PoliticsWeb2.0: The Rise of Trickle-Up Politics

Here are my notes on a very interesting talk by Rachel Gibson of the University of Manchester, titled "Trickle-up Politics? the Impact of Web 2.0 technologies on citizen participation." I think you'll find her overview and characterizations of politics before and during the web to be very helpful.

What is trickle-up politics? This isn't a new type of politics, but a new manner or mode of politics, and a wider space in which it is taking place. In the deregulated, decentralized political space that is the web, there is more space for users to do their own thing. Her talk is organized in four parts:

1. Politics before the web, until 1945. Politics was direct, localized and face-to-face. Townhall meetings, mass marches, and parties with federated structures all the way down to the local. [See Theda Skocpol's work for more on this, I'd say.]
Between 1945 thru the 1990s, politics became more indirect and mediated. Parties start to decline in importance, as the electronic mass media and personal driven candidacies come to the fore. The seeds were planted with FDR's fireside radio chats and came into full flower with the JFK-Nixon debate in 1960. [So far, so good.]

2. Politics and Web 1.0: 1990-2004. One reason why the web was so welcomed onto the scene is how negative politics seemed to become in the earlier broadcast era. The consequences of its arrival: increased speed and volume of politics; targetting and narrowcasting of information; increased individual control over what they consumer or produce; decentralized control structure; more interactivity; and the rising importance of multi-media formats. The point-to-mass structure of communication is challenged, and now citizens have the time and space to discuss and deliberate issues, instead of only consuming sound-bites and negative ads.
She rolls out some quotes from Nicholas Negroponte, Howard Rheingold and Esther Dyson on how much things could change, how individuals and communities could be empowered. But, then, "we waited and waited and we got this": She shows slides of Tony Blair's incredibly sparse home page from 1995, plus some other lousy political campaign sites familiar to her British audience. People laugh knowingly. "Obviously mastery of technological innovation takes time," she notes drily.

3. Web 2.0: 2004-? At its core, this frame refers to social or participatory elements of the web. What does it mean for politics? Caveats follow: We need new methods and data to capture how and why people are using the technology. The web is becoming an environment or context. Where it is probably having the most effect is in changing the culture of participation among young people. [You think so?] We can't yet point definitively to changes in citizen participation.
But here are some signs of the shift:
-"Vote Different" and the new "VoterVoter" site, where citizens can develop their own ad and pay to have it placed on TV.
-MySociety.org and its toolset for citizens to monitor and exert pressure on govt.
-Obama '08: all about providing a channel or a portal to other users and sites, not necessarily trying to control them. The focus is on the user.
-WebCameron, David Cameron's video-blog.

As for emerging trends, Gibson points to several:
-Blurring of boundaries between users and producers, leading to the amateurization of politics. ActBlue as an example of opening up the campaign to its supporters. Important question: does peer production continue once you get into office?
-The speeding up of politics: this quickening of coordinated citizen demands and responses, fostered by tools like MySociety or Central Desktop, will this lead to more open decision making?
-Blurring of the boundaries between public and private, leading to the informalizing of politics. Cameron making himself familar to the voters; YouTube as fostering that regardless (see George Allen, macaca).
-The long tail of politics? Because there's so much more space online, will this lead to a pluralizing or disaggregating of choices? In politics the long tail has been talked about in terms of tapping small donors, but she argues that it also applies to people's discrete interests and the opportunity to respond to more than the top four survey items in a poll.

Trickle-up politics then, is diffused/decentralized, individualistic and rooted in micro-networks, continuous, citizen-based and non-institutional, and based on niche audiences.

So, will the internet be the saviour or destroyer of democratic society? People like Joe Trippi say yes; Andrew Keen and Nicholas Carr are gloomier. Gibson doesn't give us her opinion, but I suspect she leans in the optimistic direction.

Where to from here? If 1.0 is receive/read and 2.0 is send/write, then is 3.0 more immersive--i.e., create/speak/act? She ends with a look at her avatar in Second Life. [Uh-oh, not Second Life as the future!!We're walking from the BBC virtual studio to Ron Paul's home on SL...now we're in the "Liberty Bar" at Paul HQ, but so far no flying penises...Oh, thank god, she shut off SL.] This raises questions about more immersive technologies and indeed if that is the next step, she concludes.

[Harrumph. You had me until the end. What about collaborative government? Aren't we already in a create/speak/act mode? I will take these questions up with her over dinner I guess.]