What is technopolitics? A conceptual scheme for understanding politics in the digital age

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Communication at Building a European digital space, 12th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, 7-8 July, 2016. More information: http://ictlogy.net/bibliography/reports/projects.php?idp=3057

Science

Technopolitics
A Conceptual Scheme for Understanding
Politics in the Digital Age
H. Can Kurban, The New School University
Maria Haberer & Ismael Peña‐López, UOC

Internet and Politics
• ICTs as isolated external variables
• Online vs offline?
• Internet = Democracy?
• ICTs Government 2.0?
• The Question of Power and Legitimacy
• Paradigmatic Change in 2008
2
Background of the Topic

Technopolitics Outline
• Context
• Actors
• Scale
• Direction
• Synchronization
• Purpose

Technopolitics Literature
• “constitutional integrity” (Lebkowski, 1997)
• “hybridity” (Hecht, 2001)
• contingency and multiplicity of actors (Kellner, 2001)
• contesting conceptions of citizenship, rights, and the
polity (Hughes, 2006)
• the closed vs. the open (Rasmussen, 2007)
• power and strategy (Toret et al. 2015)
4
Literature Review

Conceptual Focus
The Origins of Antagonism:
• The Organizing Role of Communication (Internet
Governance)
• The Value of Information (Big/Public Data)
5
Two Main Concepts

Technopolitics Battles
• Post‐2008 Context and Actors
6
Major Contestations

Context – Contentious Politics
• New Digital Media Environment (Chadwick, 2009)
• Organizational change (Bimber et. al, 2012)
– Resource mobilization
– Participation
– Collective Action
Pattern: networked practices travel from micro level
individual behaviours and expectation) to meso level
(collective action, campaigning, co-framing)
7
Contentious Politics in post‐2008 context

Scale
Individual => Organization => Contentious Networks
The connective logic (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013)
– Scale up more quickly
– Produce large mobilization
– Funding
– Flexibility in tracking moving political targets, and bridging
different issues
– Build up adaptive repertoires, share open source software
development, and embrace an ethos of inclusiveness.
8
Scaling Up

Direction
Contentious Politics Moving From Outside to
Inside the Institutional Politics
Cases: Barcelona En Comu, Ahora Madrid, The
Pirate Party in Iceland
9
Direction

Synchronization
Internal
• New spaces for activism (Barlow, Echeverría, Castels), including no-
places (Augé)
• Spaces that are not isolated, but behave as different layers of a
same reality (Toret, Monterde)
• There are "synchronization" practices across spaces that spread
information and enable coordination of action (Corsín & Estalella,
Martínez Roldán, Monterde)
External
• D-Cent Project
10
Synchronization

Purpose
• Short term: take back politics
– increasing civic engagement
– taking the influence of big money out of politics
• Long term: hack the political system
– Change the existing processes
– Expose its shortcomings
11
Purpose

Discussion
• Synchronize across Europe?
• Full Scalability?
• A New Constitutional Process?
12
Discussion

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