Siegen (D), November 9, 2007. Since the 1980s, political campaigning of social movement actors has become increasingly professionalised and adjusted to the selection criteria of a commercialised media environment. According to the assumption of many scholars, this trend of professionalised campaigning politics might be reversed by the internet as its technical structures offer chances of desintermediation of communication, circumventing the gatekeeper function of mass media. Online social media and social network s are perceived as enabling structures for new concepts of public spheres.
Related to the latter, ICTs have been said to both empower subjects to raise their voice individually as well as collectively and to participate directly in the political arena. Corresponding to this, forms of digital ‘peer to peer campaigning’ have also been conceived to foster authenticity and as an ‘antidote ’ against allegations of symbolic and performative politics .
Against the back drop of the concept of public spheres, the workshop strives for a comparative analysis and theoretical review of campaigning politics on the net: Do online communication structures actually enhance the democratic potential of campaigning practices? How and to what extent do online political campaigns contribute to the establishment of a transnational ‘public of publics ’? Are these publics reconnected and embedded into an overarching institutionalised public sphere?
Download the pdf program here.