[ecrea] Book Announcement - Politics and Web 2.0: The Participation Gap

*_Book announcement_*


*‘**Politics and Web 2.0: The Participation Gap’***

By Peter Dahlgren, Giovandro Marcos Ferreira, Gisela Goncalves, Evandro 
Oliveira, Joaquín Lopez del Ramo, Karen Sanders, J. Paulo Serra

Gisela Goncalves, J. Paulo Serra (Eds.)


*//*

A point of departure for this book is the paradox between the seemingly 
limitless promise modern web technologies hold for enhanced political 
communication and their limited actual contribution. Empirical evidence 
indicates that neither citizens nor political parties are taking full 
advantage of online platforms to advance political participation. This 
is particularly evident when considering the websites of political 
parties, which have taken on two main functions: i) Disseminating 
information to citizens and journalists about the history, structure, 
programme and activities of the party; ii) Monitoring citizens’ opinions 
in regard to different political questions and policy proposals that are 
under discussion. Despite the integration of websites into political 
parties’ “permanent campaigns” (Blumenthal), television continues to be 
seen as the core medium in political communication and one-way and 
top-down communication strategies still prevail. In other words, it is 
still “business as usual”.

This book questions whether Web 2.0 could help enhance citizens’ 
political participation. It offers a critical examination of the current 
state of the art from diverse perspectives, highlights persisting gaps 
in our knowledge and identifies a promising stream of further research. 
The ambition is to stimulate debate around the party-citizen 
"participation mismatch" and the role and place of modern web 
technologies in this setting.

Each of the included chapters provide valuable explorations of the ways 
in which political parties motivate, make use of and are shaped by 
citizen participation in the Web 2.0 era. Diverse perspectives are 
employed, drawing examples from several European political systems and 
offering analytical insights at both the individual/micro level and at 
broader, macro or inter-societal systems level. Taken together, they 
offer a balanced and thought-provoking account of the political 
participation gap, its causes and consequences for political 
communication and democratic politics, as well as pointing the way to 
new forms of contemporary political participation.


*Paulo Serra*has a Graduation in Philosophy, and a Master’s Degree and a 
PhD in Communication Sciences. He is Professor at the Department of 
Communication Sciences of University of Beira Interior (UBI), Portugal, 
and researcher in the unit Labcom.IFP, where he coordinates the 
Communication and Media Group. He is currently the Chairman of Sopcom 
(Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences).

*Gisela Gonçalves* has a master’s Degree and a PhD in Communication 
Sciences, and she is Professor and Head of the Department of 
Communication and Arts of the University of Beira Interior (UBI, 
Covilhã, Portugal). She develops her research activity at LabCom.IFP – a 
Communication, Philosophy and Humanities research centre.


Vernon Press 2016  184pp 
9781622730995<https://vernonpress.com/title?id=138%20>https://vernonpress.com/title?id=138Special 
discount for members quoting WP2DNMPR



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