The Conceptualization of Digitally Networked Participation

Abstract

The conceptualization and measurement of political participation has been an issue vibrantly debated for more than 50 years. The arrival of digital media came to add important parameters to the debate complicating matters further. Digital media have added inexhaustive creative and nonpolitical ways to engage in social and political life that not only often appear to form the basis of political participation but also, in a plethora of everyday contexts, seem to become embedded into what eventually evolves to become a politically meaningful act. This article argues that digitally networked participationand its manifestations-is a form of political participation and should be conceptualized, identified, and measured as one. Relying on recent conceptual and empirical work, it shows how various common manifestations of digitally networked participation conform to minimalist, targeted, and motivational definitions of political participation. Finally, tackling common misconceptions about the value of such acts, this article argues that nonpolitical forms of digitally networked participation can occasionally be far more impactful than forms of participation commonly accepted as political. This article concludes by recommending the systematic development of measures for digitally networked participation and its formal integration in the study of political participation.

The continuous expansion of citizen participation: a new taxonomy

“…11 Instead, we show that the concepts and tools for measuring new forms of participation can be updated based on the growing research that attempts to identify, document, conceptualize, and taxonomize these new forms of participation and democratic innovations more systematically (O'Toole et al, 2003;Smith, 2009;Amnå and Ekman, 2014;van Deth, 2014;Chou et al, 2015;Lee, 2015;Rowe, 2015;Theocharis, 2015). This development is not only important in terms of the analytical advantages stemming from being able to examine political participation in its multiple and oftentimes subtle facets.…”

“…Granted that it also has one of the highest levels of internet penetration in Europe, lack of social media ownership is probably related to heightened privacy concerns associated with postwar experiences; it is thus the outcome of choice and not of lack of possibility for Germans to own a social media account. This makes digitally networked participation (DNP; Theocharis, 2015) -the most popular example of a new form of engagement -less likely to be encountered as a mode of participation than in most other Western societies. At the same time, it also makes it a very important mode to identify within the broader repertoire of participation and to compare with both older and other new modes of engagement.…”

“…Moreover, with the exception of political consumerism, no studies have empirically established whether citizens perceive acts that do not fit traditional definitions of participation, not simply as alternative participatory avenues, but also as legitimate political acts. Building on recent efforts to improve conceptualizations of political participation (Fox, 2013;Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013;van Deth, 2014;Theocharis, 2015), the study expands these debates by making three contributions to the literature: (a) it offers an integrated method for measuring old and new forms of participation; (b) it provides systematic empirical evidence as to how new forms of participation such as creative, selfexpressive, individualized, and digitally networked acts fit within a general taxonomy of participation, and (c) it empirically assesses the main antecedents of various traditional and new modes of political participation in order to illustrate how they co-exist alongside each other as important components of a politically active citizenship.…”

Towards a Conceptualization of Young People’s Political Engagement: A Qualitative Focus Group Study

“…All participants differentiated states of political engagement and political participation, which leads to the open debate about how to conceptualize political engagement and political participation (e.g., [16,18,34,46]). Is political engagement the same as political participation?…”

“…Different terms are used such as 'e-participation' [45] or 'digitally networked' participation [46]-although most authors simply characterize these as online participation and engagement (e.g., [47][48][49]). Typically, online definitions are adapted from offline definitions (e.g., [50]), including searching for online political information, contacting politicians via the Internet [51], or petitioning online [52].…”