Online and Offline Spaces for Democracy

Dr Ella Taylor-Smith (@EllaTasm)

https://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith

#edfringe2016 #edskeptics

Edinburgh Skeptics on the Fringe, August 2016

Payal Arora (2014)

The Leisure Commons

Why me?

2001 -2011: Working on top-down eParticipation pilots.

2011 -2015: Exploring citizen-led participation (on and offline);

looking at the relationship between contexts (spaces) and activities.

https://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith@EllaTasm

Use of both online and offline spaces influenced by:

• boundaries• inhabitants• access• ownership• cost

How to behave in this context?

Who is the audience online?

Erving Goffman (1959)The presentation of self in everyday life

• Front region: performance.• Back region: preparation and

relaxing with the team.

The Iceberg of participation

Hidden (non-public) worksupports public outputs.

Most work (and discussion) is organisation and learning,

not events or public deliberation.

What do we do when we do democracy?

Andrea Cornwall (2002)

Invited spaces: top-downCreated spaces: bottom-up

Non-public social media

• Community/ collaboration between diverse people

• Friendly consensual discussions (Facebook pages of nice people)

• Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984)

• Filter Bubbles (Parisier, 2012)

• Hidden manifestos

Collaboration vs isolation

David Altheide (2004)

Media logic

Integrated spaces

Blended spaces (Benyon, 2014)Microsoft’s Realtime Crowd InsightsTelepresence (Kane, 2014)

Picturesthanks toAlex Macintosh for PokémonVan Gogh Museum for woodcuts

We use spaces together, online or offline.

Kane: telepresence; cognitive tunnelling

Holyrood School (Glasgow)and The Scottish Parliament

with Frank McAveety MSP

Thinking back to public parks..

Need to work with commercial giants like Facebook, Google, Twitter, to create good spaces for democracy.

Thanks. Questions.

Dr Ella Taylor-Smith (@EllaTasm) https://about.me/EllaTaylorSmith

Edinburgh Skeptics on the Fringe, August 2016

References

Altheide, D. (2004). Media logic and political communication. Political Communication. 21 (3). Pp.293-296.Arora, P. (2014). The Leisure Commons: A spatial History of Web 2.0. London: Routledge. Benyon, D. (2014). Spaces of Interaction, Places for Experience. Morgan and Claypool.Cornwall, A. (2002) Locating Citizen Participation. IDS Bulletin. 33 (2). Pp49-58.Daniels, A.K. (1987). Invisible Work. Social Problems. 34 (5). Pp.403-415.Goffman, E. (1971). The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Originally published, New York: Doubleday; London: Mayflower, 1959.Graham, T. (2012). Beyond “Political” Communicative Spaces: Talking Politics on the Wife Swap Discussion Forum. Journal of Information Technology and Politics. 9 (1). Pp.31–45.Habermas, J. (1964). The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article. New German Critique. 3 (Autumn, 1974). Pp. 49-55.Hassan, G. (2014). Independence of the Scottish mind elite narratives, public spaces and the making of a modern nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Kane, T.B. (2014). Using Cognitive Tunnels in a New Approach to Building Social Elevators in the Information Society. Informatica, 38 (3). Pp.263-271Kim, J. and Kim, E.J. (2008). Theorizing Dialogic Deliberation: Everyday Political Talk as Communicative Action and Dialogue. Communication Theory. 18. Pp.51–70.Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (2012). Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. New York: Routledge.Noelle-Neumann, E. (1984). The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion — Our social skin. Chicago: University of Chicago.Oldenburg, R. (1999). Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of the Community. 3rd edition. New York: Marlow.Papacharissi, Z. (2014). Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Pariser, E. (2012). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. London: Penguin.Star, S.L. and Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional ecology, "translations" and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Studies of Social Science. 19 (3). Pp.387-420.Wright, S. (2012). From ‘third place’ to ‘Third Space’: everyday political talk in non-political online spaces. Javnost. 19 (3). Pp. 5-20.

Edinburgh Skeptics on the Fringe, August 2016