Does 'Web 2.

0' fundamentally change the

nature of Internet politics?

The last decade of the development of the Web has been characterised best by the term Web 2.0. In
my essay I will evaluate the meaning of this term, and look at the way that Web 2.0 influences the
way different groups use the internet for political purposes.

The use of the Internet has changed in different ways for casual internet users and for political
parties. I will argue that for internet users, the two most important developments are the
broadening of access to political content, and participation in political discourse on one hand, and
the decline of deliberative discourse on the other. For political parties the change has again meant
the greater participation of voters, but also a shift in the way the Web can used to organise and fund
political campaigns.

First, however, it is necessary to define what exactly the term Web 2.0 constitutes

What is Web 2.0?

The term Web 2.0 arose in 2003 in the name of a set of conferences organised by Tim O’Reilly. In
O’Reilly’s view, the set of technologies emerging in this time signified an important break from the
past. We can therefore perhaps understand O’Reilly’s view as one of a technological determinist. In
his definition the technological basis of Web 2.0 is emphasised.

According to his article “What Is Web 2.0” from 2005, these are: the Web is a platform for the
running and interaction of software, that user-generated content; data in general, is the single most
important resource; websites will use lightweight programming models (RSS, XML, AJAX) based on
simplicity and standardisation, and will constantly evolve (the end of the software release cycle); the
software of the Web 2.0 will have a rich user experience, and will exist above the single device (i.e.
they will be accessible from everything with an internet connection, whether smartphone, personal
computer, or refrigerator). (O'Reilly, 2005)
O’Reilly keenly predicted (and influenced) the development of the web in the next years. However, it
would in my opinion be a mistake to define Web 2.0 solely by the technological advances described
above. The Web 2.0 also marks a significant shift in the social and political nature of the Web. This in
turn, has had an influence on its technological make-up.

First, the internet penetration in western countries reached a very high level. In 2002, after a decade
of rapid growth, 173 million people in the United States (that is about 60% of the population), and
34 million people in the United Kingdom (about 58% of the population), had some kind of access to
the internet. (The World Bank) (U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division , 2011)

Moreover, the rising popularity of broadband in the years following has meant that websites could
expect a significant part of their users to be constantly online, and have high bandwidth. The
penetration rate for fixed (wired) broadband in the United States grew from 4.4% at the end of 2002
to 27.1% in the second quarter of 2010. Even more dramatically, the penetration rate in the UK grew
from 0.6% at the end of 2002 to 30.5% in the second quarter of 2010. (OECD, 2010)

Web 2.0 can therefore, in my opinion, be understood as the widening and deepening of user-
participation on the internet. Most people in developed countries in 2002 were already online. In
the following years, these people found themselves interacting with the internet to a greater
degree, and moving towards a faster and more ubiquitous internet experience. This has led to a kind
of democratisation of the internet, and the development from medium (where producers create
content and use the internet to direct it to consumers) to a network (where consumer-producers
create content on the internet and automatically distribute it to others.) Probably the best example
of this is the how people find information in general reference works on the internet today. In the
past ten years we have seen a significant shift from expert-written reference works such as
Encyclopædia Britannica and Microsoft’s Encarta to the user-generated and collaborative Wikipedia.

The focus on user-generated content and network effects in web-services, driven by the saturation
of internet penetration and growing internet speeds and the internet’s ubiquity is, in my opinion, the
most important development of the Web 2.0. It is this development that influences the way people
participate in politics online.

In order to see how the nature of internet politics has changed, I will try to look at political
participation from two perspectives: the perspective of internet users, who participate and use the
Web for political purposes, and the perspective of political candidates, parties and groups that use
the web in order to facilitate the participation of their supporters.
Politics from a User Perspective

Web 2.0 is defined by its emphasis on the user, and on user generated content. There have been
several significant shifts in the way the Web is used from the perspective of a user. In the next
paragraphs I will look at the lower barriers to entry for the creation and dissemination of user
generated-content and the resulting greater political participation, but also at the decline of online
political deliberation. I will argue that these two developments have had a profound effect on
internet politics in the Web 2.0 era.

Lower barriers to entry

Websites that are considered part of the Web 2.0 are relatively simple to use and actively promote
and facilitate the sharing of information. Blogging services such as Google’s Blogger and WordPress,
and microblogging sites (or tumblelogs) such as Tumblr and Twitter are extremely easy to set up,
and are usually free and open. This has meant Internet users can publish their views, and have a
genuine impact on the political process without the support of such traditional gatekeepers as the
media, or political parties. (Pole, 2009, p. 5)

Indeed, some bloggers have risen to prominence: Nate Silver, the statistician and writer behind
FiveThirtyEight.com, began blogging with the Daily Kos, and started his own blog only after receiving
some attention there. (Wikipedia contributors, 2011) Writing anonymously (or pseudonymously),
the blog and Silver’s predictions of received wide-spread attention from the print media. After
publicising his name, he appeared on “MSNBC, CNN, “The Colbert Report” and Fox News.” (Clifford,
2008). Indeed, Nate Silver was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people of 2009. (James,
2009)

Blogs have given people the means to put their message across in a way that was previously only
available to the elites. This is true in two ways. Blogging first enables people to directly contribute to
the political discourse with first-hand accounts and of what is happening around them. Much of the
information the traditional media relies upon when reporting the recent unrests in the Middle East
and North Africa comes from micro-blogging services such as Twitter. These then have a significant
influence in how and if the news is reported.

The second way in which blogging empowers people is the prioritisation of content. As Antoinette
Pole argues, “while most political bloggers do not provide breaking coverage of news events, a
majority link to important articles and/or provide commentary on politics, public policy and current
events.” This gives them the ability to highlight important articles and editorialise them to a certain
degree, thereby diminishing the power of the media that traditionally held this role (Pole, 2009, p. 5)

The Decline of Political Deliberation

However, the popularisation of online participation has had an effect on its quality and the amount
of deliberation that goes into it. While blogs such as those mentioned above are poplar and plentiful,
the majority of political content online is of a much more mundane variety. This has important
consequences with regards to e-democracy, which expects deliberative participation as its input. As
Chadwick notes, the e-democracy paradigm of the 1990s (or Web 1.0) was concerned with “the
creation of deliberative spaces, particularly discussion forums. It was assumed that they would
provide for rich, critical, self-reflective, tolerant, and sustained citizen engagement” (Chadwick,
2009, p. 15) . However, the development of the internet, and particularly its popularisation, has
shown that this is not the case. While deliberative spaces exist on the internet, in discussion forums,
blogs, and their comment sections, and elsewhere, these are not used by the majority of users. Web
2.0 is characterised by the aggregation of simple “low-threshold” use-generated content and
feedback.

For example, the social-news site Reddit allows users to vote on different stories in order to give
them priority on the front page, and also to comment on the stories in a threaded forum-style
discussion. The most popular story of the last month the “politics” subcategory is about Russ
Feingold (“the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War” (alecb, 2011)). The
story has a relatively large number of comments: 870. Comments on Reddit are not particularly
high-threshold: Creating an account is a simple process (no email is needed, for example), and
commenting is as easy as typing the comment and clicking save. However, voting on content is even
easier: it consists of only clicking on one of two arrows. The number of votes, therefore, is much
larger: 17,081.

Political participation on the internet has, more often than not, taken the form of minute low-
threshold feedback and content, “liking” a politician’s Facebook page, signing an online petition and
voting on a sympathetic article on a social news website are far more popular than deliberating on a
forum post. However, this, in my opinion, is a necessary development: most political participation
offline is not deliberative; most people have little interest in politics. It would be a mistake to limit
political participation on the internet to those who do.
Politics from a Politicians Perspective

Politicians have quickly started to recognise the ability of Web 2.0 tools to increase voter
participation, and have had some success in doing so. Those campaigns that have recognised the
nature of political participation online have been more successful in fostering it.

Politicians and political parties take advantage of the Web 2.0 on their own websites and blogs, and
on social networking sites. According to Jackson and Lillekar (Jackson, 2009, p. 238), the three main
British parties are active on most social networks. The Conservative Party uses Facebook and Bebo;
the Liberal Democrats also have a YouTube page, and Labour both a YouTube page and a MySpace
profile. In addition, the Conservatives and Lib Dems have Facebook applications. On their own
websites, British political parties use several different Web 2.0 tools. Most prevalent are those that
(Jackson, 2009, p. 239) allow users to share and update information. Most sites also allow users to
upload material, particularly video, and have forums where users discuss various topics. While
perhaps limited, the Parties in the UK do use Web 2.0 features to some effect.

The best example of the use of Web 2.0 features is the Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama. Built
by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes (Stelter, 2008), my.barackobama.com was the social network
platform for Obama’s campaign. The website was, of course, instrumental in the Obama’s
fundraising: for example, in January 2008 alone, 80% of the $36 million raised came from online
donations. (Holahan, 2008) Apart from being particularly successful in encouraging donations,
my.barackobama.com was also used as an organisational tool for the campaign. Via the website
users can create and edit public profiles for themselves, find local grassroots campaigns, get
information on primaries and even organise their own local campaigns by creating local groups,
creating events, blogs, creating networks of friends and messaging them. The site also has a tool that
allows users to call potential supporters, and organise fundraising events (or “fundraising house
parties”).

The success of this internet-based campaign is built on Web 2.0 features. User-generated content,
social networks and a rich user experience were all central to its success. The shift from Web 1.0 to
Web 2.0 has, for political websites meant a shift from one-way presentation of the politician or
political party, to a combination of presentation and both horizontal participation (that is between
supporters) and vertical participation (between voters and the politician/party). By widening and
deepening participation Obama was able to organise his supporters into fundraising and direct
political marketing.
Conclusion

The shift to Web 2.0 has had a profound influence on the way different groups use the Web for
political purposes. Apart from lowering the barriers to entry for users and allowing more people to
politically participate in a meaningful way online, the Web has also changed the quality of this
participation, with more emphasis being put on low threshold participation and a move away from
the deliberative kind that was expected from Web 1.0

Political parties have also adapted to the use of Web 2.0. They use it to allow their (potential) voters
to share and create content. Campaigns that put heavy emphasis on Web 2.0 tools, such as Obama’s
2008 campaign, also allow users to organise themselves, and others, in order to raise funds, and
persuade people.

While coming short of fundamentally changing the nature of internet politics, Web 2.0 has,
nevertheless, significantly affected it, and in my opinion will continue to do so.

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