Understanding political and citizen participation on digital platforms for civic mobilization. Analysis of cyber-activism in Spain through Change.org

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation attempts to study cyber-activism as an emerging phenomenon that could complement traditional processes of political and civic participation in Spain. Citizens display their indignation with the political elite and public institutions and aim to find new opportunities to get involved in the democratic community (Stoker, 2006; Hay, 2007; Presno Linera, 2012; Innerarity, 2016). In this context, cyber-activism provides an additional element that meets postmodern society concerns and gives power to citizens (Carpentier, 2012). Nevertheless, cyber-activism is also considered a movement too complex and extensive to delve into in a single article of research. For that reason, this study analyses cyber-activism in Spain through the digital platform for civic mobilization: Change.org. The main hypothesis of the current research formulates that cyber-activism as introduced in Spain as an expression of political and civic participation that reconciles new opportunities for civic engagement and aims to fulfil deficiencies in classic channels of political participation. From this central approach comes the objective of analysing the phenomenon of cyber-activism in Spain from the Jacobson’s (1960) model of the functions of language in order to evaluate the communicative purpose of cyber-activism. Addressing it as an expression of political and civic participation that could complement classical paradigms of civic involvement. In this sense, this study shows two clearly distinguished blocks: a theoretical corpus and an analytical corpus. It has considered proper to turn to the literature review qualitative technique in order to choose those studies that deal with political and civic participation, civic engagement, participative democracy, cyber-activism or intelligent society, among other concepts. On the other hand, the analytical corpus is defined as a case of study (Hammersley, 1986; Yin, 1989; Hamel, Dufour & Fortin, 1993; Stake, 1994; López-Barajas & Montoya, 1995; Angulo & Vázquez, 2003; Coller, 2005; Gill, 2011; Hernández-Sampieri, Fernández Collado & Baptista Lucio, 2014) in which the Triangulation method is used (Denzin, 2003) as a strategy to validate the research and as the most advisable methodology to avoid any scientific bias (Pérez Serrano, 1994; Stake, 1998; De Miguel, 2005b; Álvarez-Álvarez & San Fabián Maroto, 2012). The Triangulation method has been structured according to three main elements: the addresser, the channel, the message and the addressee. According to the Jakobson's (1960) model of the functions of language, the phenomenon of cyber-activism -object of study of this doctoral dissertation- is analyzed as a linguistic process in which the prosumer, the channel and the message are assigned some specific functions (Jakobson, 1960): • Prosumer -keeps an emotive and conative function-: following Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1986), sender is susceptible to turn into the receiver of their own message, since a reflexivity principle is assumed in any communicative system and sets that each addressee is also a potentially addresser. This approach is linked to McLuhan & Barrington’s (1972) and Toffler’s (1980) contributions that refers to the concept of prosumer of information: user is understood as a communicative actor that produce and consume contents, in other words, prosumer performs the role of sender and receiver at the same time. This means that citizens represent an “early adopter” (Rogers, 1995) of cyber-activism phenomenon and the receiver of other cyber-activist protests. For that reason, this research intends to hybridize both roles in the prosumer figure, who carries out a double function -emotive and conative- as addresser and addressee in the cyber-activist communication • Channel -digital platforms of civic mobilization such as Change.org- carry out a phatic function, it means it is expected the channel gives advantage to the interaction and the dialogue between the addresser and the addressee. • Message -online campaigns in Change.org- carries out a poetic function, it means that language has an aesthetic or rhetorical purpose: speech

The prosumer’s perspective has been studied by a focus group -qualitative method- organized with different cyber-activists of Change.org Spain. On the other hand, channel -Change.org Spain platform- has been analyzed using two methods: an in-depth interview -qualitative and quantitative focus- to executives of Change.org Spain and a content analysis based on Dader et al. (2011) and Van Aelst & Walgrave (2002) methodologies. This last technique is essential to evaluate the communication functions of the digital platform. Finally, an ex-profeso content analysis template had been designed to study cyber-activist petitions in Change.org Spain -message- and to set out which factors demarcate the success or the failure of online campaigns. In short, this doctoral dissertation concludes that cyber-activism was introduced into Spanish society reservedly, but it cannot be considered a rooted political and civic participation model yet. Cyber-activist petitions do not always fulfil the criteria of expected quality and gravity. Regional or autonomic initiatives have more chance of victory, because they imply specific actors with delimited political responsibilities. This proves petitions do not need to generate a radical or pretentious metamorphosis because, as it has been expressed, initiatives that are focused on a national atmosphere –like the ones that are sent to the Spanish government- do not obtain effective results because they are considered too imprecise and inaccurate to be implemented. Moreover, cyber-activist waves have not achieved the continuity they sought on digital platforms like Change.org. On the other hand, despite the suggestion to improve simplicity of use and instrumental help and visual attraction and design dimensions in order to allow citizens to use this channel intuitively, focus on developing information, interactivity and mobilization dimensions would be more effective since they are the main characteristics of any cyber-activist movement. Thus, beta projects like crowdfunding are expected to recover individual trust and to guide political and civic participation in Spain thorough new involvement and collaborative network formats. Finally, regarding the role of prosumer, it is confirmed the main features that distinguishes the zeitgeist of cyber-activists from the traditional activist: cyber-activists who act on digital platforms for civic mobilization not only have the objective of promoting social or political change, but intend to discourage troll users from perverting the cyber-democratic dynamic and polluting the cyber-activist channels with irrelevant or insolent messages that could corrupt the real purpose of the protest. In short, any political and civic participation transgression in cyber-activist channels complicates and hinders the approval of cyber-activism as a phenomenon that comes from civic disobedience and hacktivism.