Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate

Abstract

This article investigates the public debate over proposed U.S. legislation designed to give prosecutors and copyright holders new tools to pursue suspected online copyright violations. We compiled, mapped, and analyzed a set of 9,757 stories published over 16 months relevant to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). This study applies a mixed-methods approach that combines text and link analysis with human coding and informal interviews to map the evolution of the controversy over time and to analyze the mobilization, roles, and interactions of various actors. We find a vibrant, diverse, and decentralized networked public sphere that exhibited broad participation, leveraged topical expertise, and successfully reframed a debate and focused public sentiment to shape national public policy. A network of small-scale commercial tech media, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals fulfilled the fourth estate function; traditional media then amplified the work of these actors. The campaign involved substantial experimentation and rapid development of mobilization strategies. We observe an increased public awareness of an agenda originating in the networked public sphere, which emerged successfully despite substantial expenditures attempting to produce a mass media narrative that favored the legislation. Moreover, we witness what we call an attention backbone, in which more trafficked sites amplify less-visible individual voices on specific subjects. The data suggest that, at least in this case, the networked public sphere enabled a dynamic public discourse that involved both individual and organizational participants and offered substantive discussion of complex issues contributing to affirmative political action.

Energiewende’s Lone Warriors: A Hyperlink Network Analysis of the German Energy Transition Discourse

“…This is also true for actors from the civil society and SIG thus suggesting that these, even though not fully exploiting its potential (e.g. Benkler et al, 2015), are adapting to the Internet and its possibilities whereas politics is not.…”

“…Usually these processes of attention attribution between actors are not visible to scholars but a growing body of literature has shown that it is to some extent visible online (e.g. Adamic & Glance, 2005;Benkler et al, 2015). We assume that public spheres are constituted by condensed networks of communication and understand the public and segmented publics respectively as forms of communicative aggregation (Habermas, 2006;Latzer & Saurwein, 2006).…”

“…As actors from one social field tend to stay within their own field (Giddens, 1984), we extend Kleinen-von Kö-nigslöw's (2010) integration approach to social fields. Since the Internet offers actors from less influential fields to form alliances, reach other social fields and influence public opinion (Benkler, Roberts, Faris, Solow-Niederman, & Etling, 2015) we will focus in this paper on the question of how well the political field is able to integrate other social fields within the Energiewende discourse. Hyperlink analysis is a welltested digital method, which allows us to analyse this question.…”

Does Public Attention Reduce the Influence of Moneyed Interests? Policy Positions on Sopa/Pipa Before and After the Internet Blackout

“…Finally, our contribution is more specifically related to the law, political science, and communication studies literature discussing Internet governance, public opinion and lobbying in the context of the SOPA/PIPA bills (see Benkler et al ; Guo ; Lemley, Levine, and Post ; Powell ).…”

“…According to Wikipedia about 160 million people saw their protest message that day, not counting the visitors to other protesting sites (Waugh and Poulter ). Benkler et al () report massive online mobilization following the days of the blackout, reflected in over 3,000 news stories surrounding the SOPA/PIPA bills and emerging during the week of the blackout.…”