Call for Papers Panels: Digital politics: Collective action born in and from the Internet – ECPR 25-27 August 2011 in Reykjavik.

CfP Panel at the 6th ECPR General Conference, 25-27 August 2011 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Panels: Digital politics: Collective action born in and from the Internet
Section: Internet and Politics: Bridging Current Research and Outlining Future Directions

Panel chairs: Johanna Niesyto, University of Siegen and Mayo Fuster Morell, European University Institute.
Discussant: Sigrid Baringhorst, University of Siegen

So far, political science research has focused on the use of the Internet by collective political actors that had their main operational base in the offline realm. First studies on the Internet and politics mainly concentrated mostly on well-established and traditional actors such public administration and political parties. Then the cope of research widened to include interest groups, NGOs and social movements looking at the impact of the Internet and the type of Internet use carried out by those groups. In particular, given the growing importance of political campaigns and other forms of collective action that are launched and carried out by networks of political actors, that mainly, if not completely operate and mobilize for their issues online, the debate on the Internet and politics could benefit further from considering actors who mainly operation with an online base. Interestingly, the emergence of collective action in online environments apparently follows new forms of “networked” forms of action and collaboration that are said to be different from political actors with a mainly offline base. The panel “Digital politics” aims to iniciate a discussion on the main organizational and democratic logic of the collective action born in and from the Internet addressing questions such as: What are the main characteristics of participation in online base collective action? How are boundaries drawn between the individual and the collective in such forms? How can we deal with the dialectics of individualization on one hand and the effects of de-personalization on the other hand that are inscribed in online spaces? How is the online space governed and how does its architecture structure online interaction? Finally, which methods are best suited to analyze the practices and dynamics of collective action online adequately?.

Abstracts with a maximum of 500 words should be upload by 1 February 2011 at the ECPR website: https://www.ecprnet.eu/myecpr/login.asp

You can contact the panel chairs at Mayo Fuster Morell <mayo.fuster@eui.eu> and Johanna Niesyto <Johanna.Niesyto@uni-siegen.de>.

Further information on the panel at the conference is available at: http://www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/panel_details.asp?panelid=517