The Internet in Theory Reevaluated: Theorizing the Role of the Internet in the Political Space

Author(s):  
Galina Nikiporets-Takigawa
Author(s):  
G.Zh. Sultangazy

Cities of the northern part of Kazakhstan at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries had played the role of administrative units for a long period; however, the gradual development of the urban environment and the integration of the cities of the national outskirts into the system of socio-economic relations of the empire led to the formation cooperation of a citizen not only in the economic aspect, but also, in the political aspects. The research attempted to analyze the processes associated with the formation of a political space in a colonial city, where representatives of the national intelligentsia were the subjects, and the emerging media and public spaces were the tools. The author insists that the political component of the city had developed in the context of the all-Russian political situation. The systemic crisis in all spheres of the state's life demanded new formats of their rights struggle. Under these conditions, the intelligentsia takes the initiative and develops its own style of struggle, expressed in the creation of newspapers, which will later become the print organs of the parties. For example, the newspaper "Kazakh" will become the official organ of the Alash party. Thus, the author argues that the formation of the political space in the colonial city is the result of the activities of the intelligentsia. The article uses the data of the regional archives of Kostanay, Petropavlovsk and NurSultan cities. One of the methods of this research was the historical and genetic one, which allows considering the problems in its development and identifying patterns. The use of the historical-comparative method revealed differences in the development of Kazakhstan historiography.


Author(s):  
Herbert Kawadza

A number of landmark judicial review decisions and the resultant political backlash are arguably to supportive of the claim that political and legal constitutionalism are entrenched in South Africa. The common thread in the legislature and executive's reaction to judicial review decisions is that government supremacy is under threat from legal constitutionalism. More specifically, there is a perception that courts are meddling in the political space through judgments that are aimed at weakening the government's authority and power. Nonetheless, such decisions have had an effect of reinforcing the judiciary's legal constitutional role of reviewing the lawfulness of the other branches' activities. There is need for strategies to minimize this tension as the continued antagonism can have unintended consequences such as the delegitimisation of the judiciary    


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Respect Farai Mugodhi ◽  
Lloyd Moyo ◽  
Munyaradzi Muchacha

This commentary critically discusses the political space prior to, and in the aftermath of, former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's fall from power and the possibilities for a transition from authoritarianism to democracy in a new political dispensation. The article examines the role of social work in contributing to the democratisation of Zimbabwe and makes a great case for the involvement of social workers at the micro- and macro-level in the pursuit of democracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Ceccarini

AbstractDemocratic politics does not meet the expectations of citizens who have gradually become more critical towards representative politics and the political elite that represent them. From these well-known considerations and social evaluation spread among the citizenry, this paper focuses on political representation and the concept of citizenship in the age of the Internet. After discussing the positive and negative aspects of digital disintermediation (and hence neo-intermediation), this study concentrates on the potentialities of the role of the Internet, with its ambiguities, and monitoring of citizens' engagement as a possible safety-net for representative democracies in crisis worldwide.


Author(s):  
Lisa Chamberlain ◽  
Gina Snyman

Frequent protests, arising from a diversity of motivations, are a feature of the South African landscape. Despite the right to protest being entrenched in section 17 of the Constitution, it is under threat, and communities seeking to protest increasingly risk criminalisation. This article identifies some of the emerging themes in the protest landscape and the way the right to protest is being suppressed. Four dominant themes are highlighted through the lens of the experiences of the public interest legal sector: the conflation of notification and permission; heavy-handed state responses to protests; the abuse of bail procedures; and the use of interdicts. Law has become at least one of the sites of contestation in the protest arena. The political space held open by the existence of the right to protest is thus closing as a result of violations of this right. It is therefore both useful and necessary to interrogate the role of lawyers in such contestation. This article also examines the context and nature of the public interest legal sector’s response to these emerging themes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Grigoryevich Zyryanov ◽  
Daria Valeryevna Averyanova

The ongoing sociocultural transformations contribute to the present the problem of the society and power relationship. Due to the changing forms, methods and channels of communication, including political communication, this article considers the role and place of the Internet, social media in aggregating protest moods. Since there is a lack of a consensus in the scientific literature on the phenomenon of political protest, the authors present a theoretical interpretation within the framework of political sociology supported by the Russian researchers’ developments of recent years. Protest political activity is seen as a form of political participation and communication with the authorities. The purpose of the research is to reveal the role of information technology and social media in aggregating protest moods on the basis of analyzing online publications. The scientific novelty is conditioned by a multifaceted study of the role and place of the Internet and social media in aggregating protest moods, the role of horizontal and vertical communications during protests. Methods of the research are theoretical and methodological analysis, ontological and system analysis and questionnaire survey. The sociological study has shown how the society’s perception of protests changes in the context of the virtual political space development, which in certain periods becomes more important than the physical political space. Keywords: political protest, protest activity, protest moods, social media, sociological study


2012 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 73-83
Author(s):  
Renata Matkevičienė

Jau gerą pusę šimtmečio mokslininkų tyrimais yra įrodyta, jog žiniasklaida yra aktyvi politinio diskurso dalyvė ir konstruotoja. Praėjusio šimtmečio pabaigoje įsivyravus internetinei žiniasklaidai matomi ir žiniasklaidos turinio formavimo bei informacijos pateikimo pasikeitimai. Įsivyravus informacinėms technologijoms, keičiasi ne tik žiniasklaida, jos veikla, kuriamas ir skleidžiamas turinys, bet ir komunikacija, į kurią yra įtraukti ir kiti viešosios erdvės veikėjai – visuomenė ir politikai. Pastarųjų sąveika politikos komunikacijos sistemoje geriausiai atsispindi būtent per žiniasklaidoje pateikiamą informaciją, jos pranešimų poveikį ir pan., nes daugiausia tik dėl žiniasklaidoje pateikiamų pranešimų yra įmanomas visuomenės informuotumas apie politiką, taip pat tik žiniasklaida įtraukia visuomenę į politinių sprendimų priėmimą ar diskusiją apie politines problemas, priimamus sprendimus. Šiame straipsnyje nėra kvestionuojamas žiniasklaidos, taip pat ir internetinės žiniasklaidos, vaidmuo, jos svarba ar poveikiai, straipsnyje yra teigiama, kad žiniasklaida, o ypač internetinė, yra aktyvi politinės komunikacijos dalyvė, įtraukianti į aktyvią komunikaciją ir politikus per jų pasisakymams suteikiamą erdvę. Dėl šių veiksmų, internetinėje žiniasklaidoje pastebimas ne tik žiniasklaidos formuojamas politinis turinys, bet ir pačių politikų konstruojamas politinis diskursas, kurį žiniasklaida tik moderuoja. Šio straipsnio tikslas – ištirti ir nustatyti internetinėje žiniasklaidoje pateikiamo politinio diskurso kaitą. Aptariamas žiniasklaidos vaidmuo ir jo kaita politikos diskurso konstruotojamame politikos komunikacijos kontekste, taip pat siekiama nustatyti internetinės žiniasklaidos politinio diskurso, konstruojamo pačių politikos veikėjų, kaitą.Changes in the Political Discourse Constructed by the Lithuanian Internet MediaRenata Matkevičienė Summary In the end of the last century when the social media became an important part of the media system, there oceurzed changes in constructing the content the of media and spread of information, as well as news creation, selection and delivery.Changes that occurred in the media because of new information technologies could be seen not only in the mass media, journalism, but also in communication in general, because those changes involved all participants of the public sphere: the media, politicians and citizens. In the system of political communication, the interaction of these participants could be seen via the news that are delivered, and their effects: society receives information about politics and participates in discussions about it. In the article, the role and effects of the Internet are not questioned, because the Internet media are an active participant of political communication; they involve politicians into communication processes, providing space for their voices (publications).The aim of this article is to analyse the change of political discourse in the Internet media content.In the article, the role of the media and its change are discussed in the context of social constructivist theoretical approach; also the political discourse constructed by and in the internet media is analyzed in search of changes in the construction of political discourse, introduced by politicians into the Internet media.The main conclusions made in the article are as follows: 1) the use of the internet by politicians as an arena for discussions is increasing, 2) the main topics discussed by politicians in the internet are politics, economy, energy and social policy, 3) the ways in which politicians are discussing political issues differ depending on the number of years that a politician participates in the political arena, the topic or issue under discussion, 4) economic and political issues are discussed in more sophisticated ways in comparison with discussions of social policy issues which are presented in a very simple, clear way with the arguments that stress the aspects important for society or for some specific groups of citizens, 5) in presenting ideas and in discussions, the politicians prefer to present their own the position instead of presenting position of a political party. These main research findings lead to some conclusions about changes in the political discourse, but they also show quite a strong and manipulative role of the Internet media in selecting politicians and their publications, so it shows that there is still a strong role of the Internet media in constructing the political reality and presenting this “window” to political reality, which is strongly influenced by the position of the media.


Author(s):  
Georgios A. Antonopoulos ◽  
Alexandra Hall ◽  
Joanna Large ◽  
Anqi Shen ◽  
Michael Crang ◽  
...  

Chapter three focuses on the nature and social organisation of the counterfeiting business. It examines the structures and actors involved in the business as well as their motivations, briefly explores the political economy of supply, and pays attention to the role of the internet in the trade.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 885-901
Author(s):  
Francesca Ansaloni

Research on refugee camps and camp-like institutions has gained momentum over the last few decades, as camps have been spreading everywhere in Europe under the impact of the massive increase of migrants stuck at border zones. While early conceptualisations are based on the paradigm of the exception, some scholars have recently posited camps as socio-political spaces which are negotiated and reproduced by the everyday entanglements of the multiple bodies that contribute to their making. This article aims to make a contribution to this strand of literature by understanding camps as the temporary result of spatial and material processes of ordering. By grounding my reasoning on fieldwork in Calais, I explore the countless negotiations and the attunement of multiple rhythms that organised and segmented the Jungle. I focus on the territories built by aid groups, the state and stuff, namely the supplies that flew into the encampment, how their assembling produced orderings and control, and how those orderings shaped the political space of the camp. This territorial account aims to stress the role of the affective and the material in mediating encounters that may produce new orderings while opening up to lines of flight and the configuration of political matter.


Author(s):  
T. N. Samsonova ◽  
E. S. Naumova

The article analyzes the role of mass media in the process of political socialization of the Russian youth in the context of deep socioeconomic and political transformations.Especially significant for the development of political views is the period from 15 to 25 years. Young Russian citizens are just at the stage in the process of developing political habits and are easily influenced by different factors. Much of political information comes from the media, both traditional: newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and innovative — through the Internet. Television helps to shape public opinion by providing political news and their assessment, touching upon important problems, existing in the political sphere. The growth of the Internet is especially significant. News aggregators and online bloggers present a broad range of opinions on political events. The importance of an adequate assessment of the role of the traditional and innovative media in the political socialization of young people, in shaping the political subjectivity of young Russian citizens is obvious.


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