as regard a widely available democratic voice. It is implied that this activity is justifiable as it feeds a process of agenda setting, but is this really progressive, democratising or indeed revolutionary? The authors tell us that: Twitter is not mainly a venue for young people, but rather a place for an older more professional audience. A study by the consultancy firm Trendstream found that 80 per cent of Twitter users work in information technology, professional services such as law and accounting, financial services, education, or in government. The study’s conclusion suggests that Twitter is ideal for political leaders who want to reach an influential audience. (6)
Can we therefore conclude that this idea, which goes unchallenged by the authors, counters the widespread suggestion of the democratising potential of a medium like Twitter? Are we to take it that a set of elite influencers, who have always talked to each other rather a lot, are merely further facilitated in this by the tool? In addition, the word ‘influence’ is used liberally throughout the text without a clear definition of what this actually means in the context. There is a great deal of conflation of the worlds of business and politics throughout the book. The field of marketing is casually drawn upon to draw parallels to the political milieu. This is problematic as it feeds into a wide scale perception that the area of public representation is a business much like any other and that it holds no characteristics which might distinguish its practice from any other arena of commercial activity.
These titles, in different ways, add to some extent to the process of gaining an understanding of the meaning of current political practices and landscapes. They are not, however, without their limitations and blind spots, and both share a worldview that runs contrary to persuasive theoretical work emerging from commentators elsewhere. Both of these titles seem to offer reassurances as to the state of the nations in the first decades of the 21st century. However, read in the light of events and the contributions of other commentators they do little to dismantle the ‘fantasy of participation’ which renders what many experience as democracy, to borrow from Dean (2009), a neoliberal fantasy.