FB chat with a MEP?

ICTs (information and communication technologies) and their ascribed revolutionary potential could/should by now make a notable change in the formal political arena. Many expected that they will bring politicians closer to their voters by enabling direct dialogue with political leaders. Yet, this is not the case. As noted by many researchers ITCs did not make a revolution in this view, instead they provided a new space for the polititians to be present but mostly do nothing. Of course, they use Twitter, Facebook etc. to update their followers on the latest happening, but they do not provide much of an environment, where a political discussion could take place. So instead of relevant political dialogue with the citizens, a lot of them share more or less personal thoughts, that have little or nothing to do with their political persona. (Holtz-Bacha 2004, Karvonen 2007, Sampedro & Pérez 2008) Personalization of politics is not a new phenomenon, yet the web and especially the ITCs provide a great environment. So as Bentivegna (2006, 337) adequately notes:

If one takes the formal political arena as a reference point for defining the role played by ICTs, the result is inevitably disappointing. In this context, in fact, ICTs can only take on a marginal role, in support of a pre-existing organizational and communicative apparatus. In the case of exceptional events such as electoral campaigns, ICTs assume a prominent role but without ever modifying the fundamental nature of the relationship between political actors and citizens.

As much as I agree with Bentivegna, there are exceptions. An interesting thing happened about a month ago. I was browsing through my news feed on Facebook an saw, that European parliament made an event called: Journalism, New Media & Public European Space - Chat with MEP Løkkegaard. I found out about this event only two hours before it was supposed to take place, so I decided to participate. This chat was created in order to get some feedback on a report “On journalism and new media – creating a public sphere in Europe”, a draft of which was presented by Danish liberal MEP Morten Løkkegaard to the Culture committee in April and which will be voted in beginning of June.

The chat took place here, under Mr. Lokkegaard's portait. Participants asked questions and MEP answered. Facebook users would surely agree, that trying to make a proper discussion by posting questions and answers as comments under a photo is nearly impossible: participants were trying to address complex problems and notions, such as the existence of the European public sphere, online deliberation etc., which require more space available for the text itself and even more importantly, more time to make a proper answer by the MEP. The event only lasted an hour and a half, and in this time I believe all of us got our answers: - they were short, sometimes superficial, but everyone got one.

Skeptics would argue, that this kind of events are only part of a show to humor the public, and make them think that politicians really do care and want be closer with citizens, but in my opinion, this kind of events are definitely a step forward from just being present in social networking sites and other ITCs. The MEP actually took the time and provided answers for everyone who had a question. Some questions were completely irrelevant and some people came only to promote their civic initiative groups and the like, but all things considered, such events could be seen as a sign of progress, because by creating potential spaces for online discussions, governmental institutions and polititians are (slowly) bridging the gap between political leaders and their citizens.

Examined literature:

Bentivegna, S. 2006. Rethinking Politics in the World of ICTs. European Journal of Communication, 21 (3): 331 – 343.

Holtz-Bacha, Christina. 2004. Germany: How the private life of politicians got into the media. Parliamentary Affairs 57 (1): 41-52.

Karvonen, Lauri. 2007. The Personalization of politics. What does research tell us so far, and what further research is in order? http://www.ecprnet.eu/ecpr/ecpr/paper_info.asp?paperNumber=PP226

Sampedro, Víctor in Francisco Seoane Pérez. 2008. The 2008 Spanish General Elections: "Antagonistic Bipolarization" Geared by Presidential Debates, Partisanship, and Media Interests. The International Journal of Press/Politics 13 (3): 336-344.