Social media, politics and democracy in post-transition Central and Eastern Europe (original) (raw)
#Democracy: social media use and democratic legitimacy in Central and Eastern Europe
Democratization, 2016
Since 1989, many of the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have made the dramatic change from communist regimes to democratic nations that are integrated in the European sphere. While these sweeping changes have given rise to a successful transition to democracy unlike any the world has ever seen, there remain issues with governance as well as citizen support for the regime. While other studies have shown that mass media can influence a person's attitudes and opinions in the region, none has explored what effect social media can have on orientations toward democracy in the region. In the following paper, I build several hypotheses based on previous studies of media effects and democratic survival. I then employ survey data to empirically test whether social media increases support for democracy. The study finds that not only does using social media increase support for democracy, but also simple usage rather than information seeking provides more consistent effects on a person's support for democracy in CEE.
2013
Moldova's April 2009 mass unrest and the subsequent ouster of Vladimir Voronin's Communist Party have become widely known as the country's "Twitter Revolution," which in turn is often cited as an example of the Internet promoting revolution and democratization in a hybrid regime, a political system combining elements of democracy and authoritarianism. A close analysis of these events, however, shows that social media played a secondary role at best. Instead, Moldova's revolution is best understood as the product of a succession crisis that happened to hit the regime as the country was entering a sharp economic decline linked to the global financial crisis. The findings emphasize the risk of overestimating the Internet's effects on regime change if researchers neglect the hard work of carefully tracing the actual processes by which nondemocratic regimes are ousted.
#Democracy: The Internet And Support For Democracy In Central And Eastern Europe
2014
Since 1989, the countries in Central and Eastern Europe have undergone a tremendous amount of societal and political change. While previous studies have noted the importance of citizen support for democracy in providing a base for regime stability in these new democracies, there is considerable debate in what influences these values. One possible mechanism of attitude change is mass media. Previous studies in political science have noted the importance of mass media in influencing citizen attitudes and behavior. Though this research has uncovered a plethora of effects that the media can have, the extant literature has mostly focused on this relationship in older, established democracies. This study seeks to advance literature on political communication by extending this research to new democracies and new media. Specifically, it explores the effects of the internet on support for democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. The main hypothesis is citizens who use the internet will be more supportive of democratic governance and the norms of a democratic society because the internet offers immediate feedback loops between citizens, media outlets, and politicians, as well as the opportunity to diffuse democratic norms through social interaction online. To test this prediction, the study utilizes data from Eurobarometer and the European Social Survey. The findings show that internet use does increase support for the political regime and democratic norms in the region's democracies, while only increasing support for democratic norms in the non-democracies. Furthermore, the findings show that social interaction online tends to be a driving mechanism in producing support for democracy, while online news increases the chances for citizens to hold political elites accountable by providing an open space for healthy political opposition to iii coalesce. These findings provide evidence that the internet can be a particularly helpful mechanism in supporting democratic consolidation in these new democracies because it provides unique opportunities to influence support for democratic norms and hold elected leaders accountable to the mass public. iv DEDICATION To Summer. Without her endless support and encouragement this work could not have been completed. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express sincere gratitude to my dissertation committee, Professors Alice Cooper, Greg Love, Matthew Loveless, and Carrie Smith, for all their help and guidance throughout the dissertation process. Their vision and tireless efforts have allowed this project to come to fruition. Furthermore, I would like to thank Professors Cooper, Love, and Loveless for all their professional advice and guidance throughout my time as a graduate student. Their advice has been invaluable at every stage of my graduate school education. Finally, I would like to thank my family, especially my grandmother, for inspiring a love of learning and creativity at an early age. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
International Journal of Communication, 2018
Since the fall of communism in 1989, many formerly communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe have undergone a tremendous amount of social, political, and economic change. In the nearly 30 years after communism, these countries have become democratic and integrated into the European Union. Despite these changes, the consolidation of democracy is in question as citizen trust in government remains low and nationalist populism has risen. Given that other studies have shown that online media can affect attitudes toward government and that a massive technological revolution has occurred alongside democratization, it is imperative to better understand whether the Internet can aid consolidation by making citizens more supportive of democratic governance. This study uses Eurobarometer data to evaluate this question empirically and finds that online news consumption leads to more positive evaluations of government in the region.
Teorija in praksa (vol. 51, no. 6), pp.: 1222-1241, 2014
The paper looks at the wider role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of their use in global political struggles, but also on the back of their sweeping abuse for surveillance by global capitalist corporations and state institutions. A general question is raised: can the Internet and social media be perceived as a means of social progress or as mechanisms of oppression? The author proceeds from a critical perspective and emphasises that ICTs must be analysed as parts of the social totality. They cannot be understood in a dichotomous way, but only as being full of contradictions. Yet, contradictions do not entail relativism – class inequalities, exploitation and domination are filtered through ICTs together with the manifold antagonisms emerging from capitalist societies.
2015
CONTENTS Foreword Judy Dempsey Preface Part One: e-Governance and Cybersecurity 1. E-Governance in the Post-Soviet Space: A Conversation with Tarvi Martens and Andrew Wilson 2. Michael Yakushev and Veni Markovski, Internationalizing Internet Governance in Eastern Europe 3. Szymon Marcinów, Private-Public Cyberspace Partnership in Poland 4. Leslie Holmes, Cybercrime in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe Part Two: Ukraine 2014: The Crisis Online 5. Ilami Yasna, Ukraine-2014: Which Way Will the Digitalization Pendulum Swing? 6. Andrea Chalupa, #digitalmaidan: United Ukrainians Everywhere over Social Media 7. Katya Gorchinskaya, YanukovychLeaks 8. Katie Kuksenok, Multilingualism on Social Media in the Maidan Movement Part Three: Separatism and De Facto States Online 9. Matthew Luxmoore, Digital Separatism: E-Diplomacy in Ukraine’s Rebel Republics 10. Giorgio Comai, Post-Soviet De Facto States Online 11. Marcin Kosienkowski, William Schreiber and Joyce Hahn, Social Media in the Service of Territorial Reintegration in the post-Soviet Area Part Four: Democracy and Authoritarianism Online 12. Maeve Shearlaw, Guardian New East: Social Media Freedom and the Post-Soviet States 13. Marta Poślad, New Europe, New Technologies and Old Politics 14. Andrei Aliaksandrau, How Free Is Internet in Belarus? 15. Alex Rubin, Runet: An Ambiguous Political Force Part Five: Digital Diplomacy 16. Victor Guzun, E-diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Perspective 17. Sergey Utkin, Digital Diplomacy and Russia’s Image Problem 18. Hristofor Hrisoskulov, #Ukraine: A Good Chance for e-Diplomacy. A View from Eastern Europe 19. Radu Cucoş, Social Media Bridges between States and Diasporas: The Case Study of Moldova
PRE PRINT: Public communication in Central and East European democracies
Stephen Coleman, Frank Esser, Julie Firmstone, Katy Parry, Chris Paterson, Eds. ‘Public Communication in Freefall’ (Palgrave Macmillan), forthcoming, 2025
In this chapter I wish to outline the problematic of understanding the changes in the public sphere in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In agreement with Barbara Pfetsch (2018) who argues for the empirical examination of hybridity in relation to the disconnections and dissonance in the public sphere, I will attempt to take a snapshot of the empirical situation in the CEE countries. By applying the framework of the political information environment in van Aelst el at. (2017) to the CEE, the chapter will show what we know about the six areas which are necessary to understand the shaping of citizens' democratic engagement: supply of political information; quality of news; media concentration and diversity of news; fragmentation and polarization; relativism in news; and the degree of inequality in political knowledge. This exercise will show that a great deal of research and existing knowledge mapping is necessary before we can truly begin to understand the form and consequences of media and political hybridity in this part of Europe.